There are crucial differences between MySpace and Bebo on the one hand, and Facebook on the other. Although the three are often lumped together, I have come to think that Facebook has very different possibilities - ones which could be usefully used in educational contexts, and particularly as a background platform for immersive learning. The difference can be explained quite crudely and simply. MySpace and Bebo emulate what happens when a group of people come together, and Facebook emulates what happens when they part.
When a group of people first come together (as students at a college; as tourists in a resort; whatever) there is a period of conscious image-making and declaration. People are aware of how they look and how they are perceived as looking. People make remarks designed to state who they are; they declare opinions stridently and form allegiances. This is an outgoing process through which groups come together and bond. Through speech, visual signals, and other means, individuals effectively say “Hey, I am like this” in the hope that other people who are like this will wave to them and invite them over.
When a group disbands, however (when students graduate; when the holiday is over) something very different occurs. People quietly and selectively take contact details from the people they wish to remain in contact with. Those asked give the details or find excuses not to. This is not a loud, outgoing, shouting process: it is a series of quiet, one to one interactions, leading to later, smaller, get-togethers.
MySpace is good for people wanting to draw attention to themselves (singers, film makers, poets) and often involves people making new online friends through being drawn together through publicly declaring their interests. (The argument about whether or not these are “real” friendships is irrelevant for the point I am making.) It works well. Clubs form, stuff happens.
Facebook, though, seems much more suited to keeping up with people that you already know in real life. Its whole structure is geared towards contact with people who declare themselves friends. Only friends see your profile, and follow your activities. To everyone else you are only a name and possibly a photograph.
Facebook has opened its api, and is keenly allowing developers to introduce mini-applications that enhance the site. Many of these are frivolous, and simply serve as ways to say “hello” amusingly. You can send friends fish for their Flash-based aquarium. You can share your iPod playlists, or have Last.FM make up a streaming playlist from the artists you list in the My Favorite Music section.
However people are beginning to find more serious uses. The Zoho Online office suite, for example, is now available directly from within Facebook. This is potentially very important because it ties in, in an oblique way, with the in-built ability to create groups in Facebook. It means that a geographically dispersed group can use Facebook as the front end for online collaborations that will happen mainly through Zoho’s tools.
Why is this important? One of the problems with online collaboration is that it is often subject to forgetfulness. You may well have shared the newly updated paper with me, and Zoho will have sent a standard email to that effect, but the email itself is not very compelling, and I am have other things on my mind. The Facebook interface, however, is very compelling, since it changes minute by minute as your friends or colleagues do things there.
Specifically if Facebook is the front end for collaboration, we start off knowing a lot more about each other. Hearing my Last.FM playlist may not be necessary for the business side of the collaboration, but it serves the same kind of purpose as the discussion over a drink after the meeting serves in face to face encounters. We feel we know more about the people we are dealing with, and we feel better about the collaboration because of that.
In the online epedagogy courses there has been much discussion about which methods of communication allow for groups to develop, and friendships to form. I think this will prove one of them. I have started a Facebook epedagogy group, and I am inviting everyone involved to join it, as a form of action research.
This is not intended to replace any of the current communication channels. It is intended to bring them together and act like a desirable front end. I think we can take advantage of the fact that the framework for what we are doing has been created at Facebook, and is being maintained there. I think that we can build upon that without having to run our ow servers or manufacture our own communication channels.
Whether any of this will work or not is up for debate. Hopefully the debate will happen on Facebook.