Am I done with social networking yet? Almost. Next week I’ll be talking about BASEBALL for the first time ever (don’t worry; there’s a huge business change lesson in there), but for now . . . I have one more social networking point to make.
And it’s positive. And I’ll even say something nice about Facebook!
From Wired Magazine:
A study led by Abilene Christian University followed the Facebook profiles of 375 first-semester freshman students for nine months to examine how Facebook activity can be used as a predictor for a student’s likelihood to stay in school. The research found that students who returned to school after freshman year had significantly more Facebook friends and wall posts than those who didn’t return.
In other words, peer pressure works.
In business, the closest thing to this is peer review. When your work is held up to the scrutiny of the people you work with, you’re going to want their approval. So your work is better, before ever getting completed. For kids, in college, in a social networking environment, the very face that there’s a growing and tightening net of peers boosts the odds of success.
The positive upshot for social networking is obvious. The positive upshot for Facebook is . . . oh darn, I take it back; Facebook doesn’t make you feel connected to your peers, it makes you feel disconnected.
OK, maybe I should back down just a little. This study used Facebook and there was a clear positive outcome. Facebook helped kids stay in school. But the reason that worked was because the kids in the study were linked to each other naturally; Facebook merely facilitated the usefulness of that link.
And that’s where social networking becomes really useful (see yesterday’s piece on GetGlue). If you have a reason to be communicating with other people social networking goes a long way toward making that reason stronger. And that’s when peer pressure can become a good thing.
Peer Pressure. A Good Thing. Seriously. And on Facebook, of all places!
