Thesis Title: Subtitle

Objective Architectural Constraints: Making Facebook a Place

To understand how users construct social space, the architectural constraints that users are working within should be detailed first. From this, I discuss how, by using de Certeau’s theory as a basis, we can understand how users move through and experience this space. I then argue that while Facebook can be compared to a city in terms of scale, the way users act in this space does not align with the public nature of city life.

While the architecture of Facebook has certain objective limits, it is possible to go beyond, disrupt or reinterpret these determinants that Facebook – as an object – sets on its utilisation (de Certeau 1984). De Certeau argues that the act of walking through a space (the urban environment) creates and transforms spatial signifiers into something else. The choices made by the walker mean that only a few possibilities out of a constructed order are realised; conversely the number of possibilities may be increased by taking unexpected routes and limited through prohibitions. That is, taking or not taking paths considered accessible or obligatory (de Certeau 1984). Thought of in this way, Facebook could be considered to have as many forms as it has users (de Certeau 1984).

By making these choices, places are made and unmade. The history of the internet, and social networking, is replete with such examples of previously well-trodden paths becoming neglected, and then abandoned, because the spatial choices made (of where to go) have condemned them to inertia and disappearance. Currently, through sheer weight of numbers, Facebook has become central to communication for its users. But paths are not fixed, and when forgotten, places are unmade through lack of use; the spaces within them also fall away. Myspace is an example of this. It is now a non-place on the Internet because few travel there anymore. For example, those who linger in these non-places, such as Natalie (F, 25), can also get stuck in a social black spot when deprived of the incidental social contact that Facebook offers. As Natalie describes below, being stuck in a place that no one else visits limited her opportunities to be socially engaged.

You know what happened was I got a Facebook page and then never used it. I wondered why I had no friends, because no-one ever texted me and no-one ever invited me to anything. No-one was really using Myspace anymore. I was like oh I've

got no friends. Anyway, one day I saw a friend. She's like oh why didn't you come to my party? I was like what party? She's like oh I invited you on Facebook. I was like what? Oh yeah, I do have a page. So I went on there anyway and I had like 50,000 event invitations or whatever and like friend requests and all this stuff. So I was like, oh, okay, here's where it is.

So, in the broader context of the internet, Facebook has become increasingly central in arranging and sustaining an individual’s social connections as demonstrated by Natalie’s account. As more people chose to make Facebook central to the way they ‘walked’ the internet, those such as Natalie, who were taking other paths inhabited an increasingly silent and shrinking social space online; a consequence which translated to her offline experiences. So broadly, users who walk the internet turn places like Facebook into important social spaces. Not only do users create social space on the internet more broadly, they also create social space within particular sites such as Facebook.

As alluded to above, Facebook has its own architecture that users must work within which offers both constraints and affordances. These architectural features will now be outlined in order to sketch the basic dimensions of Facebook as a place. On a basic level, opening a Facebook account requires an email address. While this observation may seem basic, it is important to highlight that this is not a requirement for all social spaces on the internet. Many IRC chat rooms can be accessed with a screen name that is not tied to an email address. More recently the social media site Reddit, which has content that spans everything from news to entertainment, does not require users’ screen names be linked to an offsite email for verification processes. As observed in the previous chapter on self- presentation, processes such as requiring an email address to participate on Facebook are part of the ways in which Facebook’s architecture takes steps to link a user’s offline self to a body that is locatable in space and time.

Facebook also requires users to input basic details about themselves. All users must nominate a name to use on their Facebook profile. Additionally, users are strongly encouraged to use real names over pseudonyms so that offline acquaintances can find them on Facebook. As an example, when I re-joined Facebook to create an account for my observational research, Facebook would frequently send me prompts about the ways it preferred me to use my Facebook account. Upon joining, Facebook suggested that I

‘find my friends’, fill out profile information, including location, education, marital status, age and interests. It also frequently prompted me to share status updates and to interact with other people on my friends list by writing on their ‘wall’ (as opposed to sending a private ^{message). While I could choose whether or not to follow these prompts, Facebook} aggressively guides users along preferred pathways.

While some aspects of Facebook are negotiable, others are not. For instance, the aesthetics of Facebook are uniform across all users. No matter who the user is their profile is shaped in identical ways. When a user logs in, they always see the ‘news feed’, a real-time feed of status updates and other activities from those in their friends’ list. To a certain extent, users can customise this feed to exclude people from whom they do not wish to hear. However, aside from purposely hiding individuals from appearing in the new feed, users have little control over what appears when they log into their Facebook account. Facebook employs a ^{sorting algorithm to determine what it believes users want to, or should, see. Bucher (2012a)} explains Facebook employs an automated selection algorithm to determine what it thinks is relevant to its users interests which thus controls the levels of visibility within Facebook. Bucher (2012a) also explains that Facebook treats every item in the News Feed as an object (be it status update, a like or picture upload). It then, as people interact with this object, ranks them through a system that Facebook calls ‘EdgeRank’ (Bucher 2012a). This rank takes into account three different components, which Bucher (2012a: 1167) details as follows:

1. 
   Affinity. This pertains to the nature of the relationship between the viewing user and the item’s creator. Here the amount and nature of the interaction between two users is measured. Sending a friend a private message or checking out his or her profile on a frequent basis heightens the users’ affinity score to that particular friend.
   
2. 
   Weight. Each Edge is given a specific ‘weight’ depending on how popular or important Facebook considers it to be. Therefore, not every Edge gets weighted the same. Some types of interactions are considered more important than others. Arguably, a Comment has more importance than a Like.
   
3. 
   Time decay. Probably the most intuitive component relates to the recency or freshness of the Edge. Older Edges are thus considered less important than new ones.
   

However, as Facebook currently has a feature where users can pay to ‘promote’ their post(s) over other content, it is obvious that paid content is privileged over unpaid content. Users also see promoted posts more than they see other more potentially

interesting content. Therefore, the architecture of Facebook can shape sociality by dictating who views what content via the news feed. This is significant as the news feed is positioned as the hub of Facebook. It is via the news feed that most socialising on Facebook occurs and is arguably the ‘point’ of Facebook. In these aspects, Facebook’s status as an abstract place is most apparent. These functions do not come organically from users’ needs, or their own innovations. In fact, some of these changes, such as the News Feed were heavily protested when they were first implemented (Arrington 2006; Leydon 2006; Schmidt 2006). Subsequent innovations are also often met with resistance (e.g. Bunz 2009; Bates and Waugh 2011). As Facebook functions according to its own logic most of these protests are futile, and users, instead of leaving the service choose to work within these constraints.