viernes, 5 de noviembre de 2010

Rename the Gossip

About the topic of time spend on Facebook posted two days ago (See post), Alcides, a friend of mine, point out that “although there are some high costs paid in a specific realm (productivity) the benefits in other areas might as well override those costs”. Specifically Alcides research is oriented to find “how SNS might benefit psychological well being, social capital, and community attachment”. This position is not far away from economic theory. The argument is that people are always looking for the maximum utility (happiness) they can get from allocating their resources, like time in this case. Thus, the estimate of $225 dollars per month based on the average of an hour and a half per person each day is just simply an indicative of the individual willingness to pay for being in touch with family and friends, in this sense, maybe is better to change the characterization of the phenomena from “social cost of gossip” for “social valuation of social networking”.
Notice that the figures provided are not giving any kind of information about when and where the time on Facebook was spent, home or work, day or night. This comment is just to rule out the possibility of link the use of social networking with changes in productivity, which is a different but interesting topic.

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