The Facebook Faker

Listen up, oh dwellers of the Facebook/ MySpace/ Orkut domains. Most people (or about 50% of you reading this) have at least one profile or more on these social networking web sites.

To marketers everywhere, you are an elusive demographic. In context, imagine if Facebook was actually a physical warehouse... just one giant room full of 80 million+ people. Flashing your company's brand and key messaging over that isolated crowd sounds pretty tantalizing, yes? Billions of advertising dollars have already been dumped into social networking sites since 2004. However, sincere doubt in the effectiveness of this type of advertising has begun to surface. Why?

Why should a stranger believe that the goofy profile picture with you and all your little buddies is really you?

Sure, we've all been warned about not talking to strangers on the street. Cyberspace especially. Today, anyone (whether you're 10 years old or going on 90) with basic knowledge of web browsing can create on online profile on any of these sites.

Big deal, right? You know that YOU'RE real, and so are all your internet friends. Well, they probably are. You hope so, anyway. Not so fast. Go ahead and search for your favorite celebrities on any social networking site. You might begin to think that cloning in America is legal after all.

Now apply that same concept to yourself. How do you know that you're the only you out there? Perception, of course, is everything. When it comes to the internet, seeing isn't necessarily believing. I have a friend who recently created a fake Facebook profile to see if her boyfriend would respond to flirtatious messages. He bought it.

And who remembers the infamous MySpace suicide case? To refresh you, some parents created a MySpace profile to harass and embarrass their daughter's ex-friend. The ex-friend took the internet bully for being real, and the situation ended in tragedy. Follow this link to get the whole story.

The bottom line is, until we begin entering social security numbers to verify authenticity, and sites like MySpace and Facebook run full background checks on their new members, social networking is still just hype.

Come to think of it, how do you know that I'm real?

Now for the devil's advocate

These types of sites are incredibly handy for small groups to stay in touch. Or for stalking people you don't want to talk to in person. Then again, email and a coffee shop rendezvous haven't failed us yet. How DID people in the 1920s communicate anyway? They must've had, like, zero friends.

Now go search for your clone in cyberspace!