Goodbye Facebook(theaboutness.com) |
Goodbye Facebook(theaboutness.com) |
If you get enough value out of Facebook, it is worth the risk, otherwise it is quickly discarded.
FB lost because VK was specifically targeted at Russian audience from the beginning.
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.
How's that not a spoiler?
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.
Equally, people confuse being insecure and attention-seeking with being sociable or worse, popular.
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).
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.
i haven't yet figured out the right words, but there's something important i'm trying to communicate. feedback welcome.
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.
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 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.
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.
I think connecting to someone used to mean something different, although I am not sure what it was.
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.
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.
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.
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'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 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.
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.
Nice article!
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.
Tear down those garden walls Mr. Zuckerberg!!
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.There are quite a few of us doing just that. Here's my contribution:
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?
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.
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!!
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.
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'm not a Facebook fan, but I don't know that is does worse than most technology at being humane.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
Sure I'd jump ship if another platform provided more value, but that's (somewhat) different then a fad.
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).
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.
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.
Maybe I'm just a terrible person.
> Leaving a "happy birthday" used to mean you
> actually remember the date
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
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.
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.
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.
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!~"?
So did you really tell anyone?
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.