Look Mark, Who Is Using Your Facebook

To: Mark Zuckerberg, Top boss of Facebook

From: Rakesh Raman, a social media activist

Hello Mark,

Please let me introduce myself as a social media activist. I have already sent you two long messages informing you about the chaos happening on Facebook right under your nose, but you’ve failed to set it right and problems continue to persist on your site.

Here are my previous messages – Message 1 and Message 2 – for your ready reference.

I have been telling you all this with the hope that things will improve at your end and Facebook will become a real utility for its handful of users (though you claim these are over 1 billion Facebook users; I refuse to agree with this grossly inflated number).

During the past about four years of my tryst with Facebook, I have tried to study the behavior of over 4,000 of my virtual links (called ‘Friends’ in your terminology). And here I want to present the findings of my study – Who Is Using Facebook and How – for your information and necessary action.

Don’t ignore even a single word of my findings for they will help you understand the traits of your own Facebook. Okay?

Here are the categories of users who exist on Facebook.

Lifters

These users lift everything from everywhere – quotes of famous people, pictures, videos, you name it – and throw it all on the Facebook’s News Feed area, making your site a perfect land for dumping digital debris. My study estimates that the percentage of such users is 14.

Cheating Workers

They’re shirkers who cheat their employers and wander around every corner of Facebook while ignoring their official work. They don’t do anything useful here. As they’re a heavy burden on their organizations, they should be thrown out of their jobs for this online cheating. They are 20% of the total number of Facebook users.

Data: RMN Digital Estimates

Retired Souls

They may not be retired just by age, but they’re perhaps intellectually retired users. They’d come to Facebook before the cock’s crow and leave it after the owl’s growl. Their one-point agenda is to post every news story from every newspaper and comment on it without understanding the content. While they use Facebook as a data junkyard, they’re 10% in number, as my study indicates.

Naughty Gamers

These users have nothing to do with Facebook, as they enter Facebook just to play free games freely without any external disturbance. Although you keep counting them wrongly as Facebook users, they’re actually game users and those games are not of Facebook. Hope you agree, Mr. Mark. They’re a whopping 25%.

Idle Housewives

While they’re supposed to be home-makers, thanks to Facebook they’ve become home-breakers. They ignore their families and domestic duties to spend their days and nights on Facebook. But thankfully their number is not really big on your site – 6%, I’d say.

Social Parasites

This is a strange category of users. They’re very punctual and would appear regularly on Facebook. They don’t participate in any activity – no posts, no likes, no comments – but they keep sitting in Facebook’s chat box silently like parasites. Perhaps, they’re out there to redefine the social networking concept. Their percentage – 12.

Digital Zombies

Believe me, Mark; I can face the real blood-sucking zombies. But I’m too scared of these dangerous virtual zombies that you’ve created. They keep chasing me with their gory desires, asking me to play games with them or like their dirty Pages or attend their horrific Events. Save me from these zombies, Mark. They’re 10% of your users.

Shady Links

Despite my serious attempts, I failed to decipher their identities. Some of them even appear without their profile pictures. Who are they, Mark? According to my study, they must be 3%.

Listen, I’ve not created a separate category of genuine users like me on Facebook because their number is quite insignificant. And I assume you know it already. There may also be users who exist in multiple categories. Okay?

With all these users, you claim that Facebook is the biggest social networking site in the world. Is it a valid claim, Mr. Mark? And should advertisers be interested in this kind of shallow user base? Only you or the God can tell.

By Rakesh Raman, the managing editor of RMN Company.