Facebook’s early growth drew on sex appeal but thrived on strategic ambiguity

Evidence

Many have theorized that this difference was only significant insofar as it pertained to the potential for hooking up; that Facebook’s success came from revealing the universe of people it might be practical to sleep with. Was that the case? It’s complicated. There can be no doubt that Facebook gained in its early days owing to potential for erotic encounter, particularly at a moment when volume was prized over quality of connection by many users. No student newspaper failed to mention dates arranged on the site; yet Facebook was always coy on this point, maintaining a plausible deniability, and never marketed itself as a dating site. Rather, it replicated the ambiguity of college life itself, with its collisions more like Brownian motion than traditional romantic pursuit. Everyone knew that joining a certain club or even attending college would eventually lead to opportunities; making it too explicit would only ruin the effect. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 997

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the author’s broader thesis about attention capture strategies — same move as The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s studied ambiguity, and to the ‘plausible deniability’ dynamics in advertising.