I tried Facebook a couple times back in the day, but it just didn’t do it for me. Now apparently there’s all kinds of annoying crap on it. I like myspace myself. I just use it to find and keep in touch with people I probably wouldn’t talk to otherwise.
Leaffan, perhaps you could try myspace, and if you like it better, you could let your friends on facebook know where to find you there. I think it’s a lot simpler. Many people have some silly stuff on there, but you can also use it as just a sort of public profile with an email attached.
I prefer Myspace to Facebook, actually. I don’t like the way Facebook is set up, and I have a harder time finding things than I do on Myspace. Those third-party apps are annoying as hell, and I don’t want to be updated everytime someone posts a comment on a friend’s profile. I only go on to respond to exactly one friend’s emails.
I’m 27.
Facebook is as good or as crap as the people in your social circle.
I love it for events, photos, and link-sharing - and am frequently annoyed by the junk forwards and requests to install pointless apps that come from co-workers and family members.
I’ve never had any of the problems described in this re: Applications. I’ve probably received less than 10 invites from my friends for an application. And none of my friends overload their page with the myspace-style ones.
We use it to keep tabs on one another (in the good way) and to organize events. IMHO, nothing is better for organizing a party than a private facebook event.
Agreed. I’m 35 and there are very few people from my high school or college on Facebook from the years when I attended. It would not be possible for me to have a hundred friends from every single class I’ve ever taken. Most of my “friends” are my 25 year old coworkers (my company has a Facebook network). I did manage to find a few classmates though, including my junior year roommate who we all thought was dead and flamingly gay. Apparently he’s married (to a woman) and works up in New Hampshire.
It does seem a lot classier than MySpace. Probably because it doesn’t (or didn’t) allow you to make all these ghetto webpage designs and you have to connect through a school or work network. Pretty much assures that everyone at least has a college degree or a job.
Also, I feel a little weird about connecting to high school or college people I haven’t seen in like 10-15 years or more. The person I knew was some teenager. I don’t know who this 30-something with the wife/husband and kids out in the suburbs.
Benefits that are apparently hidden to many of you:
You can completely ignore everything you want to, by disabling all e-mail notifications except the ones you want, and by blocking application requests, and by ignoring the Requests and Notifications sections. You can even disable any of the functions (wall, photos, etc) and have a very minimalist page.
Nobody will ever know if you unfriend them or ignore their requests for anything so don’t feel you have to stay on in order to preserve anyone’s feelings.
The main things it does better than anyone else (all of which of course depend on having a critical mass of friends):
Lets you keep track of people even if you don’t have their current e-mail address/phone number at hand (this happens a lot to me these days)
Planning events and inviting people and remembering to go to things you’ve been invited to - I love the calendar feature
Sharing photos and tagging folks in them - maybe I don’t get out much but I haven’t seen one better than this
Sharing links - I don’t have a blog or website so when I find something cool, now instead of e-mailing it to fifteen of my friends (who may or may not be interested), I can share it on my FB page and then the interested ones can self-select.
I wouldn’t join a site that was just for event organizing or just for photo sharing (and none of my friends are on de.licio.us for sharing bookmarks), but the fact that I can do all of these things in one place is quite convenient.
I have also had a couple of delightful moments of reconnecting with people I knew in high school. I never thought of them as “friends” because I was so insecure in high school I thought everyone hated me. Now I have discovered that not only was this not the case, but that most of the people in my high school felt the very same way. (One girl even apologized for being a bitch to me back then, but I couldn’t remember her ever being a bitch to me, which made her feel better when I told her that …) This was a series of warm fuzzy revelations that I’m glad I had and would never have had without Facebook.
But in this, even more than most other issues, YMMV.
They will, but they won’t get a notice that you’ve unfriended them or anything. But in my experience, except for maybe five close and active friends, I wouldn’t notice at all if someone’s profile disappeared. If I tried searching for them and couldn’t find them I’d just assume they weren’t on Facebook any more, and send them an e-mail. No harm, no foul.
(You can also set it so your profile doesn’t turn up in any searches, so if you want you can make it appear as if you had deleted your profile.)
I like Facebook. If you don’t like the apps, don’t sign up for them–I only have a few. I like playing Scrabble on it, and it’s a good way to stay in touch with my grad school friends (except for the one who refuses to use FB because it won’t allow pics of nursing mothers–words fail for me re this issue).
It’s just a tool; not a statement of your ethics/character/“coolness factor”.
My kid was showing me her Facebook account over break. I was (momentarily) intrigued at the way you could leapfrog from friend to friend. I was quickly amazed at the amount of info so many people are happy to post in a manner that will be accessible to so many.
Not for me.
The alternative, I guess, is set up an account like my wife and kids did for an organization they belong to, where they have the security ramped up so high and the friends list so limited that it barely resembles a facebook site.
I like Facebook - and I’m 43, so I guess I’m a bit of a dinosaur too. I cull my apps pretty regularly and have disabled most of the Feeds so I don’t bother others on my list. Any app which requires me to add friends is not even installed.
I have connected with half a dozen friends from my past who I lost touch with and I never would have seen again, and I’ve made friends in other countries and cities. That’s the part I love the most. That makes it worth it.
Since switching from MySpace to Facebook, I no longer receive six friend requests a day from webcam hoes claiming to be local girls who want to meet me.
OP - Once more. I get stuff from people all the time. Not a tonne, but almost daily, and I never reciprocate. a) 'Cause I wouldn’t know how, and b) 'Cause I don’t give a shit.
The same people with whom I’ve connected now have my email address. Why not just drop me an email? No, no, they instead post something to my message board or my “Fun Wall,” or my “Super Fun Wall,” or my “Really Extremely Neato-Fantastic-Never-Been-Anything-Like-It-Super-Fun-Wall-O-Rama-Ding-Dong.”
at 49 years of age, and a new job that takes up my time, I have no interest in Facebook. I can see using the interenet to look for interest-related sites but the amount of time spent feeding Facebook is time lost interacting directly with people.
I did just get done watching a Frontline piece about kids and the internet and I feel sad for the generations that are growing up now. It’s not that I don’t like technology, I love it, but I’ve always been conscious of how addictive it can be. As an adult it’s easier to walk away from it.
It’s a double edged sword. On the one hand it allows you to connect and stay connected with more people than you could otherwise. On the other hand, it’s easy to make a lot of superficial connections that you have no real meaningful relationship with.
When I was growing up, we didn’t have shit to do in my home town. If you weren’t old enough to drive, basically your only options were to hang out at a nearby friends house or talk on the (non-celular) phone.