Three Interesting Trends in Facebook Postings

Over the last, I would say, two years I've noted a marked change in the kinds of individual postings I typically see on my Facebook page and profile. I'm not talking posts from businesses, well-known bloggers, or celebrities; I'm talking purely about posts from everyday people.

My follower list is quite varied but consists primarily of entry-level through graduate-level healthcare faculty, students, and practitioners. It's not a universal sampling, for sure, but the consistency of the changes and the many other Facebook profiles I visit everyday lead me to think the changes are probably more widespread than just on my twiddly little accounts.

I used to see many more posts about news-related events, but now I'm seeing posts that fall into one of three categories. Let's take them one at a time.

Trend #1: More fractional updates

Mostly I see what I'm going to call fractional updates, little details about what someone is doing or thinking about at that moment. I'm talking about these kinds of posts (actual posts taken from my profile):

• "I feel so blah"


• "well we have moved on from THAT movie to the Wiggles..Idk which is worse! gonna go scrub the carpets, that 'grounds guy' got some great stuff and it got out some mystery stains...but it smells really bad"


• "I got this at an estate sale this past weekend. It's a French Provincial Chiffarobe. Love it!"

Fractional updates were once Twitter's domain, not Facebook's. But I'm seeing a reversal of that trend, where Facebook has become the preferred means of distributing information about the details of everyday life.

Now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that kind of post, they serve a distinct purpose for the poster and, sometimes, I think, for the postee. (I'm not sure those are actual terms, but I think you get the idea.)

QUERY: Is Facebook the best place for fractional updates? Are there too many of these tidbits showing up on your wall?

Trend #2: More spiritual declarations

I'm seeing many more wall posts lately from people declaring their love of God, asking for prayers for friends or loved ones, or reciting psalms or other religious quotations. Examples include:

• "I thank god everyday for all the wonderful people that I have In my life ! God is good"


• "fear not my child I'm with you always I feel every pain and every tear I see I know how to care for what belongs to me ~ God"


• "I personally believe in Jesus Christ. One Facebooker has challenged all believers to put this on their wall. The bible says, if you deny Me in front of your peers, I will deny you in front of My Father. This is a simple test. If you are not afraid to show it, re-post this. I'm proud I did."

Not a thing wrong with these kinds of posts either, but it seems more and more people are declaring their spiritual inclincations [sic] more outwardly than ever. I'm not entirely sure Facebook is the best medium for them, but it's being used that way nonetheless.

QUERY: What do you think about using Facebook for spiritual declarations?

Trend #3: More private messages

More and more I see Facebook posts, open to the world, that really should be messages. I find this trend rather alarming. People have become so comfortable posting to Facebook from wherever they are that they seem to have forgotten that everyone sees wall posts, not just a single, targeted person.

Here are some actual posts from my wall that fall into the Private Message category:

• "NAME, you have been in my thoughts all week, but most especially this hardest of days for you. For whatever small measure of comfort this can bring you, please know that we love you, and treasure you as a member of our family."


• "Ok, so wanna meet up this week? Or next weekend? Let me know what days are good for you. I can either visit you or you can visit me :D"


• "NAME, I have a doctor's appointment in the hospital tonight at 8. Is it okay to stop by for a couple minutes? I have some books for you. :)"

This is the most interesting trend, and to me it's a bit disturbing. First, I'm guessing that many people don't know that if they post something on someone else's wall, that any mutual friends can also see the posting. Second, it strikes me that people have (unknowingly?) expanded their comfort zone to include a medium open to, essentially, the world, and I'm not at all sure that's a good thing.

QUERY: Have people become so comfortable with Facebook that they don't even notice that they're posting such messages on their wall for everyone to see? Or do they not care?

I would truly love your thoughts on these observations and queries, so comment away!

Will the iPad and Kindle Kill Traditional Textbooks?

TONS of news lately on the new Apple iPad and Kindle's response to it.Some people are wondering whether traditional textbooks will be dead soon.

A blog on the British Medical Journal Group Blog asks whether recent technologies will kill off medical textbooks on paper. The blogger, Harry Brown, takes the position that yes, they will indeed kill paper texts and probably in the not so distant future.

Me, I'm not so sure.

I absolutely believe that the iPad, Kindle DX, and lots of other technologies are changing the way people buy and use clinical content, and I LOVE it. These technologies offer many features that print-on-paper (POP) products simply can't.

Yet there's something about paper, something about holding a book, about writing in the margins and highlighting key passages that make traditional textbooks important learning tools. We've seen attempts at schools going all-electronic falter because the students found the devices (the Kindle DX at Syracuse University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison) too cumbersome, especially for bookmarking, highlighting, and taking notes.

Certainly the technologies will improve and e-books will find a place in education. Absolutely. Bet the farm on it.

But they will not universally replace books just as television didn't universally replace radio, the internet didn't universally replace TV, and so on.

These devices present another option for the user, and for some applications in education, they'll make perfect sense. For others, they'll fall far short.

Same with POP products. They just don't make sense for certain pedagogical applications anymore, which is one of the reasons why all of us textbook publishers are scrambling to provide electronic ancillaries, to supplement the books with what they can't do very well, things like interactivity, rapid searchability, that kind of thing.

That doesn't mean technology will kill textbooks, it just means that the way we develop and present textbooks, and the way we link them with technology, will change. It HAS to change, the market is demanding it.

And we'll do it, we'll change. Actually we already are, and we'll continue to adapt to the technologies and we'll continue to sell paper textbooks because they offer things e-books can't.

More on that to come…

Fear and Language Changes

Lots of factors drive changes in a language. New technologies is a key factor nowadays. Laziness, in a way, accounts for some changes too, contractions being a prime example. But sometimes fear does it too.

I've been noticing the last few years an overwhelming number of otherwise intelligent people who use "more" instead of adding "-er" to a word. For instance, I've heard "more clean" instead of cleaner, "more firm" instead of firmer, and even "more funny" instead of funnier. I've also seen these kinds of phrases in printed media, from ads to blogs to newspapers and magazines. And don't even get me started on the number of news anchors and other TV personalities who do the same thing when speaking off the cuff.

It seems that people have become so reluctant to take a crack at the correct -er word that they automatically shift to the more construct. Do these people not read? Did they attend lousy schools? Did they have teachers who didn't know the difference themselves? Or did they, as I think might be the case, struggle with learning the -er words and, on top of that, have teachers and parents who corrected them so often that they just gave up, deciding to use the more construct, regardless of what they think the correct one is?

I don't know, but I'm wondering whether this observation is an indication of a shift in our language toward the more construct in all cases. Hmmmm.