I think that many of us remember chain letters, actual letters one would receive in the mail. I’ve gotten a few, never written any.  Many more of us have had chain email letters, you know you’ll be cursed if you don’t send it to ___ people within 2 days, but if you do then something good will happen to you.

Out of that concept came an email chain letter where you receive an email from a friend with answers to a list of questions and they sent it to you and a bunch of people and then you were supposed to write them back with your answers and send it to a bunch of other people too.

Now with facebook we have a similar phenom, but there are several reasons why it works better, and I’m guessing will be more popular than any of those other methods were.  Here’s how it works: 1) You write a note, you include 25 facts about you, usually things that are kind of obscure that many people wouldn’t know. 2) You tag 25 people in your note.

Why it works

It’s viral by nature: This isn’t really new, the point of chain letters is they are viral, but by tagging you are are much more likely to read it.  In facebook, if someone tags you, it will show up not just in your timeline, but in the timeline of your friends, even if the person who originally posted it isn’t your friend.  When the comments start goign it attracts more attention too, and this in turn prompts more virality.

It’s semi-public: This is one of the big changes from email or chain letters.  Notes in facebook are much like individual entries in a blog (and in fact you can import your blog automatically as notes in facebook) in that at least your friends, if not everyone can see your posts.  This pique’s people’s interest, and it’s not just you responding and sendig it to one person or a few people, but ALL of your friends, and possibly many others can too.

Discussion is possible: This is also something that changes online.  Facebook now allows you to comment on just about anything, a status, a photo, and notes.  In general people enjoy discussion, and even they don’t participate, they lurk (or observe). This means that it’s not just a one to one interaction, but a many to many interaction.

People are curious: People enjoy getting to know each other, hence all the profiles we fill out online, but this kind of exercise allows you to get to know things about people that perhaps you would never find out.

Thanks to @mmeller for reminding me of this: It’s free form.  This is a big point. One of the biggest previous incarnations of this had a list of questions you had to answer, many of which were silly or didn’t apply or I simply didn’t care about.  With 25 fact you can choose what to talk about and for how long.

Social Media is here to stay

Some cynics think social media is just a fad, something that will come and go, but I think that as long as people have the opportunity to enhance or make social connections online, then social media will be around.

Oh and here’s a copy of my twitter message that links to the note that I wrote:

“Couldn’t resist writing my 25 facts about me on facebook. http://twurl.nl/trm7cx.”

EDIT:

Inside Facebook got a little bit of the statistics showing how big this has gotten.