Facebook Types

An attempt to generalize online people!


• The Moderate User: joins and increases friends slowly & steadily. Usually checks out friend’s profile and posts but without commenting or interacting. Updates sometimes depending on time, can have spurts of very active usage followed by period of inactivity.

• The Forced User: Doesn't understand what the big deal is. Has always sneered at web based social networking but was forced by friends or co-workers into creating an account. Tentative, only accepts friend if invited, posts rarely and may add a few pictures. Usually not have a profile picture or has one which is never updated.

• The Short sprinter: Activates an account and immediately friends everyone and their uncle, uses obsessively for a few weeks before realizing it would have been better not to have all the friends in the first place, goes into hiding and occasionally "likes" a few posts.

• The Ego user: usually has a huge list of friends so that they can have an audience, will sometime “unfriend” people who are not deemed worthy enough of their social status. Updates their status regularly, doesn’t really care about interacting, usually does not visit/comment on anyone’s status/posts unless the topic is about them or if it’s a very trendy hip friend then will post excessively witty comments on their pages and hint about cool get-togethers involving high art and sophisticated cultural events.

• The Loud mouth: also known as CNN. Will persistently post links from entertainment to politics to news. Excessively share applications and causes. Has a tendency to comment on friend’s friend posts/wall. Can be relied upon to usually have the last word on any thread.

• The Task master: Treats face book as a job, strictly regimented, regularly updates status, has a fixed number of comments daily, never misses a friends anniversary, well organized comments schedule so that every friend is touched in a fixed period of time, captioned and grouped photos, detailed information on info page.

• The Power user: has account in every social networking site FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, Orkut etc. Passionate user of the medium and prefers to talk via this channel instead of face-to-face. Gets update by the minute using their Smartphone. Usually lost when forced to interact outside these medium. Will not go on a vacation unless the place has Wi-Fi access.

• The Evangelist: really needs/wants a large circle of contacts. Is irritatingly using the medium for spreading his world view whether religious, political, social, cultural or crassly even business. Not really interested in personal details or posts if they cannot be tied to his central message.

Okay small print!
“He” above is interchangeable with “She”. I attempt to group while fully aware that most people are an amalgamation of the above types or move from one group to another during their lifetime. I don't have any of above in my own friends list ;-)