You might not think of it at first but Facebook actually has a ton of numbers to it. Notifications, likes, friends, mutual friends, comments and so on. There’s always some number hovering over you, influencing you so what if you used Facebook… without numbers?
Artist Benjamin Grosser has created Facebook Demetricator, a browser extension that removes all numbers from Facebook to see if people would use Facebook any differently. Grosser says:
No longer is the focus on how many friends you have or on how much they like your status, but on who they are and what they said. Friend counts disappear. ’16 people like this’ becomes ‘people like this’. Through changes like these, Demetricator invites Facebook’s users to try the system without the numbers, to see how their experience is changed by their absence.
I think it’s sort of interesting. Huge numbers can catch our attention, no numbers would make our attention focus on the actual content. It’s like growing up without digital peer pressure. Sort of. [Ben Grosser via The Creators Project]