It is transforming reality as we know it. Facebook is just six-and-a-half years old, and there are already studies being done on its social and psychological effects. Yet, what exactly Zuckerberg has unleashed on humankind remains a grey area. Hollywood has even made a movie based on his life, Social Network, releasing in India this Friday. He was just 23 when he made it to Forbes’ list of the world’s richest. The social networking site, which racked up revenues of some $800 million last year (thanks to finely targeted ads), has made its founder Mark Zuckerberg one of the world’s youngest billionaires. It currently has 15 million users in India. In August, Facebook overthrew Orkut to become the most popular social networking site in India. According to, which tracks net traffic, 37.1 per cent of the world’s net surfers visited Facebook in the last one month, while 44.2 per cent used Google. In July this year, the overall number of Facebook users crossed 500 million worldwide, making it the second most popular website globally after Google. In the world of the internet, everyone is talking, and no one is willing to listen. “They are happy to share, and I’m happy to watch. “When you have 5,000 friends, no one begrudges your sharing nothing,” he says. He has left his relationship status blank. Mayank doesn’t upload photos or change his profile picture. While he is candid about his voyeurism, his own life is strictly self-censored on Facebook. Generally, there’s a lot of drama going on there-parties, etcetera.” “If you want to see them in their regular roles, you have to check out the photo album titled ‘random’. Those who are really uncomfortable with their looks don’t bother uploading profile pictures at all. Often, Mayank doesn’t recognise the people he has interacted with on Facebook because they look so different in real life. They are at some level building a perception of who they’d like to be.” Most people look better in their profile pictures. Or a very non-cool guy who dresses in a suit and throws cool one-liners online. “You meet this quiet dude,” he says, “who will leave the angriest status messages.
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Mayank notices a disparity between people’s online and offline personalities. “Unlike Twitter where people take themselves too seriously, where profundities are spouted, this is really light.
He can see where people party, what their thoughts are, whose photos they upload. Mayank logs on to Facebook through his phone when he has a minute to spare. It’s entertaining to peek into other people’s lives. Besides helping keep in touch with people and staying updated on events like a gathering of friends, Facebook’s charm lies in pure voyeurism. What it does make him is a social voyeur. Having 5,000 friends hasn’t made him any more social most of his Facebook ‘friends’ are just acquaintances. Of the 5,000 friends he has, more than 90 per cent are fans, people out to network, corporate social media accounts and fake profiles-like someone called Pandit Nehru.
Since it hadn’t worked, they unfriended me.” Two or three people very sweetly messaged me saying that though we’ve been friends on Facebook, we never really interacted, and ‘I’m sure there are many other friends you would like to add’. “I asked my Facebook friends if it was really true that I can’t go above 5,000 friends. It demanded a status update, and he explained his newly discovered constraint. In addition, there were 200 friend requests pending, but Facebook wasn’t allowing him to add more. He started his Facebook account on the internet just last year and recently notched up 5,000 friends. Mayank Shekhar, national cultural editor of Hindustan Times and well-known film reviewer, is a popular man. You can save the world, become a farmer, have 5,000 friends, be the centrefold model who can goggle a billion eyes on the internet… but none of it is true