‘The Blob’ is growing ... and growing

The more people join The Blob, the stronger it gets.

But unlike most Facebook groups in the website's "Just for Fun - Totally Random" category, The Blob was created for research purposes.

When students in a new information studies course on social networking were tasked with creating a Facebook group that would attract 10,000 members in one week or less, sophomore computer science major Alex Mateik hoped The Blob would be just weird enough to attract procrastinating Facebook addicts.

Few were surprised by the decent success of "10,000 Haters of Duke Basketball" — another group created for the same course — but The Blob's massive appeal was less predictable.

Mateik's Facebook group is fairly straightforward. "It's the BLOB!!!" he announces in its description, above an explanation of his class assignment and next to a drawing of some grinning yellow-green goo.

"I don't know why this excites me so much but you did it!!!" posted one of The Blob's fans on its Facebook wall after the group hit 10,000 members in just six days.

The Blob was the only group to attract enough members by the deadline. Others, such as "Lower The Drinking Age To 18 On College Campuses Across The Country" and "10,000 Strong Against Snow Day Make-up Work" fell short with 4,392 and 771 members, respectively.

The Duke basketball group, which came in second in the class competition, netted 7,026 members as of the Feb. 25 deadline.

"It's a mystery," said Jennifer Golbeck, professor of INFM289I: Social Networking: Technology and Society, who has been studying online social networks since their infancy in 2002.

"I think it hits the right silly spot on Facebook," Golbeck said. "The cute picture is funny enough that people will take a few seconds to join and share this little joke with their friends."

Mateik offered an alternative explanation for the success of his Blob: Everyone who joined knew what they were getting into from the start.

"I think people joined because I made the information on the assignment available to them on the front page, a lot of people supported the assignment more [than] the group," Mateik wrote in an instant message.

While event promoters and publicists often send mass e-mails to lure networkers onto their clients' Facebook pages, Mateik took a more laid-back approach to getting people to join The Blob.

"I wasn't one of those people where when you join a group the creator is constantly wall posting ‘hey! Let's get 4,000 tonight!'" he wrote. "I personally asked I think something like 20 of my friends to invite all of their friends. I sent invites to everyone on my friend list. People seemed to enjoy watching it grow and so I never had to ask the group to invite more, it built itself."

Though The Blob itself may seem silly, research on social networking patterns is in high demand, Golbeck said. Her research ranges from writing programs that use social networks to predicting which movies people will enjoy to studying how members of Congress use Twitter.

Although Golbeck said the class assignment wasn't a scientific study, she said it has taught many students about online media marketing strategies and a concept that she and other social networking experts call "the strength of loose ties."

"What Facebook does is make it easier to maintain relationships," Golbeck said. "What started as a way to keep tabs on 20 of your closest friends — people you have very close personal relationships with — has become a way of cataloging everyone you've ever met. You can transfer information to all these people so easily, and that's a powerful thing."

And though the class assignment has been turned in and received an A, The Blob, standing at about 10,860 members as of last night, continues to live and grow.

hemmati@umdbk.com