Five Labs asks: Are you living a double life on Facebook?
has released a new Facebook 鈥渜uiz鈥� that holds up what some say is a funhouse mirror to people's digital lives. The online tool scans users' social media posts in search of clues about the their personality. Do you recognize what is reflected back by your Facebook page?
鈥淭his new app has over 100 million Facebook users taking stock of how others may view and perhaps judge them,鈥� says Five Labs founder Nikita Bier.
Mr. Bier explains that the program takes into account only the words you post and what you say in comments and photo captions on Facebook. It does not track words posted as comments by others on your wall.
This new looking glass that Five Labs has constructed relies on a study published by Five Labs advisor H. Andrew Schwartz and his colleagues聽from the University of Pennsylvania's World Well-Being Project.
The application鈥檚 predictions are based around Dr. Schwartz's 鈥淏ig Five鈥� personality traits: extraversion, openness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and agreeableness.
鈥淎 lot of users really took offense to the use of the word 鈥榥euroticism,鈥� but we really don鈥檛 use it in a negative light,"聽Bier says. "In this instance, it means a user posted words like: depression, hate, lonely, sick, worse, alone, dead, stupid, bored, nightmare, scream, angry, or anxiety.鈥�
The 鈥渙penness鈥� trait, on the other hand, is characterize by the use of words such as: universe,聽art, I've, writing, soul, music, dream, poetry, epic, and zombie.
This program measures the appearance of these words, not the context surrounding them.
Bier hopes the quiz will聽help users become more self-aware. He points out that while the output of the tool is a fun pastime, the quiz itself also provides some insight into the way marketers can batch-skim your Facebook posts to better advertise to you.
鈥淪ocial networks have become corrupted, more like television,鈥� Bier says. 鈥淲hy does a social network even exist if it's no longer representative of the people on it?鈥�
Curious readers can try the quiz at the聽聽website. The website will ask for permission to access your Facebook profile, then analyze the words you post online to make its personality assessments. When it's done, Five Labs will聽score your Facebook profile in each of the five traits and provide an overall list of key words that it thinks best describe you.
Then, you can click on either a celebrity or friend profile to compare results.聽
For example: I am 70-percent similar to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, but only 24-percent similar to President Barak Obama on social media.
According to my analysis, on Facebook I am, 鈥淪olitary, curious, analytical, sensitive and easy going.鈥�
Since this didn鈥檛 actually feel much like me and left several people I know on Facebook LOLing themselves sick, I decided to try and skew the quiz, as can often be done with other Facebook quizzes by giving the 鈥渞ight answers.鈥�
No luck.
鈥淵ou can鈥檛 alter the results because you can only do the analysis one time,鈥� Bier says. 鈥淲e would never be able to handle the volume of people retrying. That鈥檚 actually one of the most interesting results of this lab: people don鈥檛 recognize themselves and what they鈥檝e become on social media.鈥�
He argues that it isn鈥檛 the fault of the developers that users find themselves unrecognizable, but that users of social media have reshaped their images to be more politically correct or pleasing, rather than just being themselves.
鈥淲e wanted to get a feel for just how far Facebook has drifted away from actually being a social network,鈥� Bier says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 lost that town-square feel it once had before it was opened up to people outside a college campus environ.鈥�
Five Labs is planning to use this tool to help Facebook users take a closer look at the 鈥渇alse personas鈥� they have become on social media platforms.
In so doing, Five Labs hopes to generate an uprising and demand for the Five Labs alternative, which Bier says, is coming soon and will be, 鈥渁 more intimate social network platform.鈥�
鈥淲e are creating a kind of restaurant or caf茅 kind of meeting place where people can be real with each other again,鈥� Bier says. 鈥淚nstead of tailoring your identity as we seem to be doing on Facebook we can be ourselves again.鈥�
