Hi! My name is Emily and I’m a junior psychology major. I’m pretty interested in psycholinguistic stuff, but for all I know, I’ll be writing jingles for snack cracker companies in ten years. Lack of finely-tuned ambition and a history of setting perfectly good combinations of guitar chords to inane lyrics make this a plausible possibility. I really enjoy listening to music, fiddling around on a guitar once every few half moons, watching movies, and indulging a debilitating (in the best sense of the word) addiction to “The Office.” I should also probably mention I’m from Long Island, but who isn’t?

I’ve been fascinated by Facebook since I joined the summer before freshman year. Before that, I’d routinely thwarted invitations from peers to join social networks like Myspace, which I wrote off as an adolescent vehicle for self-aggrandizement. Facebook, however, seemed like a more benign way to keep in touch with friends from high school and plant new friendships in the fertile soil that is mutual access to each other’s favorite TV shows.

Since then, I’ve used Facebook fairly often as a means of combating boredom and conveniently conveying short notes to friends, via their “walls.” Though I usually use the wall application without a second thought to its implications, I’ve occasionally wondered what motivates me and others to post messages, which are supposedly directed toward a single person, in a place accessible to all of the recipient’s friends. The private message option is equally convenient (one extra click doesn’t constitute a burden), yet most Facebook users trade privacy for publicity. Wall posts differ from private messages in that they are written for a large audience and their content reflects this difference.

I think some wall posts serve as marks of territory. Posting an inside joke says something like, “Hey, look, we hang out all the time,” even if that subtext wasn’t consciously intended by the sender. Other wall posts may stem from altruistic motives to decorate the recipient’s profile with a nice comment. Finally, I think some people use their wall as a place for brief messages with a distinct, task-oriented purpose, reserving private messages for more personal communication.

The Facebook wall is an asynchronous space, since recipients often take a few days to respond to messages. It differs from email in that the person being addressed is not the only one with access to the message (comments directed to one person aren’t usually sent to an entire listserve). It differs from discussion boards in that a post becomes part of a single person’s profile. Though discussions between two people other than the wall’s owner can occur on a wall, these exchanges seem to be rare. Posts from users on their own walls are perhaps even sparser, making this space comparable to an online guestbook. While the Facebook wall might have as much to do with utility as vanity, I think the preference for public messages warrants exploration.