The FACEBOOK Experiment

Behaviour modification (mine) regarding facebook usages, likes and posts. I hope to "encourage" a purge of my facebook newsfeed content by eliminating responses to non-personal content. This is a record of my experiment.

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Finale

Due to increased commitments I am ending this experiment early.  I have accomplished what I originally set out to do, namely retrain my own habits in order to encourage the facebook 'bots to allow more personal material to appear and appear more consistently in my feed.  

I hope that I do not regress.

The stats do not confirm my accomplishment, unfortunately.  There is a noticeable change in the amount of straight comments as well as a decrease in shares listed.  I guess that has to satisfy me.

Note that the first three series are from the last few facebook sessions and the last four are from the first - but I did not track anything those first few days, so every data point for those first three days is a guess, at best.

Looking at it not from an absolute standpoint but rather from percentages, leads us to this:

... which again, seems ambiguous.  Still, I feel better about my online fb time now, so in a very personal sense I have accomplished something.  I take the time to read and reply to personal posts and skim through shares and feeds alike.  It is the glimpses into friends' families, lives and minds that I treasure the most.

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9/20 M/30

Started right before midnight.  I'll post more about the last two days as soon as the typhoon (currently a tropical storm and I am hoping that it doesn't give itself a promotion) vacates the premises.

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9/19 M/30 - Edited Post

REVISED POST:

Let start with the basics:

161 posts read

136 posts liked

62 photo posts

74 comment posts

13 ads

5 shares (with 10 people liking aforementioned shares)

7 feeds

The stats look as follows:

with photos, always a leader, breaking down into

Surprisingly, despite my absolute knackeredness, I managed to enjoy this session despite the seemingly regular appearance of ads.  In fact, I was rather happy that the first add hadn't appeared until post #27... but then it seemed they appeared all to regularly after that.  I mean, look at these numbers:

27 (first add)

38

51

59

68

76

85

93

102

111

128

137

It pretty much seems that ads appeared every 7, 8 or 9 posts after the first appearance.  Rather annoying, it was.

Still, the posts that I became the most enchanted with continued to be personal posts and random thoughts that just ended up in the 'verse.

Life is so interesting!  Life with kids even more so.

ORIGINAL POST: Just finished up under the wire.  I'll posy results later as I am so completely knackered that I can barely see straight@@.

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9/18 C/45

Nearly an hour after I opened tumblr to start this post, I have found my way back here.  It is amazing how a single post, yes a POST, can set you off on a journey of discovery and tangents.

I remember eons ago when the internet was new, Netscape was the browser of choice, and there were nowhere near as many sites/pages/links. I used to love following links and then look back to see where I started.  I was always amazed at the journey.

Now that is commonplace.  No matter how far-fetched the connection, 7 degrees and all. There is no awe anymore.  There is no newness. Thankfully, it hasn't lost its fun.

I guess I have to thank facebook for that, still.  Feeds, especially as THEY are what usually drive my mood for knowledge, entertainment and discovery.

Recently a friend posted this question:

My immediate thought was HELL YES!  I still think it wouldn't be a problem.  I go for long stretches without access (voluntarily) anyway.  But lately, I have been online for several hours EVERY DAY.  Some people call that normal.  I call it an addiction.

But what would I miss most?  Lately, through this experiment, I have been on facebook significantly more often.  The purge seems to be working as more and more of what I am fed is personal - whether that is a poster / picture from a friend or their comments, it has been a delight to see more about the people that used to populate my world (I live FAR away from the vast majority of my facebook friends). 

I have been amazed by the interests and the lives of my friends.  Their lives are so different from mine.  Or, more likely, my life is so vastly different from theirs.  I love the contrast but more than that I love the delight in their own lives that comes through in their posts.  I know that I am lucky that most of the posts that I have been seeing are less politicky or ranting and more intimate.  Maybe it is the source.  Regardless, thank you, facebook, for allowing my feed to become more personal.

Still - and I have to throw this wrench out there - the first advertisement appeared as THE THIRD POST in today's adventure.

Back to the Question... I would miss finding out what my friends were doing on facebook, certainly.  Sometimes the nuggets of wisdom are just CLASSIC.  Other times, the situations they share just make me think - always a good thing.

The world is such a small place.  Less than 10 minutes after seeing this post, I see another one (from one of my cousins to her brother)...

Laughter followed.  Chuckles, really.  Then a coughing fit because I have the cold that everyone, including myself, thought they were finally over.

Still facebook is not my immediate online destination of choice.  Neither is my e-mail - unless I feel like a half-hour of deletes before reading anything of interest.  And no, I don't need ANY medication, thank you.  And that is just the ONE account.

I guess I would miss YouTube the most.  Even when I am typing along like I am here, I often have music from YouTube playing in the background.  My subscription list there could use a good month-long purge as well.  I don't comment because I DON'T WANT TO USE MY REAL NAME, D**** it!  So that takes the personal aspect away a bit.  Still, I LOVE the feeds and the videos and the clips and the quirks so immediately available on YouTube.  If there was one public site that I had to choose to keep, that would be it.   

I am thankful that I do NOT have to choose - Yeah NET NEUTRALITY (so far) - but the question also made me consider how I use these sites.  

I have decided that I should use facebook for the personal connections that were the reason I opened the account to begin with.  After all, my innate introversion and lack of correspondence skills can be someone mitigated on that platform.  

I have enjoyed my tumblr experience as well.  I have only been here for about 6 months - thank you Kissing In The Rain fan cannon experiment (Shipwrecked) - yet the discoveries have been amicable.  I wish "tumblr" would post less often, but that is how it rolls.  I have begun following my feeds more regularly from here and missing less than previously.  That's a bonus.

I don't have twitter or any other significant social media.  So, along with YouTube, these two sites cover most of my bases.  I think they are really basically all that I need.  I like it this way. :)

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9/16 C/30

So, I decided to not continue tempting fate so I decided to return to the computer for today's session.  Irritation averted.  Again, I was pleasantly surprised.

Ads didn't even make an appearance until post #35 but by the end, with a total of 74 posts read, the tally was up to 5... which is a huge leap from 2.857% (1 in 35) to 6.757%.  Still, they were a considerately small irritation and all in Chinese and therefore easy to ignore.

There were NO FEEDS today.  Not a one.  I do have to admit that I miss them - as feeds from George Takei and "I fucking love science" often MAKE my day.  Still, I have been glad to see more about people I know on facebook, as that was my original reason for creating an account.

 I even saw a profile-picture-change post from a high-school acquaintance... someone I haven't talked to in years... who has ended up closer to a place I used to live than to the place where we both went to school.  

Life is interesting when you keep interesting people around you.  OR friend them on facebook.

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9/15 M/30

I think my best strategy is just to NOT TOUCH FB over the weekend.  As the ads, feeds and irritations begin to build up through the week... but then without access this weekend... back to zero ads, very few shares and no annoyances (other than ones that friends DO post) and I am a happy camper again.

I thought I would tempt fate.  These results are from the never-so-accommodating MOBILE fb APP!!  Yippee!!

  A few notable posts that I thought I would share.  These two above were from friends who were friends with each other.  I don't know if that is still true, but the posts were in close proximity, though I am pretty sure that they are not anymore.

My friends never cease to amaze me with their outlook on the world, their dedication to their children and their general humour.  Their lives are so different from my own but I love the snapshots comments such as these often provide!

This gem is from a former student who has grown into his own.  I enjoy seeing the many things that he posts and how his outlook on life has shifted.  His thankfulness is also a reminder to count my own blessings.

Now this one just makes me jealous.

The daily snaps of life beyond my comprehension.  It is an amazing world we live in.

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9/10 - Sharing More Awesome Posts!

There were just so many great posts today, that I just have to share a few... well, more than a few BUT NOT TOO MANY, I hope, posts!

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Where?!!?!!?!! All over, apparently! 9/10 C/30

Well, today was a delight.  I think I might start sticking with the computer sessions as, again, there wasn't a single advertisement, nary a feed and the newsfeed was LOADED with personal posts... so many that I really have to share!

And NOT ONLY were the posts awesome, but they were from EVERYWHERE.  It was like taking a mini-round-the-world-voyage!

Plus there were like NO ADS!  And the first feed didn't even appear until after the 61st personal post!

So, basically browsing my feed on fb for the last three days has been an unusual delight - one that I hope will continue.  I have to wonder, though... is it because I didn't get online for TWO WHOLE DAYS????

Whatever it is, I am definitely liking it!

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Euphoria ended: 9/9 M/30

Okay, so I knew the euphoria over the awesome fb session I had yesterday couldn't possibly last.  I jinxed it even further my doing my 30 minutes today on my mobile phone using the app... and I was still pleasantly surprised by somethings and less-than-shocked about others.

I think the weekend away (sans wireless) was really helpful as well.

And... perhaps there are more commentary posts simply because people's favorite football teams - and the plays, players, rivalries and certain bad behaviours - have come forward for discussion.  If that is what you can call it.  A Patriots-themed room?  Huh.  Flying a Redskins flag when you live in Texas?  More power to you!

Still, the massive amount of shares seemed to be spread across topics AND friends.  Usually one or three contacts go haywire with the shares.  This time was not so straight-forward.  There were a lot of shares, sure.  But they were from so many different people!

One seriously cute/funny ALS video from a co-worker.  Loved it.  Lots of tags and lots of links - in comparison.  But very few feeds and almost no advertisements... ON THE MOBILE DEVICE!  Ads accounted for a mere 1.333%.  Feeds clocked in at 2.000%  Comments 21.333%, Single photos 24.667%, Total photos (single, multiple & profile) 36.667% and Shares at 37.333%.

Not bad for a 30 minute session on the fb app.

I wonder if this means progress is being made... or if someone (big brother fb) has been spying on these posts - note that the changes appeared immediately after a rant... or perhaps it is a fluke.  We shall see, I guess.

fb-on.

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Happy MOON FESTIVAL (9/8)

First of all, Happy Moon Festival (aka Mid-Autumn Festival). 

Now, look at these amazing STATS!

Can you believe it??? ONE share.  NO ads, NO feeds. NO likes/links!  Amazing!  I came back late today and got online to do my 30 minutes of facebook.  I meandered, I admit... but the posts were so... uninterrupted!  I got into a flow... liking, reading, responding, laughing and simply enjoying my facebook session.  NO ads interrupted the flow.  There were still Chinese posts and comments everywhere - which I cannot read but is to be expected when many of my friends are in Taiwan.

These are the kinds of stats I wish I could see everyday.  However, I have to admit that I missed the feeds... just because they are so interesting.

Let me revise that.  I missed the feeds that I originally "followed/liked" and not all the extraneous junk that fb sends my way.  However, it was really nice to see what my friends were up to instead of what fb wants me to be looking at in my downtime.

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Minor Irritation 9/5

Mmmm... apple pie...

Sorry.  Got distracted.

Since setting up this challenge, I have been checking my facebook every day.  The methods have varied but inevitably I will dedicate a chunk of time after getting home from work to scroll through my newsfeed either via the Google Chrome browser on my computer or the facebook app on my iPhone.

It is only today, day 13 of this 1 month project, that it hit me.  I almost never checked my feed daily... and certainly not as consistently as I have been since beginning this experiment.  Perhaps that is why I have come to feel that facebook is rather stingy with friend-feeds.  

Usually when I got on facebook, I could scroll for hours.  Now 22 minutes elapses and I have run into a block - posts that I have already read, and liked, or feeds that I have already read and ignored.  That's up from yesterday's 20 minutes by a negligible amount.

In addition, I am getting more and more FEED posts (at least on the app) and more and more "tagged" or "commented on" posts (on the browser).

I wonder if it would be the same if I used Safari instead of the app?  I'll have to think about giving that a try in a few days.

In the meantime, I will not likely be able to post during the next three days. I will be away from outlets and my battery pack is not reliable.  I do not know if there will be any wifi available where I am going, so I don't expect to be able to do much.  In addition, I won't be taking my computer with me.

In the meantime, I leave you to ponder these:

and

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Major Irritation. 9/4

Okay - I spent all of 20 minutes scrolling through facebook via the facebook app on my iPhone... and MAN AM I ANNOYED.

Annoyance#1: I saw several feed posts REPEATED.  Not just repeated or re-shared with an additional comment BUT REPEATED with the SAME comment from the SAME feed with the SAME attachment AND NOT JUST ONCE!

Irritation#2:  After only 5 minutes online I was seeing POSTS that I had already LIKED yesterday.  Thankfully they were mixed in with posts that I hadn't seen... but they were showing that I had LIKED them already so why were they showing up with NEW POSTS???

Vexation#3: 122 posts scrolled through in 20 minutes vs 82 posts scrolled through in 30 minutes on my computer yesterday.  I got through so many because of copious REPEATS of both FEEDS and SHARES and Personal Posts I had already read and liked.  Granted, I didn't "like" the shares and the feeds... but why do I need to see them again?

Peeve#4 Waaaay to many additional tags on people that I am friends with (that's ok) in pictures or posts from people who I have no clue who they are... in which I can't like or comment on because I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THEY ARE.  Connections are one thing.  Networking is one thing.  Strangers feeds being shared with me... that's something else.  19 TAGS! PLUS there should have been more from the 483 people that I have actually FRIENDED on facebook!  Ugh!

Indignation#5: There was NOTHING personal really shared today.  Posts from feeds - again repeat after repeat after repeat - took up 40%  of all my posts today.  I checked my time after just 5 minutes - already feeling exceedingly BORED.

Tumblr is so much better.

Irritation stats: note that I counted the repeats as they DID appear in my feed.

Cumulative stats for mobile fb browsing (regardless of duration):

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9/3 Computer - 30 minutes

Okay, so I loved playing around with the graphs in Excel but kinda lost the thread of my purpose.  Regardless, it has been illustrative.  As I look at the numbers, and I'm not a math geek - excel formatting and simple formulas do all the work for me... I just have to look at the results - certain trends have appeared.  The question is Have they Always Been There and Have My Purposeful "Likes" had ANY Effect on Them?

Perhaps it is too soon to tell.  This is day 12, I believe, of the Like Project / Facebook Experiment.  Since I have been doing the reverse of the WIRED magazine article (see first few posts for link) that inspired this experiment... meaning that I LIKE only the non-profit-making posts that appear on my feed... it is hardly surprising that the effects, if there are any, will take longer to appear or may not be visible at all.

I have metioned that I seem to be seeing less POSTER shares and that SHARES overall seem to be less frequent.  In fact, only ONE direct share appeared on the posts I scrolled through during my 30+ minute session today.

ONE.

There were a few "poster" or "saying" posts but none of them linked to another site nor did they state that they were "shared" from whothef**kknows's feed... so I counted them as original and personal photo posts.

In addition to the lack of SHARES during today's session, only 1 FEED post appeared.  Funnily enough, I originally believed it to be a personal post from one of my many friends who only have their Chinese name posted in Chinese on facebook... so I have been "liking" each post I have seen for the past 12 days.  

Since I do not read Chinese I asked a friend to help me identify which of my other friends it might be... because YAY if they have a recognizable photo as their profile picture - but that is only about 15% (guesstimating) of them.  The rest either have photos of their children... okay that indicates that at least they are PEOPLE... or cute pictures of characters / cartoons / anime / or animals... which leaves me NO CLUE as to who (or what) they may be.  My friend kindly translated the name of a TEMPLE in LUKANG, Taiwan.

Great.  Against the precepts that I had originally laid out for this experiment, I have been "liking" a feed that I never even knew was a feed nor do I have any clue why it suddenly appeared in my newsfeed.  Although I have enjoyed visiting the temples in Lukang and may have posted a picture or two from there - I have never LIKED any of them or visited any facebook pages dedicated to them.  To my knowledge.

Still  it makes you wonder what facebook algorithms harvest from the information we post.

Moving on, here is my favorite post from today.

And here are the droll stats that serve as a reason for me checking facebook daily...

and

Delightedly, I encountered exactly ZERO advertisements during today's scroll... which is a much more likely case when checking via computer than mobile.  Still ZERO.  How did they miss me?  What can I do for it always to be that way??

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9/2 Mobile

Wow.  The "real estate" of my facebook newsfeed has been pretty consistent the last couple of days.  However, looking at a longer exposure shows that the Photo Uploads are hogging the space.  The first day I started paying attention to individual posts and types of posts, 8/27, Photos (cumulatively) were 33.333% of the feed.  Straight comments were 55%.

Today there was significantly more disparity.  Comments lagged behind at a mere 19.048% while photos took up 38.624% of the virtual landscape.  Of those, single photos, of which there were 50 during my half-hour facebook session, wholloped evey other category.  Coming in at 26.455%

Here is one of the more interesting single photo posts to appear on my feed today.  She hates having her photo taken so I am surprised that she uploaded this scary thing at all!

Just goes to show you that you never know what might jump out at you! 

Here's a quick look at today's stats:

And the progression since I began tracking the types of posts:

 I don't see any obvious progressions but it is clear that photo uploads (with singlets being the majority of that) takes a serious lead.  

What is interesting is that ADVERTISING, including suggested apps, hovers around 5% each day - despite the device used to access facebook... and despite the general feeling that there are more ads more often when I am browsing / scrolling through my feed on my mobile.

Perhaps they just appear earlier. Yesterday, the first thing I saw was an advertisement.  Today it appeared immediately after the second personal post.  Hmmm... I wonder if that contributes to the oppressive feeling about their ads...? 

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By Comparison

The last few mobile sessions, by percentages.  

Note: The last series is rather sparse because I didn't detail the posts.  The series are as follows: Today 9/1: 30 min (blue), 8/30: 1 hr (red), 8/27: 30 min (green), 8/25: 30 min (purple).  All were done on a mobile device using the facebook app.  All values are in percentages of the totals.

   Here is a cumulative comparison, disregarding device and time spent scrolling.

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September Begins

Stats from Mobile 30 minute facebook session:

More Specifically:

Today, the VERY FIRST thing I saw was a SUGGEST APP.  Ugh!  The next advertisement appeared after the 17th personal post.  Then it seemed to get more frequent... alternating with feeds.  

By the end of the half hour I had doubled the number of feeds that I had come across... most within the last 5-6 minutes of scrolling.  The number of ads picked up as well.

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Grrrr... stupid site wouldn't let me sign up unless I used my facebook account.  Grrr....