"Promote your page!"

Upon posting a funny link on my brother’s facebook page this past week, I was greeted with a new option of choosing to ‘promote’ my post. “Sure!” I thought. I knew my post was funny, so it would have been best for everyone to see my post. That’s when it hit me. I would have to pay in order to promote the link to which describes how to roast a whole pig over coals. Did I like my post enough to pay $7.99 for it to pop up higher on others news feeds? I didn’t like trading recipes that much. This prospect has since allowed me to think of Facebook’s alternative motives to the user experience.

Stephen Marche, author of ‘Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?’ argues that if facebook is not used in a proper manner it has the potential effects of making individuals lonely. I suppose facebook could say fairly that you could pay your way out of the ‘slippery slope’ of loneliness. I for one believe that life interactions are crucial for becoming a “normal” or socially dynamic being of consciousness. I see a different light for this idea of paying for promotion as Marche states in his findings. The manner at which individuals use facebook and by means of promotion could be either potentially harmful or quite useful. Let’s take the idea of promoting the use of post for selfish intent of glamorizing one’s self my popular view: I would say this is a negative light. What would be a positive light would be if one were raising money for a charity, and they promoted their post in hopes that their return would be higher than that of the cost which they set out.

Not only do I believe that we have the capability of using facebook for ‘good or evil’ but I also believe that facebook itself has the power of either imposing positive or negative experiences to the daily user experience, in their day to day operations.