PERSON A (laughing resignedly): I spend way too much time on Facebook. It's a problem.
PERSON B (reveling equally in her fate): I know, right? I'm kind of addicted.
I bring this up because of a survey (that you have to give company information to download, but that I read about on TechCrunch) that came out almost a week ago now. I'm sorry it has taken me so long to finish this post about it, but I've been busy/carefully formulating what I want to say.
The (annual) survey is called the American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), and this year it rated, for the first time, consumer satisfaction with social media. The results were surprising to many people because they seemed to paint Facebook -- by most accounts an immensely popular service -- as a largely unsatisfactory company. Facebook's customer satisfaction score was only 64 (out of 100). Apparently, that's worse than 95 percent of the other companies surveyed, and it's even worse than 90 percent of government agencies. Apparently, Facebook is terrible!
In his post on TechCrunch, MG Siegler eloquently (and probably correctly) points out that this information doesn't actually mean anything, because despite their apparent hatred of Facebook, more than 57 percent of survey respondents said they visit the site daily. Also, the site has 500 million users and counting, so it must be doing something right.
Why then, are Facebook's users so dissatisfied with it? The ACSI-people have some theories, two of which Siegler seems to accept more as observable-fact than magical survey-insight. First, Facebook has a pseudo-monopoly. So many people are on it that their friends and family have no choice but to be on it too, thus perpetuating the sub-par service out of (perceived) necessity. Second, there aren't any drastically better social networks, so everyone just sticks with the most-used one, Facebook. Siegler's conclusion goes like this:
The point is that you can basically make a survey say anything you want. This one says that users hate Facebook. All 500 million of them. Who log on everyday. Hate it.
First of all, whoever says we need a special character or font for denoting sarcasm online just isn't trying hard enough. And more importantly, I'm not sure that's what this survey actually says. Obviously, Facebook-users don't hate Facebook, but I'm not convinced they don't hate themselves.
Think about it. People use Facebook because they recognize its incredible value as a tool for communication. They love that they can stay in touch with their loved-ones at a depth and breadth previously unimaginable. Facebook is a wonderful tool for organizing one's personal life. But I think for most people it feels like cheating. There's a feeling of insincerity that comes with most communication on Facebook (basically everything except direct messages and chat). Not to mention the tremendous sense of "so what?" that comes from the infinite minutiae of the network. For every legitimately interesting post that hits your news feed, there's at least 10 from all those people you met once, or twice, or went to school with but don't actually like or care about.
None of that stuff stops people from using Facebook. On the contrary, most people believe the pros outweigh the cons. But in the back of their minds, they have this nagging sense that there's something better they could be doing with their time, that the magic of connecting on Facebook pales in comparison to the magic of connecting in real life. Facebook is our online life of quiet desperation. And I suspect this survey is a reflection of that.
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