tonx and coffee are now friends
I don’t get Facebook.
I did the Friendster thing back in the day, played with Orkut when invites to the site were a hot commodity for bored screen-dwellers, and by the time myspace appeared (and single-handedly revived the once deprecated web aesthetic of the blink tag) I lost all interest. I really don’t grasp what utility these social networks offer and am wary of the privacy implications of Facebook, the social network that collects so much data with so little apparent useful return.
I started an account, no doubt like many others, just to see what the fuss was about. It didn’t take long before my inbox was calling out to me to confirm this or that friend request which allowed me to then view the noisy and completely uninteresting pages of people who I already have sufficient knowledge of and means of communicating with. I’ve followed incredulously the stories of Facebook’s mythical valuation in the billions of dollars and wonder if these reporters (or more accurately, the cheerleaders at Facebook-obsessed Valleywag) are looking at the same boring website I am?
I think Facebook is just an adult version of the Tamagotchi digital keychain pet: it cries at you (from your inbox or feed reader) demanding attention and you get some tiny unconscious reward for “feeding” it and watching it grow. That people find this marginally fun and slightly addictive (at least until the immediate novelty wears off) is no surprise, but that so many believe Facebook represents some vanguard of Web 2.0 is a real head scratcher.
All of which is to say that if I ignore your friend request don’t take it personally. If I ignore your poke, superpoke, virtual chihuahua, vampire bite, zombie attack or trivia quiz its not that I don’t like you, its more that I’m a cynical curmudgeon who wants Facebook to die a quiet death like all the other social network fads that preceded it. If you have no idea what any of this stuff is, let me assure you that ignorance is bliss and you’re not missing out.
Tags: facebook, notcoffee, social graph, social networks
October 27th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Hey, at least you’re blogging again!
Facebook is what it is. For me, it’s a better events-organizer than anything else I’ve tried for local events; though with the redesign of CG, we’re trying to incorporate an events organizer of our own for the membership to use.
October 27th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Amen to that.
I have an account and don’t really know what to do with it. My myspace account was a music one and that one hasn’t been looked at for quite a while (might look now, check if I am a success yet).
I guess the map thingy is quite nice for seeing where you’ve been and ticking them off the list…. as for the vampire thing…. (wtf?)
October 28th, 2007 at 9:22 am
Hehe.. not another boring attention-demanding social networking site! I recently read that my old university, UB, wasdoing its “yearbooks” on facebook rather than print these days. Not that I ever got or even saw a UB yearbook (isn’t that a highschool thing, not for 30,000+ student universities??), and not that facebook might have certain advantages for keeping in touch with college buddies after graduation, but as far as I can tell a website has not yet replaced printed books in terms of… oh let’s see — simple user interface, resolution per page/screen, the chance of still being around in 10 years, and snuggling-up-by-a-fire-ness. Plus I can’t remember the last time I rebooted a book. But then, perhaps I’m old and out of touch with these new-fangled ways.
I have to wonder though, my mom still has her high school yearbooks, and they are in fine condition even though over 40 years old. I’m skeptical than facebook, myspace, and flickr will be around in 40 years, unless perhaps morphed into radically different systems. Since more and more people are using such websites for essentially archival purposes, I wonder if the future web will have an increasing number of “legacy” websites, or if the bulk of the archives will just be lost in time. Sometimes I think about having my flickr photos printed if only to have a hard-copy copy for the day when flickr and all its data disappears.
October 29th, 2007 at 7:26 am
Tonx, et. al.,
I think the thing is that most of these apps, saved LinkedIn, aren’t for “adults”. They’re for the same age group that instead of picking up the phone and talking to someone, opts to text instead. And often times texts when they’re in the same room with the other person.
Odds are none of this will be around in 15 years, let alone 50. But what’s on the other side of that will likely be even stranger. Google is worth gazillions and is 100% ad-supported, Everyone else wants in on that - including Microsoft. You bet we’ll be asked to give up details on everything we buy/do/see/want in order to access the applications you want to use. It’s only going to get more invasive. And goofy.
Meantime, our store is on Facebook, MySpace and Squidoo. It doesn’t make a ton of difference, but it does make some.
October 31st, 2007 at 10:52 am
I’d leave you a response, but I already sent it to you in a message via facebook!
November 4th, 2007 at 9:16 am
Facebook is GREAT.
Like many tools out there, it’s useful to you if it’s useful to you and you use it often.
November 16th, 2007 at 8:22 am
The thing about FB is, it can be fun. Scrabble games. Little drawings. Stuff like that. Lots of ways to have fun in this world, although I must say i get tired of the teen-targeted ads. Oh look, skimpy clothing for my avatar! It must be mine!
A hi-falutin’ friend of mine wrote an apologetic.
http://koonjblog.wordpress.com/2007/09/21/a-rationale-for-facebook/
“…I am not a victim of facebook. I penetrate the structures of facebook and use it as a cultural resource for my own purpose.
Yep, I’m hopeless.
…”
March 24th, 2008 at 5:28 am
Oh thank god I’m not alone. Only got the damn account to stop relatives who have one from nagging me to get one.
Useless waste of time - was there some problem with email we all missed?
And for that matter the phone still works fine.