Please help an old fogey understand this Facebook phenomenon.
A friend of mine just sent me an invitation to Facebook. Since she’s a good friend and recently moved to another state where I’m thinking that she might feel lonely, I joined too instead of telling her I don’t do those social networking sites. (I put up updates about myself or my family on my personal webpage.)
Now that I’ve joined and created a profile listing my interests, I’m puzzled as to what I do with my Facebook profile. I see that I can add photos. But it doesn’t look like people use it as an online diary à la Livejournal. I picked out a couple of people I know using their networking features (from my church, from a non-profit group I am very active with). But now what?
I’ve added a few comments to my friend’s wall but I don’t think she expects me to post some of my drivel every day.
There’s a Poke feature but from reading about that it seems pointless.
My friends have sent me stuff but everytime I get something it seems like it’s an invitation to install more software on my Facebook page (virtual cupcakes? Superwall?)
The profiles are the content. The value to you is the number of people that you can stay connected to–perhaps not more strongly than having them show up in your list of friends, but that’s still a connection.
Facebook itself is most valuable to the college/high-school crowd, where it seems to be a pretty big deal. Other networking sites (e.g., LinkedIn) might be of more obvious value to you.
It mostly seems pretty useless for me too. However, at least there is Scrabulous (Wiki), which is basically Scrabble, and which can be enjoyed at least until Hasbro shuts it down. Your friends will need to have the app installed as well so you can play with them. Great fun for all.
I joined Facebook because a lot of people where I work joined it – I work in a place where people like to at least observe the latest trends. However, the main thing I use it for is to play Scrabulous (a version of Scrabble) with my daughter on the other side of the world.
I post pictures and videos on my page. I also never accept application invites (I hate them). I think their’s actually an option to ‘Never accept any of this type of invitation’ now, so you can really cut down on invites once you click on that.
I also leave birthday and congratulatory messages on other people’s pages.
And, I’ll admit, I use it to check on people I didn’t like or was jealous of so I can feel better that my life is more fantastic then theirs, and/or they gained weight/got ugly. There, I said it. That’s what Facebook is REALLY for.
I don’t do much. The games seem pretty pointless, and most of the features are just time sinks. The groups never seem to have anything happy. I give some basic biographical information, but really am not that impressed.
The purpose of my Facebook profile is to present a well-rounded personality for graduate school and job interview purposes. They do look that stuff up. I keep it clean and positive.
Yes, usually. They usually post pictures from their weekend or latest vacation. Most of the people I do that with are people from highschool. For example, I haven’t seen so-and-so in 10 years and she was a real bitch to me in highschool and one of the popular girls, so I feel better when I see her profile and she’s divorced with a passel of brats. Kind of like, Ha HA! See where being popular and a bitch got you? Nothing!
So I check out these people’s pictures and move on.
I do, however, have a number of current friends and coworkers in my network that I leave messages for regularly - regularly being once every couple of weeks.
Also, I update my status about once every few days, so I do go on quite often.
As others have said, I mainly play games with people I know on there. Scrabulous and Scramble. Beyond that, it seems fairly pointless to me, too, although I admit that I’ve run across a few more old friends there than I have on MySpace.
Well, I’m still in college, so people will sometimes start groups just to send out mass emails about their party or trip or whatever and invite me to join them. Surprise party for your roomie who’s friends with me? Great! Organize a spring break trip to the mountains and want me to come? Thanks for the invite, but I’m busy. Letting our LOST watching group know you’ve got a paper and can’t host this week? Glad I didn’t show up with pizza and beer and get the door slammed in my face.
Plus I can take embarrassing pictures of my friends and threaten them (when they sober up) to put them on Facebook. Ahhh, the simple joys in life.
For the most part I use it to keep track of friends on the other coast and to shoot quick “wall posts” to classmates so I don’t clog their e-mail box.
I don’t take the profile seriously. I actually attempt to see how absurd I can make it. I think I list my interests as “Busting phat moves on subway cars for pocket change” and favorite movies as “Any Rob Schneider vehicle”
[QUOTE=Arnold Winkelried]
Totally understandable. But how do you know? Do those people regularly update their profiles with the latest happenings in their personal life?
[QUOTE]
The infamous “newsfeed”. When it was first introduced, everyone hated it. It basically told you every time someone updated their profile about ANYTHING. Problem was, if you have hundreds of friends, there were TONS of updates. Now, though, you can set preferences so that you only see when a friend, say, updates their relationship status. Think of it as a communication tool. If you don’t want/need to communicate with friends, then it’s useless to you. But…
When my friend was redeployed to Iraq on short notice, guess how I found out? Facebook.
When he updates everyone to what he’s doing over there…Facebook.
When I needed to rent out a room in my house? Facebook.
When my grade school organized a reunion, how did we find everyone? Facebook.
When I’m having a party and want everyone to know? Facebook
When Ashley broke up with her boyfriend and I wanted her, how did I learn of it? Facebook.
So you see how it can be useful? Don’t let the apps get you down. If you don’t like them, just ignore them. Some are cool (did you know I’m the ranked 8th “best potential husband” out of all my friends, but like 45th hotness?), some are cool to others (I’m not making an NCAA bracket), and some are lame (No, I WON’T play zombie with you so quit asking!). Take your pick.
We lost track of each other many years ago. Then sometime ago someone started a group for us and began inviting the few people they still had contact with. Those then knew of others and now we are quite a few. People uploaded the pictures they had from the time and we’re currently trying to organize a gathering. Without some central place to gather and keep track, that would have been a very hard task. I guess the only reason it happened on facebook was because the guy who started the group was using it.
