The “Attention Economy” and the Facebook Effect

Yesterday, I wrote about building on Steemit and how we really need to treat our fellow community members as the people they are rather than just think of them as a way to get another upvote in our posts.

Somewhat predictably, the people who have so far taken the time to stop by, read the post, and make engaging comments were exactly the people in this community who are not part of the problem I was talking about.

Which got me to thinking about something that started troubling me a long time ago, and for which I developed a strong dislike because it — in some ways — was responsible for killing the original social blogging movement that saw its strength between 1998 and about 2007.

The thing about first MySpace, and subsequently Facebook, was that the ”format” for social was changed.

Instead of engagement with somebody's content meaning that you actually shared your thoughts with them in writing, MySpace and Facebook strongly encouraged a much faster and less directly engaging format of simply giving something a "thumbs up" and moving on without further comment. Or, if you really wanted to go out of your way and make yourself known, you might leave a "smiley" of some sort.

That's what I refer to as the "Facebook effect."

It is this quick clicking around in a circle where you are sort of pretending to engage with online content, but all you're really doing is leaving a virtual "check mark" that you've seen something. To the person who published the original piece, they actually don't have any real sense of whether you just clicked in and clicked the "like" button, or actually took time to read their work and then click the button.

The Facebook effect manifests in this "attention economy" of ours in that many people who are content creators are now creating primarily for the purpose of attracting huge numbers of people to their content as opposed to attracting quality engagement to their content.

I suppose you can't really blame them, since most monetization schemes — be it Google AdSense or some other form of rewards — typically revolve around bulk numbers of page views, not engagement. The only exception might be YouTube which also counts the time people are visiting your content.

Regardless, the advent of the Big Social Media companies (and subsequently Twitter with its very short format) was that our attention was carved up into ever smaller bits. And so, a venue like Steemit is actually a bit of a contradiction because in its ideal format we actually take time to engage with each other at some length, and take time to be part of the Internet of People.

My attraction to this place (in early 2017) was precisely that it resembled the original social blogging format. And, indeed, there were some very good and lengthy comment discussions on many posts I found here which was why I made an account in the first place.

But here we are, nine years later, and the aforementioned Facebook Effect does seem to be creeping into our community here too. For those of us who enjoy writing and enjoy reading and engaging with other people's writing we owe it to ourselves to take the time to encourage original well thought out content, and to engage with that on a broader level than simply an upvote or even a meaningless "nice post" comment.

Yes, that does take more time and more effort... and it doesn't necessarily guarantee you better rewards, but it does help create a better and more welcoming environment for all participants.

And the more of that we have, the better off we will be.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great rest of your week!

How about you? Have you been a social media user for a long time? If so, have you noticed engagement becoming "shorter" since MySpace and Facebook became a thing? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2025.07.07 23:41 PDT
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