Put your hand up if you spent your entire Christmas day away from a PC.
I see. Not many of you.
Put your hand up if you went on Facebook.
Right. More than I thought.
Don’t worry, if you had a cheeky look at Facebook on Christmas Day, you weren’t alone. In fact, as the above chart shows, Christmas Day proved to be Facebook’s busiest day of the year! I must admit, this surprised me. I assumed the combination of being away from work, being amongst family and generally falling out of routine on Christmas day would diminish the appeal of social networking. How wrong I was. Instead, as it turns out, the need to communicate with your nearest and dearest everywhere – not just around the Christmas turkey – makes social networking through sites like Facebook a highly attractive option for many people on Christmas Day.
As this article points out, some other factors probably play a part – the very cold weather in the northern hemisphere, and plain old boredom. Anything to escape from the relatives for a little while I guess.
What this really tells us, though, is that Facebook is less about attacking people with vampires, poking, and stalking, and much more about being a highly functional utility for staying in touch. It’s an intuitive platform for communicating that has been embraced by at least three generations (only the seniors are yet to come on board in large numbers). And despite what seems to be a growing number of detractors, I think it has a bright future, if they can get their revenue-raising off the ground this year.
Admit it – if you had a Facebook account, you logged in on Christmas Day, didn’t you?
You know Pete, I did take a look at my FB account on Christmas Day. Is that a bit sad? But, it was only for 5 minutes at the airport (sure you say) as I was waiting for my plane and you are right, I saw heaps of people online. I did think it was a bit odd so many people were online, but then I was on too…