Does anyone else avoid Facebook because they themselves suck as person? I don't use FB because the activities on it are things I am better off not doing.
I felt strange doing anything on it because I felt people were judging me. It was like I had developed this persona of an educated and successful and fun person when I was on it because I hadn't made any new "friends" since beginning grad school and I was so stressed out, miserable and broke that I was never brave enough to admit it on my own.
After surfing through the countless photos of my friend's girlfriend or my ex gf, I honestly used to feel guilty with the voyeurism. I use to feel hurt seeing my ex gf happy, lonely seeing old friends enjoying themselves, smirk seeing my friend do something stupid. I hated when people tagged me for the same reasons.
I wasted tons of time friending people I would not even wish birthday. I spent countless awkward chat conversations that never went beyond "I had a great day". I spent useless time tweaking my photos and wall so that my family wouldn't see the language that I or my friends were using. I tried to post Go's result on my wall. It became less of enjoying the game than to acquire certain points so that I could post them on my wall.
I logged into Facebook when I didnt have anything to do, which happened a lot. I used to open Facebook like I opened my email and reddit. After a while I just felt too shitty.
I deleted the account. I share photos through Flickr. Not all my friends are there but those who are have taught me a lot about taking photographs. I joined Blip.fm. Not all my friends are there but those who are truly share the passion I have for music. I deleted all my contacts in the messenger and added only those that I truly feel comfortable talking to.
My girlfriend calls me anti social. But she too has come to accept that Facebook is prone to our weakest traits as humans. We love attentions. We love to think of ourselves as something we want to be. We trade our true feelings to be included. We want to be popular. We want our taste in music and art to be value. We crave for external success. It was like high school all over again.
There is a difference between antisocial and asocial, it is the difference between being hostile or antagonistic to others as opposed to simply ignoring or ahunning them.
Equally, people confuse being insecure and attention-seeking with being sociable or worse, popular.
Ok, so I did the same thing as you (delete facebook), but you're wrong in thinking that you're not anti-social by avoiding Facebook.
Antisocial behavior is defined as "behaviour that lacks consideration for others and that may cause damage to society"
Because literally everyone else in your social circle is on Facebook, you're actually forcing them to go out of their way to interact with you, something that fits the definition to a T. Facebook is the preferred method of communication for most people, and if you're ignoring this and forcing people to conform, they'll resent it. Every interaction with you, therefore, has to be on your terms, instead of the agreed-upon social norms (therefore, not considering others).
Ok, I don't have a Facebook account nor have I ever had one. I never felt that I need it. My friends (those that I truly consider to be my friends) have my phone number and they can call me any time, either to ask me to meet them in person, discuss something they want to discuss with me, or just chat. So, what, I'm forcing my poor friends to, heaven forbid, go through all that trouble of dialing my number just to get in touch with me when I should, like any other sensible person, save them the horror of pressing a couple of keys and create a Facebook account? Even though I neither want nor need one?
I don't need Facebook. I frequently meet with my friends. We go to football matches, concerts, or just to a bar to have a glass of beer or two. Even if we don't meet in person we can chat over phone or through msn, skype etc.
So, sorry, no, I don't buy into this 'you're anti-social because you're not on Facebook' BS.
Facebook befriending = please don't forget about me.
Real friending: Facebook befriending agnostic.
Conclusion: without FB you know who your friends are. With FB, you know who your friends are, or are not: because you are reminded every time you look. And who needs that?
Why people resent Facebook: it has mangled the definition of friend and warped the ground of relating.
My way of relating to Facebook: give it as little energy as possible (have a minimal presence.) I'm not on it to make new friends, or improve relationships: mainly to keep the status quo. It's for sharing photos, sending messages and basic interaction. It's not for deep communion.
I don't think not having Facebook is antisocial in that it hinders others, but I think not having one hinders yourself socially (at least at my age - 21).
If people are having a non-formal invite (i.e. not a wedding or a 21st which will usually get a paper invite), the event invites are all done through Facebook. If its a close friend of yours, you'll get a text message anyway, but if it's an acquaintance, you might find yourself without an invite, whereas all your mates do. If you want to go, you have to get them to ask if you can come, sometimes an uncomfortable conversation.
I also find (though I only have a few examples), that those without Facebook like to complain that they're never invited to events yet like to maintain moral superiority over those who do.
The world got along fine until facebook came out all of less than 10 years ago.
Since then lots of people have joined it and lots of people have left again, but arguably lots more have joined than have left.
Just like there is no obligation to join there is no obligation to leave and those that leave should not be made to feel guilty because "literally everyone else in your social circle is on Facebook, you're actually forcing them to go out of their way to interact with you, something that fits the definition to a T. Facebook is the preferred method of communication for most people, and if you're ignoring this and forcing people to conform, they'll resent it. "
If your social circle is defined by facebook then pity to you, there are many more established means of communicating with other people including but not limited to:
- personal contact in real life (visiting)
- the telephone
- letter writing
- email
- sign language
- the telegraph system
- telex
- flickr
- youtube
- fax
- smoke signals
- carrier pigeons
- various instant messaging systems
- sms
- twitter
And on and on, and quite a few of those didn't exist 30 years ago either.
Not using facebook does not force anybody 'out of their way' in order to communicate with you, the volume will drop a bit but those that want to communicate with you will always find a way at no great inconvenience to them, after all if the 'price' of facebook is low enough for you it is too high for me because I'm not an avid user of facebook.
That cuts both ways and the onus is not on the non-users to provide ease of access to the users of a certain medium.
Typically protocol negotiations will settle when a common medium has been found, and facebook is only one of many possibles.
Fortunately there is some freedom of choice left in this life and whether or not you choose to use a certain communications medium is one of the things we're still free to choose.
Just because something is a hype does not make it mandatory.
Let's not get caught in a false dichotomy. Not having a Facebook does not necessarily make you anti-social. But if we take "anti-social" to be a measure of one's social availability, not having Facebook decreases that measure. Communicating only by smoke signal or carrier pigeon would make you extremely unavailable whereas communicating by email and telephone would make you very available. In some demographics, users check their Facebook 3+ times per day, so depending on your social circle, being on Facebook makes you highly available.
For the record, I do not use Facebook, but I accept that it makes me less available. Friends who make Facebook events to organize events can invite nearly everyone they want to invite to their event on Facebook, but have to go out of their way to invite me via different means. This makes me anti-social to some (pretty small) degree.
The same admonishion should apply to sudont's assertions upthread. We shouldn't take it as a given that friends will resent you for having to compose an email or use IM.
I only go on facebook to confirm friend requests when people start bugging me about it in real life. I haven't deleted my account, but I might in the near future (or might not). I have never met anyone through facebook and I think that in all the time I've used it (not a lot compared to most Americans my age), I never accomplished anything productive whatsoever. I get more value out of watching re-runs of Law and Order.
i think you'll find more success with Facebook-like thinks if you Think about it less, by which i mean don't strategize or mull over it. try acting from your instincts on what feels right in your core. you'll find yourself taking more honest actions and appreciating how you spend your time, rather than consuming your mind with judgements on yourself and others. "wasting time" sounds to me like a product of taking actions without consulting your gut, like you're chained to your mind instead of your whole being. the fact that wasting time is so much in your vocabulary is like a secon meta level of focusing too much on your mind and strategizing instead of doing.
i haven't yet figured out the right words, but there's something important i'm trying to communicate. feedback welcome.
After letting a profile languish for some time, I got pulled onto Facebook by people who insisted upon messaging me via Facebook rather than via email.
I quit and deleted the account, however, when the demands of reciprocity got not only too time consuming, but too transparent and formulaic to participate in without feeling almost ridiculous.
It is tangentially related to a scene from Fight Club-
Narrator: When people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you, instead of just...
Marla Singer: - instead of just waiting for their turn to speak.
On Facebook, as with many social media sites (including Flickr), people "listen to you" to remind you that you should listen to them. They like your posts and comment on your pictures and send you happy birthdays all to ensure that you feel the obligation to do the same to them.
Life is full of that sort of reciprocity, but never could it be piled onto people with the easy lack of friction that Facebook affords.
The real life equivalent of this for me is Christmas cards.
I never send them, but I receive piles of them every year. It's really not nice of me but I stuff them in the paper bin unless they're from close family or home made and not printed.
When it's mid summer though I tend to drop in on people just to say hi and ask how they're doing, I prefer to do that than to send a Christmas card just because 'it's the social thing to do', I don't feel as though I'm obliged to return the favor and the facebook 'demands of reciprocity' I can do without just as well.
Bingo! I've been feeling this way about facebook for quite a while now. I still check it every day when bored or to take my mind off work for a minute but never more than a minute or two... interaction with facebook has become minimal. It was cool back when I was a freshman in college 5 yrs ago and only other college students were on it.
I find it humorous that there is such a need to DEFINE Facebook. It's different things to different people. We really don't need one definition of what it is or a nice tidy list of the ways people use it, what the benefits are, what the drawbacks are, etc. Every time I read about somebody complaining about Facebook, I usually just end up thinking "I don't use it (exactly) that way, so this doesn't (completely) apply to me."
I have a lot of friends that I don't see more than once every year or two, but I will be close to them until the day I die. I like seeing their status updates, their vacation photos, their kids, etc. Facebook makes our connection stronger, not weaker. It doesn't replace the need to see them and talk to them; it makes those infrequent visits/conversations better when they happen because it feels like we haven't really been out of touch for so long.
Oddly enough I have the exact opposite take on it. My wife and I both don't have Facebook accounts, and while most of my friends also do not have accounts, many of my wife's friends do. These friends live in the same state as us, and while we don't live in the same city we still manage to get together frequently. In the last few years we have noticed quite the trend: everyone of these people on Facebook would do a double-take whenever we didn't hear about some large event in their life. They assume that because it was on their Wall, that everyone knew about it. They didn't think to _call_ all their friends to talk about the great news, they simply threw it up on their Wall without thought.
No longer do you have to think about your friends as individuals and how you're going to break news to them, or how they are going to react -- now you can simply throw up a general message and lose the individuality in a flood of responses.
The depersonalization of communication has been exacerbated by a number of different technologies (such as email), however Facebook has allowed us to perfect the art communication without soul.
Personally, it gets tiresome to have the exact same conversation, individually, with a dozen different friends. There's no "soul", for me, in repeating virtually the same scripted interaction over and over again when I can just inform everyone all at once and get it over with.
If I'm talking to you, I want to have a conversation that actually pertains to our unique set of mutual interests. I honestly think of things during the day that I know one particular friend of mine would be interested in discussing, and I remember to discuss it with them later. And it's easier, not harder, to have those kinds of personal talks when I don't have to waste time on scripted boilerplate about what just happened in my life.
If you're repeating the exact same thing to a dozen different friends I'm going to assume that you (or they) are not engaged by the news -- which is what I call "life trivia."
Most of what I see on twitter is this trivia, "I refinished my floors," "I bought an iPad." Would you normally go out of your way to talk about this to anyone who didn't ask "What did you do this weekend?" Probably not, so why do you feel the need to broadcast it to the world via Twitter/Facebook/<Insert Lifeless Tech Here>?
Now take something you have a passion for. I personally am an avid homebrewer and love to talk about beer. I'll talk to a half dozen different friends about the latest batch of beer I made and have completely different conversations and get insights into what they like. I have friends that are huge into climbing, now I have no big interest in it myself, but their passion draws me into the conversations and over the past decade I've learned more about climbing than I ever would have if it were just some posts.
It takes an amazing writer to really evoke the emotions that most of our daily conversations have, and let's face it, the world isn't exactly filled with amazing writers.
From personal experience, "I just graduated, got a new job, and moved to Seattle" and "my mom died" both count as "life trivia". Haven't really heard anyone come up with a new take on either of those subjects yet.
I still think new information can be created through conversations regarding those subjects better than it can be through facebook. Speaking with someone about your mom dying is bound to be more consoling than having someone comment "My condolences! What a great person" and- hopefully not- "4 people liked this."
Likewise, people will ask interesting questions if you tell them you're moving to a new place, maybe helpful things you wouldn't think of yourself, or just an outside perspective which would be impossible in a change as large as a career change + move. What would your facebook friends contribute? "~Seahawks, represent!~"?
Speaking with someone about your mom dying is bound to be more consoling than having someone comment "My condolences! What a great person" and- hopefully not- "4 people liked this."
Not really. It's just tiresome and awkward. Unrelatedly, I've also had fairly intelligent (even HN-caliber) discussions on Facebook. It all depends on who your friends are.
Plus, posting something on Facebook doesn't preclude anyone from talking with me about it in person on the rare chafe they have something to say.
BUT when you just throw it up on the wall, you have no idea if anyone read it. And chances are, most of them didn't (didn't check in regularly enough, or they did check in, but your post wasn't one of the top 10 that was put on their page, etc).
Are you sure? When I login I seem to see 5-10 posts from a list of 100 people (well, admittedly less since I've ignored so many). I you were my friend, how could you know _you_ were in that 5-10 posts that _I_ see -- you don't know how many other friends I have, and how much _they_ have posted.
It's funny you should mention being married, because that's why I don't have a Facebook account.
I signed up for MySpace because a girl elected to give me her MySpace username instead of her phone number. I haven't logged in since before meeting my wife, and never got a Facebook account because I haven't yet needed one.
It seems to me to be the difference between spending time and wasting it. All I've heard about the site is photo sharing, discussing parties, people being shocked at the drop-down other people clicked for their relationship status, and games that used to be pointless (like that silly game about buying your friends or the vampire game) but have recently become manipulative and borderline malicious (Zynga). It consumes time without providing value. I have enough useless stuff competing for my time against valuable stuff.
So far, the only actually useful social site I've used is GitHub, which is more about adding a social component to doing things. I do enjoy Twitter (which is pretty tolerable and not too demanding if you keep your "following" count low enough), where I read jokes my friends make and occasionally find an interesting link or two. I had high hopes for LinkedIn, but it mostly gets me recruiter spam. ("Do you want to add me as a connection so we can network?", "Do you want to do VB.NET?", "Do you want to move to San Francisco?", "Do you want to take a pay cut and work overtime because our atmosphere is so darned quirky and fun?", and my favorite so far, "Do you want to work for Zynga?"...Nope, none of those.)
Geeky example, but it's like RSS. Instead of having to manually check every website for updates, they all get pulled in to a central place where you can keep tabs on them yourselves.
Interesting point. I was reading a sociologist (Simmel) talk about the rise of individualism leading to the abstraction of other people: coming to think of them as all just 'friends' rather than seperate individuals we relate to differently.
On the other hand, it also removes the need to contact that person since you already know all the latest news. I'm not comfortable in situations when I meet people I don't see often and they tell me things that I already know, and I have to pretend to not knowing it to avoid the stalkerish feeling it gives me.
I know the feeling. In that circumstance, since the person apparently wants to talk about that news, I try to find something to ask them about it that I don't already know the answer to. Which could even just be to ask them how they feel about that news (which can be in the form "I bet you're happy about that...", etc), since I don't usually know that. That way, they get to talk about what they want to talk about and I get to hear about things I don't already know. Whether to make it clear that I already knew the basics or not depends on the circumstance.
It's the issue with people putting a lot of stuff out there but expecting people to consume only the newest stuff and forget that anything older exists kind of like real life conversations drift from relevance over time as subjects change.
Something like reading back through a few months of someones Facebook isn't really socially acceptable even though they are putting it all out there.
You are absolutely right ... Facebook has broadened my social circle in ways that would have been impossible just 6 years ago ...
Sure I don't call all 600 people on my friends list every week or have deep profound conversations with them all the time, but now I know enough about so many people in so many different places. People I could never have met ordinarily.
And I met them through other friends so that gives us enough familiarity that I could go to a new city of a friend on facebook and think nothing about asking them to come have a beer with me or send them a note asking about things to do in their city or what not. It could become a stronger friendship or they could have no personality, but its the possibility of friendship that fascinates me.
We're still working out the kinks with new forms of online communication (twitter/blogging/facebook) etc, but once we do, I have no doubt that we will see that they are net positives for us as a species.
There is perhaps some chance that I could be wrong due to the substantial inertia which Facebook has now accumulated, but I expect that it's just another fad which seems to be peaking if my spider-senses are correct. Facebook is not a particularly brilliant application and the amount of value it delivers is also not that great. If you're a Facebook user or addict, just pause for a moment and ask yourself how much actual value you're getting out of it relative to the time invested.
Honestly? Facebook gives me a ton of value. I keep in closer contact than I otherwise would, with more people I care about. It's simply a more scalable means of keeping in touch with people.
I find it odd that people say things like "that's what we have email and messenger and calendars and sms for". That's the point - I've replaced 5 programs with 1. I still use email and sms (messenger, not so much). But it's now all in one place, with all the people I care about right there, without having to start exchanging usernames.
I don't know how recently you've been a college student, but Facebook still offers a large ammount of value to that demographic. I would hate to make 100+ phone calls to invite people to a party, or to spend the money/time making and posting flyers.
Sure I'd jump ship if another platform provided more value, but that's (somewhat) different then a fad.
i haven't been in college for 10 years now and i still use facebook (and twitter, and livejournal) to broadcast party invites. there are about 5 people whom i like, and see in person regularly who do not get their news that way, and they get an email about those events.
funny enough, i never set facebook status updates or read anyone else's. i guess creating an event posts it in your stream, but the direct-invite and invited-by-friends feature is the extent of my use of facebook (people do message me on there and i reply via email).
my parties generally have a good mix of highschoolers to 60 somethings. i'll grant you that 2/3 of the sixty somethings are my neighbors and they get the email invite, but a lot of the 50-plus social crowd in portland, OR is on facebook.
the other benefit to using a tool like facebook to do (open) party invites is that people can invite their friends. most of my parties are open; i trust my friends' judgment not to bring/invite assholes. and it works out remarkably well. i've hosted thousands of people at around a hundred parties (some are smaller dinner parties, but still open invite) since i started this strategy, at least half of whom i did not know at all, and only 2 things have ever been broken/stolen. total value lost: $80. total connectedness gained & fun had? incalculable (but huge).
WORKSFORME, without being my only or even main method of socialization (which is decidedly in real life).
If people are Facebook users or addicts, it means they're getting something from it. That something might not be good for them, but people aren't going to volunteer hours a day doing something that isn't providing value in some way.
Facebook may go away, but the reasons why people use sites like Facebook will not. And it's really important to try and discover what those reasons are, so that you can offer that value in your own product.
Drugs are horrible for your body and for your life, but people still use it because it offers something they want. You can sit back and call drugs a fad, or you can look into why people use drugs. With that knowledge, you can invent something radically new that is healthy, and replaces drugs. Or, you can just invent cheaper, stronger drugs. Either way, you'll be rich.
The brilliance of Facebook is that it draws in lots of users. Their funnel is amazing. The app at the bottom of that funnel isn't that great, but manages to deliver value because of the huge userbase.
And this is also its weakness because if its only virtue is that it's "the cool place to hang out in cyberspace" then this is very vulnerable to changes in fashion (see MySpace/Second Life/LiveJournal/GeoCities).
Except at this point your parents are on Facebook. They were never on MySpace/Second Life/LiveJournal/GeoCities. While some of its value is "the cool place", it's also the place a lot of my family's social events (birthday parties, etc) are announced. If my 23 year old cousin switches to HotNewSocialSite, she'd still have to be on Facebook to find out about Granddad's 90th birthday get together simply because that's how the word gets out now, for better or worse.
I don't believe that facebook is the technological fad that tech pundits want them to be. They have infected the infrastructure of the web in ways that livejournal and myspace never could.
I agree, but I would add that they're overhyped as well. I think Facebook's value is somewhere in the middle between current expectations / valuations and a fad. So yes it's big, it will continue to be big, but it's not and never will be Google big.
I could be completely wrong though considering the engineers who've left google for facebook, but then again, maybe that was just for a massive payout?
My takeaway is this - Facebook is the first web application that showed us how easy it is to connect to the people we love, as well as those we know, but do not care about.
Facebook is the mere beginning of the way we will communicate in the future. It has its gripes, and people are starting to get bored with it ("ok so I friended her, now what?").
Nothing happens on Facebook.
Facebook, in my opinion, will eventually fade, and make room for new models of human communication, ones which do give us an added benefit instead of poking and secretly stalking our ex-girlfriend.
It's interesting, because my interest and understanding of social network is that it's precisely for managing my distant relationships. People I went to high school with, people I worked with 5 years ago, my second cousins, people I somewhat know who I may need to contact at some point.
People I'm close to, "the people I love", I've never had a problem keeping in touch with them. I have their number in my phone, I have their email address, I see them regularly, I know what they're up to, and how to contact them. That's never been a problem, and social networking hasn't really changed that for me.
Leaving a "happy birthday" used to mean you actually remember the date, not that you had a message requesting you to wish someone a happy birthday. The people I really care about get a phone call, not a dummy "wall post".
Maybe I'm a bit of an antisocial, but I really liked the days before social networks. My friends where on my IM contact list, colleagues on forums or mailing lists.
> Leaving a "happy birthday" used to mean you
> actually remember the date
Really? I'm sure there are plenty of people that put those things into calendars. How is the Facebook reminder+wallpost that much different than using Google Calendar + Gmail to get reminded to send a happy birthday email?
Maybe I didn't express myself correctly (My English is not that good) I meant picking up a phone and calling, establishing a connection, a bond - ie: Something not automated.
> Facebook is the mere beginning of the way we will communicate in the future
I think this is key. Just like iirc led to im and online forums led to reddit/hacker news, facebook will lead to something else ... That is what interests me.
Saying that facebook connects people only in ways limited by the imagination if its creators is true. But still, it CONNECTS PEOPLE. By deleting facebook without finding a replacement that is better than facebook, you are losing this new way of connecting people. Stuff like skype works for connecting with a relatively small social circle. Facebook allows a looser but also much larger circle. Presumably a better means of communication will come along sooner or later. The telephone replaced the telegraph, myspace replaced friendster, but until it comes along facebook(twitter?) is still the best means for this new large scale high volume asynchronous communication that we have.
Zadie Smith is one of my favorite authors. She has a jaw-droppingly gorgeous prose style. It would be nice (for someone) to link to her article (so I will) that prompted this dude to delete his account. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/25/generat...
Her insights and arguments really needs to be read by everyone of our generation in full, and I mean that in all sincerity. It articulates all the misgivings and worries I have about this phenomenon that has always left a slightly bad taste in my mouth and felt vaguely repellent.
In addendum: I pray for the day I can convert my thoughts into words as judiciously and compellingly, verily I would sell my soul for that knack.
Why is it suddenly such a big thing to delete your Facebook account. Every week it seems like there's another one of these on the frontpage and that means people are voting them there. I'd really like to understand why that is?
Everyone commenting here and on the blog post make out like it's such a huge deal.
Really? Is it? Imagine if I wrote up a big "I closed my MySpace account" post. I'd be laughed out of town. Why's closing a Facebook account such a big deal? Just because it has more users?
Good on the person for doing so, but do we all need to hold hands with them and pray? Because that what it seems like we're doing here.
Google's got just as much, probably more, info on you. Everyone uses Gmail (why, I don't know) but you don't see people writing up big "I closed my Gmail account here's why" posts. Why not? Why is everyone so comfortable with Google knowing everything about their lives in email format?
So I'm really curious: Why do these posts get voted up? Do people really think closing your Facebook account is THAT big of a deal?
I always warn my kids that sarcasm (our family's primary humor) doesn't translate to the Internet, but you obviously heard it in my voice.
I'm not a Facebook hater or a Facebook fan ... plenty of my friends are there, but there are hundreds of other ways to keep in touch with them (Jabber is everywhere). In any case, Facebook and to a large degree GMail are just not relevant for me. If they weren't there, or I felt compelled to abandon them for some reason, I wouldn't have a problem finding another way to contact them.
So let's recognize that Facebook, Google and even Microsoft are young in comparisons to the average human's life-span. And when the next big thing comes along, we'll embrace it until temporarily too.
One big caveat ... these companies build up customer good-will over longer or shorter periods of time and can persist until that reservoir is run dry. With a little care, that good-will can last a long time, so I'm not saying that Microsoft is in any danger as a company. But I do think they're past their heyday and will have to reduce their margins to keep business.
Anyway, we're so conditioned to sign-up for a service at the drop of a hat that these services become "cheap" to us. They didn't cost us anything and they don't cost much to throw away. Look at the number of people who signed up for Hipster without knowing what it is. I think everything you've written is true EXCEPT, I suspect it's more common for users to simply abandon an account without closing it. I'd love to know what Facebook's churn is.
I quit Facebook about half a year ago and I find it very refreshing. It's too bad I miss some events, but it is so relaxing. No longer do I have to think with every picture: this would be good for Facebook. No longer do I spend hours looking at pictures of people I don't know. No longer is my private information shared. Finally: when I meet people, I can tell a story without having to hear: "yeah, I read it on Facebook".
Few people seem to entertain options between Facebook addiction and account deletion. I have a simple practical use for it: easy access to acquaintances. Here's a recent story I can share.
I was on vacation in DC with friends, and I walked right past a girl I was certain was a friend of mine from college. I found her number on Facebook, sent her a text, and found out that it was her. We met up for drinks the next evening. Do we chat regularly as a result of having met up? No, but we enjoyed reminiscing and sharing our stories.
Not a single comment on that great blog post. Where is the discussion? In a vibrant community like Hacker News.
Facebook has something valuable... we've already logged in, so there's no barrier to making a comment that is voiced from our own identity. Fewer clicks, no barriers, and boom - the comment is public.
But Hacker News does that for me, since I have a long-lasting cookie that I don't clear... hence this comment... and nothing "social" happening on that blog. Interesting.
What is starting to really irk me about Facebook is how birthdays are handled. It's like the site is basically one big happy birthday wish site. Each day it's somebody else's birthday and all their friends take turns trying to write a somewhat unique birthday wish, like:
Friend #1: Happy Birthday!
Friend #2: HAPPY BIRTHDAY DUDE!!
Friend #3: happy b-day!
Friend #4: Have a wonderful birthday!
And it goes on and on down the list. Some unfortunate people feel the need to individually reply to each and every birthday wish. Each day it's like this for a different person, until once a year when it's your birthday and then everyone's doing it to you.
It's really, really stupid. And I wish there was just a way for me to automatically generate and deliver my friends a birthday wish on the right date. But the Facebook API prevents you from being able to post to your friends wall.
To each his own. Personally, the birthday reminders are the only reason I use Facebook. Also, each year, every attractive woman I've met in the past 4 years wishes me happy birthday, which is a nice ego boost.
It's not like you don't have control over your participation in this silly ritual... I think automating a meaningless post would be the wrong way to go.
I try to write thoughtful, detailed birthday messages for people who really mean something to me, ignore birthday notifications of more casual friends and temporarily hide my own birthday when it's getting close to prevent the avalanche of hollow wishes.
Facebook is an amazing product. However, the more facebook unravels their plans for the future, and the more we learn about their past, the less I trust them.
We can write to hacker news with our articles, bitching and moaning about facebook, or quietly build an alternative social network with the values we want.
Jacob: I'm kinda right in the middle of a thing
right now, but can I text you later?
Girl at Club: Can you what?
Jacob: Are you online at all?
Girl at Club: I have no idea what you're talking about.
Jacob: How do I get a hold of you?
Girl at Club: You come find me.
Jacob: That sounds... exhausting.
I tweeted the fact that my blog about quitting Facebook has been published. So meta that it hurts.
This article amounts to a wisp of air amongst a wind of change. It's a tad late, but better late than never. Some users of Facebook will never quit. It's a realization that permeated Facebook's offices for a long time and these are the users that just don't care period. With blinders on, they will obey the rules, and let their online privacy erode.
What's more important, and the conversation that we should be having: where to go next? What's our collective need that an online network can fulfill ? Maybe it's not online and in fact, going backwards is the new cool. Who knows?
My dad (58) just signed up and I got the friend request Sunday night. Right now, his friends list consist of him and some guy in his computer class, and me. But in a few days, I know I'll get a friend request from my mom and some of my aunts. I'm pretty sure this thing is still growing.
alas, for every person that delete their profiles there is another 2-3 that sign up. I am not saying that is sustainable, but they are growing. This is especially true in Asia where in the last 2 years has quadrupled.
I don't know. The author seems to think we'll become Zuckerberg's zombie army due to extended Facebook use. So was the same true of the time UseNet? MSN Messenger? And all those others when they were highly popular? Weren't we trapped in their creators' worlds? With before, when new tech comes along, with an interface, or "world" we prefer to use, then we'll move on. We'll interface with people on the web in a different way. Habits come and go.
Usenet is at least a decentralized thing owned by nobody and governed by a mixture of elected representatives and popular vote. Or was, back in the day. Therefore, usenet users weren't anybody's zombie army.
I wonder if there isn't a correlation amongst Facebook users that falls along introvert-extrovert lines. Specifically, I wonder if introverts aren't more likely to be disappointed with their experiences with Facebook because they crave deep, interpersonal relationships with fewer people while extroverts are satisfied with Facebook because it allows them to keep up to date with hundreds of people.
I find that I regularly check Facebook and am regularly disappointed with what I encounter there both as it relates to the activities of my friends and their responses to my activities. I tend to want deeper feedback and discussion which clearly isn't the model for Facebook. Whereas I know plenty of extrovert friends who love Facebook, are constantly checking in and because they have hundreds of friends, are constantly validated.
Certainly this is all anecdotal and biased given that I'm strongly introverted but every time I see someone say they are giving up Facebook or are disappointed in it (including myself), it seems to me that person is most likely introverted and thus not well served by the end goals of Facebook.
Why do these facebook account deletion articles always have to be either "addiction" or "deletion". Regarding the article, its kinda stupid to generalize that we are all living in the world with rules set by Mark, if I take that generalization much further we are living in the real world with rules set by people higher up in the chain. But thats not true as you can see that lot of people around you behave/act differently to these things.
Biggest takeaway for me from the article is that enormous amount of time, thought spent on yet another communication medium in evolving world. I have to wonder how scared people were when they first saw email!!
The far more substantial commentary by Zaddie Smith (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/25/generat...), which the author refers to a few times should really have been the article linked. The author's entire point is much more eloquently made by the original.
I too struggle with the idea of what Facebook has become and currently is, just like many others. However, I cannot help but feel that anyone who speaks against Facebook is simply jealous that they could not fit 500 million+ users into their own representation of social interactions taken online. Facebook just like many of it's predecessors (hotOrNot.com,addictinggames.com, forumns, aol instant messenger) has combined the best features of these already existent sites into a single trustworthy one. You no longer have to scour the internet to obtain the pleasure that these type of sites produced.
It is this concept of entertainment that makes Facebook what it is today. A single source of entertainment, and a place to peak deeper into the lives of those around you with or without participating in those lives. As with many different forms of entertainment if you indulge too deeply you are consumed by your indulgence.
For the time being Facebook has a place on the internet. Will it be a main stay for years to come? Well that is very hard to predict. I truly believe Facebook's biggest internet value add will come in the form of an online digital pass. I feel those leading Facebook's directions also believe that too. If they can satisfy the majority of its users basic desire for entertainment, continue to build out the graph API, and keep giving more reasons for businesses to utilize the graph API then soon enough Facebook will will realize what Microsoft never was able to with the Microsoft Passport from the Internets early days.
Strange, I was a FB hater until I watched the movie, at which point I wanted to find more reasons to like it (though the releasing of phone #'s and address data didn't help).
My wife, on the other hand, liked Zuck less by the end of the movie, even though she knew it was mostly sensationalized. It still hasn't changed her FB behavior.
I found it funny that the author quoted the bit in the Zadie Smith piece about the absurdity of the Facebook format right before you reach the end of his post, complete with tags and permalinks.
I'm not a Facebook fan, but I don't know that is does worse than most technology at being humane.
The circulation of current generation after two or three years, who is more into facebook right now, will come to know it is sucking them, there is nothing which adds something into them apart from being cluttered forcefully in so called 'social' stuffs.
I only post stuff to Facebook that I would tell any random stranger, like I had a good trip somewhere or I read a good book or I saw a movie. Even if I was convinced of the privacy of that site, I still want there to be a bit of mystery.
The degree to which China is not connected in the visualization at the bottom, I find worrisome. Why? Because connection and commerce are the true foundations of peace. By that thinking, visualization is not a good omen. (Maybe we should just chalk it up to language?)
Facebook lost in China and Russia because other similar products were already established (and in Russia the product is pretty much better >_>). The regions aren't actually less connected socially, or if they are you can't tell by looking at Facebook's data.
If you are talking about VKontakte in Russia, you are wrong. VKontakte (launched 2006) is a clone of Facebook (even the design is copied from FB). It's criticized in Russia for the same reasons as FB here.
FB lost because VK was specifically targeted at Russian audience from the beginning.
Well, I can say that they've copied older version of facebook and it seems more convenient for some people. Also do not forget audio and video sharing applications. It is like Napster since it allows users to exchange their collections.
It is great that he has come to his conclusion on whether he should delete or not. Though... I see the movie for what it is ... just a movie intended to inspire or incite dislike , how much of it is in line with facts who knows ( e.g. where was Adam D’Angelo ?) . To use it as any part of the deletion decision making process does not seem right and seems that maybe the approach/reason for joining the social network was not the correct one. For me this means losing years worth of photos, messages, events that I went to ... I lived my life through facebook and I didn't have to write a single word in a journal. With the new messaging platform http://www.facebook.com/about/messages/ and personal email address contact with friends and acquaintances are now possible without wall posts.
In 2005-2006 (I just started at McGill) when it was still within campuses it was like wild fire and when I watched the movie , I completely related and recalled sitting down with room-mates and class-mates browsing dozens of girls in the school. There were no games just mainly wall posts and photos. You cannot relate that to now ... it is just not equivalent. Privacy was the same back then as it is now... people are just more aware of it or they grew older and understood the effects it wil have with their jobs, lives etc.
> What we actually want to do is the bare minimum, just like any nineteen-year-old college boy who’d rather be doing something else, or nothing.
Yes Zadie Smith is right ... this was never meant for the old folks (no offense), when it started those are the only people there were 18-22 year old college students looking for the bare minimum.
Times are changing though and these kids start to grow up, thus changes to try to satisfy all. But to me it seems harder and harder to define.
Russia has Vkontakte
Japan has Mixi
So hopefully the author finds what he is looking for. I would start by just picking up the phone and calling someone. That is my Dad's way of keeping up with his social network. After he finishes work everyday, he has a 5-10 convo with his old friends and co-workers. Sometimes he even visits... (It is a no-brainer but somehow these days people find this hard to do)
> 500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore
Is a 26 year old billionaire in charge of a 500 M network something someone would want to fail ? Are the 2000 or so employees that work there doing it for the vision of Zuckerburg? Is jealousy that strong ? I dont want it to fail. I want to be some percentage of whatever he is when I reach 26 not by personality but achievement. Why should I wait for maturity to achieve things, I want to fall, get back up, fall and fall some more if it means I reach closer to what he did (no matter how simple the idea was). It is as if he is not allowed to mature or people are still looking at him as a sophomore that sent those sms messages. He does get assistance from his COO Sheryl Sandberg http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/business/03face.html so maybe back in creation the site was a reflection of the immature sophomore but now it is something different.
This movie is not about Facebook. If you watch the behind-the-scenes documentary on the 2nd disk, they even tell you this. Facebook, in the context of this movie, was just a vessel to deliver a story about building something big and conflict. Much as a tortilla chip is a vessel for nacho cheese.
I felt strange doing anything on it because I felt people were judging me. It was like I had developed this persona of an educated and successful and fun person when I was on it because I hadn't made any new "friends" since beginning grad school and I was so stressed out, miserable and broke that I was never brave enough to admit it on my own.
After surfing through the countless photos of my friend's girlfriend or my ex gf, I honestly used to feel guilty with the voyeurism. I use to feel hurt seeing my ex gf happy, lonely seeing old friends enjoying themselves, smirk seeing my friend do something stupid. I hated when people tagged me for the same reasons.
I wasted tons of time friending people I would not even wish birthday. I spent countless awkward chat conversations that never went beyond "I had a great day". I spent useless time tweaking my photos and wall so that my family wouldn't see the language that I or my friends were using. I tried to post Go's result on my wall. It became less of enjoying the game than to acquire certain points so that I could post them on my wall.
I logged into Facebook when I didnt have anything to do, which happened a lot. I used to open Facebook like I opened my email and reddit. After a while I just felt too shitty.
I deleted the account. I share photos through Flickr. Not all my friends are there but those who are have taught me a lot about taking photographs. I joined Blip.fm. Not all my friends are there but those who are truly share the passion I have for music. I deleted all my contacts in the messenger and added only those that I truly feel comfortable talking to.
My girlfriend calls me anti social. But she too has come to accept that Facebook is prone to our weakest traits as humans. We love attentions. We love to think of ourselves as something we want to be. We trade our true feelings to be included. We want to be popular. We want our taste in music and art to be value. We crave for external success. It was like high school all over again.