It’s because you’re too old. No offense, but I just barely caught the cusp of being to old to have it, and I’m 26. Any older and it would have been a bit after my time; any younger and everybody’s pages would be full of useless apps.
On Facebook, I can’t tell what’s publically posted, or what’s a private message, and I can’t figure out why it announces every little thing I do:
"At 7:50am on 7/21 Happy updated his Favorite Movies to include ‘Dark Knight.’ "
“At 7:54am on 7/21 Happy updated his profile.”
“At 7:58am on 7/21 Happy took a shit.”
Why do people need to know all this?!? And what are apps? What am I supposed to do with them? Where do they come from???
I liked it better with MySpace when the only thing I had to worry about was my hard drive melting when trying to load someone’s ridculously complex page complete with 8 songs playing simultaneously, a glittering background, “snow” falling across the page, a flashing mouse arrow, 50 8x10 photos of Jenna Jameson and A-Rod, and 10 auto-play videos of Dane Cook doing standup. At least there I knew what was going on.
Yikes, just come out and say it why don’t you? I think this is the first time anyone has called me “old” before, and I’m not even over the first ageing hurdle!
Sorry, but that’s bull. I’m much older then either of you and I use it everyday. It’s just that some people don’t find much use in online social networking, and other do.
You can change what is or isn’t shown in your minifeed, and also stop it from putting the times of everything.
Who claimed they need to know it?
Click on where it says ‘edit’ beside ‘applications’!
As I’ve already said, it’s become the main way I communicate with family and friends, many of whom are older than me (and you). At least three-quarters of my primary school class are on there.
I am an idiot.
There is a group which i got invited to, of people that went to my old high school.
I was just now trawling it looking for a few girls I used to fancy.
Then I realized that if they got married (pretty much a given) then their last names will be different. DOH!
I think there was an ‘emma’. There was definitely a ‘beverly’ (the first girl I ever liked, I liked her in infant school, primary school, and high school. I worshiped her)
Shhhhh! That’s one of those things we don’t tell anybody about! 
Further to what I just said…
On the list is a ‘Tammy’ The picture shows the typical gamourous attractive girl who could be a model or porn star.
I do remember a girl by the name of ‘Tammy’ In fact the memories are mixed. Fondness and regrett are the two biggest aspects of the memory.
I met Tammy in primary school. Her best friend was a girl called Tamara. My best friend was called Mark. The circumstances of this are odd: We liked to chase these girls as frogs. They would be frogs too. By that I mean we wouldn’t run, we would adopt a frog stance and hop after them. So would they. We did this quite a lot so we got quite good at it. Me and Mark were two years above T and T. The time doing this was pure fun and there was absolutely no bad times. I liked Tammy the most. It was Tammy whom I would chase. Mark would chase Tamara.
Eventually we left primary school for high school. Being two years older we left T and T behind.
Then two years later Tammy Joined the same High school as me. (If memory serves, both M and the other T went to a different high school). I bumped into her in a corridor. If it’s possible, her looks had improved. She was innnnnncredible. Being a hormonal teenager by that time I was a nervous wreck. I had about one word to say to her and we never spoke again ever.
I so regret that… she even seemed hurt by my coldness, and seemed to want to relight the old magic. This makes the regret worse.
The Tammy on Facebook is unlikely to be the Tammy I knew, but you never know.
‘You never know’? That’s the great thing about the way Facebook works. Try adding her as a friend. The various outcomes might be:
(a) She accepts the friend request. You then realise it’s somebody you don’t know who accepted you anyway, and you’re free to delete her from your friends.
(b) She accepts the friend request. It’s the right Tammy. You have a bit of a conversation, maybe catch up on things and have a laugh about how horrible everything was in high school, maybe just a courteous hello.
© It’s the right Tammy, and she decides you were so weird that she won’t accept the request. (Rare.)
(d) It’s the wrong Tammy, and she declines the request.
I did. right after I posted.
I like Facebook. I play Scrabulous on it–a lot. I can keep an eye on my teens (but I never intrude or embarrass them), but mostly I keep up with long distance friends.
I find some of it to be quite self-absorbed, but what the hell. No one has knocked on my door asking me to do a film or similar, so I figure Facebook is my one place I can “show off”.
I keep my stuff private for the most part–I only have 27 “friends” all of whom I have met in RL. I’m 46, btw. There is no one too old for FB–but anyone over about age 22 is too old for MySpace. Just MHO, of course.
Okay, let me rephrase that. College and work life have very different social structures. In college (well, at least at mine, feel free to chime in if yours was different), there were fairly distinct circles of people. Some of them overlapped, of course, but if there was a party at somebody’s house, you could always be sure of, say, a dozen people that you knew would be there, and a dozen people that would probably be there. My point is that there was sort of a facebook hysteria when it came out, whereas MySpace kind of grew exponentially. But with facebook, when it first started, it felt like it was made for us. All my friends from school were on it, and just a sprinkling of my friends from high school who had gone to college. Of course there are people older than me who are going to use facebook, but that’s not my point. Honestly, Telemark and GorillaMan, what percentage of your friends use facebook as often as you do? My numbers have gone down*, but it was at 95% when I finished my undergrad. If I wanted to invite 20 friends to my place, I only had to call one on the phone. It was a powerful tool for me as a college kid, and its usefulness declined sharply when they opened it up to everybody.
*To be fair, they’ve gone up again since they opened the system, but they’re not near where they were. Literally 95% of my classmates had it. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was the only one of my coworkers that uses it.
Prove it to yourself, do a search of people in your region 18-24, and then do a search of people over 30.
I have 150+ friends on facebook, probably 3/4 are over 30. Keep in mind, I work in high tech and most people are know are very comfortable with this type of software. Probably 30-40 folks visit the site daily, the majority are there once a week.
I don’t think I’m stating my point right, but I think I’m getting there. When you say you work in high tech, to me that means that a lot of your friends and colleagues are going to be on facebook. That, to me, seems equivalent to what I’m trying to say; college kids have a lot of friends on facebook. Both subcultures basically demand being at a computer for several hours at a time, so they’re more likely to be on facebook than somebody who doesn’t fit that subculture.
If I were you I’d just put the shovel down, the hole is deep enough already. 
I think you answer your own question in a round-about way…I’d say that the usage is smaller but growing among older people. (Defining ‘older’, I finished my masters in 2002, Facebook was launched in 2004.) Certainly the number of my ‘real friends’ who use it frequently is still increasing. Also the international element is significant, perhaps, in that it’s comparitively fresh to us, and also that there’s bound to be social and cultural differences that make one or another site more or less suitable, e.g. regarding how rigid or blurred to make the boundaries between work and social lives. (Plus, FWIW, high school kids here typically use Bebo for social interaction among one another, with Facebook being a secondary tool, yet for those at university the latter is ubiquitous. Either this demonstrates a difference in the suitability of the sites for people in particular situations, or just that they’ve managed to capture different markets.)
Facebook was launched two years after I finished my Masters degree!
And? What happened?
If you need any help deciphering her response, I’m right here. Waiting.
Impatiently.
And to those who were wondering, yes, there is an etiquette. Trust us college kids to make our virtual interactions just as awkward, nerve-wracking and prone to miscommunication as real-life stuff.
I’m in my 60s, and I’m on Facebook, though I don’t use it much. I have 43 “friends” there, who include 3 of my children, only one of whom is active (she’s a high-school teacher, and is the most social of my children). Other friends include work colleagues, and people that I’ve met through Flickr.
I actually started a group there, called Newcastle Boys High School, for the high school that I went to a long time ago, and it now has 10 members, but isn’t very active. However, since the school went out of existence 1n 1976 (in a re-organisation of high schools in the region), all the member of that group must be aged least in the mid 40s.
Facebook? Pah. All the really cool folks are on MySpace.
Keep telling yourself that.