Facebook Psychology
If you thought Facebook was just for connecting with friends and playing silly games, then think again. Facebook is more than just a particularly successful social networking site; now it’s also a psychology course. Stanford University professor B J Fogg is teaching a course called Psychology of Facebook. The inspiration from the course came from seeing the social media site as a new form of mass persuasion, in which an unknown application could go viral almost overnight.
The class dissects different aspects of Facebook to see how they work and what users are trying to do with them. Understanding how Facebook works is not just about the social networking site itself, but about other sites that may use similar methodology in the future or, as Fogg puts it, ‘those blockbusters yet to be invented’.
Want to know more? Read this account of a typical Psychology of Facebook class.
