In a Facebook Second
I believe you can tell a lot about a person simply by looking at their profile picture on Facebook (Note: This theory is influenced by Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink). In fact, I think the picture more adequately explains who that person is than all of the other listings on the page. And I would say it's much more likely to be accurate than all of the other information, becuase everything is much more easily skewed.
Why do I propose this concept? First, I don't think that anything happens accidentally. And if nothing happens accidentally, then I know that each person chose their picture for a specific reason (or reasons). The key to figuring out what their picture means isn't an exact science, but I propose that you can adequately make assumptions based on characteristics in the photo.
Possible ways to analyze the photo:
- Consider the duration between changes.
- Look at the colors.
- Consider the background.
- Determine their positioning in the picture.
- Is there more than one person in the picture, and if so, are the others cropped out?
- Consider the size of their face in conjunction to the picture and the visible portion of their body.
- Look at clothing types.
- Consider differences between daily activities and pictoral setting.
Of course, these are only a few of the many possible ways you can over-analyze the pictures. But I really believe that analyzing Facebook pictures will become a more frequent activity in the future...especially among potential employers.
What do you think?
Comments
Kayla Said: (June 12, 2006 01:41 PM)
Nice post. I've often thought about facebook/myspace/xanga/blahblahblah pictures, but never analyzed quite as eloquently. Mine easily fits into your analysis as well...