#facebookdown

It's 12:41a as I begin this post. I had been engaged in exam listing for my minor in TA training and education when I decided to pop over to Facebook (a behavior I sometimes curtail with Fred Stutzman's Freedom software), only to find that the page wouldn't load. Facebook's recent outage prompted a surge of conversation, particularly in light of the release of The Social Network - in the movie, Zuckerberg is adamant that even a momentary lapse in the availability of the interface would be disastrous. The scene, of course, takes place early in Facebook's history as the site was just beginning to build a serious critical mass; Zuckerberg's insistence on the necessity that Facebook never go down hinged on his sense that if the site got a reputation for being unreliable, people would quickly dismiss and abandon it.

6 years later, connectivity through Facebook has become the core of many users' lives and activities online. Despite the vocal exodus of some users in retaliation for what was widely perceived to be a cavalier disregard of privacy by site administrators, most people remained on Facebook. Many can't imagine disconnecting themselves from this sphere - access to the web of contacts they've made and the information generated through this network has become extremely valuable in people's lives on and offline. A majority of users now have a vested interest in staying on Facebook, and have demonstrated that they will maintain their participation on the site even in the face of potential inconvenience or exploitation. At this juncture, I doubt that the outages pose much threat in terms of people deleting their accounts; that said, if this trend continues, it could absolutely lead to the gradual erosion and eventual decline of Facebook's social network empire.

When I discovered that Facebook was down again, I got curious about how long it had been out and headed over to Twitter (which I don't log into nearly as often as I do Facebook though I always feel like I ought to), to see whether people were tweeting about the outage. It wasn't a trending topic, so I searched a hashtag that I thought might yield some results: #facebookdown.

Indeed, my search brought me to the conversation already in progress, and the page was blowing up with new tweets. Since I started writing this post, there have been over 300 new tweets; they are in a range of different languages and demonstrate a wide spectrum of intention. Many tweets are expressing vehement frustration; other people are joking about the outage being a good way to address privacy concerns. One enterprising individual took advantage of the situation and posted a link that promised to explain the reason Facebook was down - I clicked on it and found myself at 7dollabeats.com, a site that offers a sweet package of 30 blazin' beats for just $19.99.

124 new tweets since the beginning of this paragraph.

...and, hey. Just refreshed and Facebook is back. The first tweet I found that announced this was 7 minutes ago.

This phenomenon (or this particular iteration of the larger phenomenon that are occurring here) is robust with relevant inquiries that merit the attention of media scholars:

How channels of online communication shift and change in response to varied exigencies; dependence on Facebook as a constant source of interconnectivity; the different kinds of responses prompted by the outage(s), what those responses hope to accomplish, and how actors capitalize on an event to promote their own personal, intellectual, and creative agendas; the convergence of users on Twitter and this interface's capacity as a rapid disseminator of instantaneous information; the diversity of users who all found themselves immediately engaged in a situation that they felt the need to comment on; and many other issues present themselves as critically relevant to the investigation of human behavior and communication online.   

I think it would be neat to take the tweets generated in response to the outage and examine them in a framework that analyzes this exigence in relation to the larger function of trending topics on Twitter, the rhetorics of tagging, and the role of online social networks in users' lives.

The dataset as a whole provides an overview of users' sentiments in response to the outage, but I would find it fascinating to separate and categorize the different streams of recurring thought as this situation unfolded. Many took the opportunity to impart their cynicism toward Facebook - some tongue-in-cheek, others with genuine disgust. The number of jokes about a forced increase in productivity is particularly interesting - especially given the fact that this event took me from my exam-list efforts for about two hours.

I wouldn't consider it time wasted, though - I plan to collect these tweets (and possibly others bearing this hashtag and related tags) and I think this could be a pretty interesting conference paper, perhaps a dissertation chapter, and maybe an article. If you found yourself getting all fired up about the idea of pursuing the inquiries I've been jotting down here, consider emailing me and maybe we could collaborate or put a panel together. The deadline for Digital Humanities 2011 is November 1st - the conference is in June, and Stanford's hosting this year :)

Back to building the list - TA training in rhet/comp programs has produced a body of literature that, like much of the literature devoted to the design and delivery of curricula in writing, rhetoric, and communication, is both laden with despair and laced with hopeful optimism at the promise of progress. It is in the name of progress that I leave you, and bid you goodnight.