My newest discovery: Secret Facebook users

[#1]

I’ve been an avid facebok user for years.  I started using Facebook very soon after they first opened it up to people outside of the .edu domain.  I recruited lots of old people into Facebook… long before it was acceptable for old people like me.  And, I’ve been thrilled to watch it go more mainstream.  I wrote a post about how my home town in Western New York has even joined in.  And now you hear stories about how people’s grandmother’s are joining.  This has allowed me to end up with a pretty entertaining set of Facebook friends.  I think I passed some invisible threshold where my Facebook social network became large enough and active enough that I can be almost constantly entertained with interesting status updates, posts, and pictures.  Pretty fun!

I have a few friends left who are still holding back from joining.  They are concerned with privacy, and the thought of blasting their little life events is not at all appealing.  Many of my recruits felt that way at the beginning and joined just to be polite to me (and perhaps because I begged a little), but many of them are now actively posting away and having fun.  But I still have real-world friends who have not joined.

I was having dinner with old college friends last week and I made an interesting discovery- I discovered a secret set of Facebook users!  These Facebook users don’t feel comfortable with getting an account (and some even dis the idea), BUT they lurk by using their significant other’s account!  My one friend makes her husband friend her friends.  And when she gets home from work, she asks him “What’s going on with my friends?”  Another one of my friends just had a shocking event where her friend said “Oh, I saw that you were at so-and-so’s party”, and she thought “how the heck did you know that?”.  The reason was because someone posted a picture on Facebook.  She doesn’t feel comfortable with joining, but when I suggested she just look at her husband’s account, and she said “Yeah- that would be okay”.

Anyways, I thought it was interesting that there might be this hidden set of Facebook users who are not Facebook account holders.  Any idea on how big this group is?  Do you know any secret Facebook users?

[#2]

My set of friends that seem -- as a group -- to want to avoid Facebook the most are teachers.  Since they think of FB as a high school/college thing, they think of it as being full of their students.  Which would leave them zero privacy.  So they're not even willing to lurk...