Is Facebook this decade’s pet rock or is it cutting edge?
Is the entire world on Facebook? Yes, I’m pretty sure it is.
As usual I’m late to the game. I have an account and it all started because I wanted to play Scrabble with Pantrypuff.
Hey Puff! Remember those first couple of games when you spanked my ass to Thursday and back again? She’s really, really good. And I fear I posed no challenge to her whatsoever. And then I stopped trying to play against her.
But she is a kind and gracious blogger and she never mocked me. Thanks! So that’s how I got in there. I don’t really spend a lot of time on the site but it has its perks. Facebook is
like
the City
of Atlantis: you
need approval
to get in
but once you’re in
the riches are there to behold.
It also looks like you can import email addresses to find folks. That’s how some of ya’ll have found me. I haven’t used that feature yet so I’m not sure if your profile photo shows up or not when the email address finds a match. Yep, I just tried it and there’s my ponytail.
So it appears if one wants to go deep undercover, one should eliminate one’s gravatar or at least post a different pic.
I’m a lurker over there. I’ve looked up some folks from high school just to see if they have a photo. I’m not interested in knowing them again, but I am interested in knowing if they’re bald or chunky. Some of them are and that makes me feel that some amount of justice has been served.
Thank you karma; I appreciate that.
So beyond satisfying my curiosity I don’t really use Facebook. But the world seems to communicate that way. Does anyone email anymore? And if you’re writing on someone’s wall isn’t it open for the rest of your friends to see? I think if you want to write something private you have to send something via the inbox, right?
If you’re going to send something to an inbox, why not just email the person? Am I being obstinate and 20th century about this? I do get that you can share photos and family info with your select inner circle, but is that all it is with a few time-sucking games thrown in?
I think that’s it, right? I don’t know, it just seems like a bunch of hype but I’m trying to run with the big dogs. I think I’m being trampled, but I’m trying. How do you use Facebook?
What if you became someone’s friend, but it’s just not working out. How do you politely break up? Do you just ignore that person’s thread? Do you actually block that person and if so, isn’t that a slap in the face? And in reverse, what if someone wants to be your friend but you’re just not that into him or her?
What about those suggestions of friends? That seems so desperate to me. So I know John Doe and John Doe knows Cheryl Smith. Facebook wants me to approach Cheryl Smith. But maybe John has a crazy S&M side and that’s how he knows Cheryl. I’m not trying to be judgmental, but I don’t think Cheryl and I would have much in common.
Do you accept those friends? And isn’t this just one big high school clique all over again? I’ve seen people who have over 200 friends. Do you know all of those people? Do you communicate with all of those people? Is your wall overrun with their daily musings?
Now what about all of those extra applications it wants you to agree to? For instance Angelika sent me some interesting questions via a thing called Friends Exposed. But when I clicked on it, it wanted permission to run it. If it’s part of Facebook, shouldn’t it already have permission?
The question that sucked me in — even though I have not accepted the program since I’m afraid it will jack up my computer — was: “What is the longest Cardiogirl has probably gone without taking a shower?”
Angelika is so cute; she guessed two days. She’s a kind friend.
But back to the app and giving it permission. What if I join it and decide I’m not into it? Can I unjoin it?
I’ve also seen the live chat option. That’s fun. So I see two pros about Facebook. You can share photos and news without having to attach a huge photo to the email and you can chat live. Is that what this is all about? Oh! The third pro is that you can look up your mortal enemies to see if they’ve been ravaged by time. (What? I told you up front that this post was petty.)
The cons seem to be it sucks up time and it if it alerts me, via email, that I have a message that’s two steps to see what the message is. Does this thing replace email?
Lastly, I made the mistake a couple weeks ago of clicking on a game advertised in the right-hand column. That thing jacked up my computer.
It ran one of those programs that looked like the Windows anti-virus program. And then it asked me if I wanted to fix the Trojan Horse jumping over the moat. Like a fool I clicked the button marked YES! Save me! And I was not saved.
So tell me — why is this a good idea?
Tags: Things that intrigue me
i actually like FB for some reason, though i have not spent the time there that i used to. it’s a semi-private place for me to hide and write and chat – without people who “know” me being judgmental and all.
i do not accept invitations or anything i have to click on. if it has to pull information, no STANK you! i also don’t friend anyone, if we have friends in common, i might, but it depends on who those friends are. i like to keep my circle small.
it’s a time suck, as is the web period. i do love the web though. it’s so much fun.
So you don’t allow family in? It does freak me out when it asks about pulling my information. I wish it would do it without getting down in my details.
I love Facebook. I spend ages playing games on there that I wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Plus it’s nice to be able to hassle people. :D
I don’t have any personal info on there, not even my real name. Facebook could work out where I work, but I don’t have that listed, or my address, or my DOB. And my privacy controls are set pretty high.
Think of it as “email: extended”.
I wish I had come up with a different handle over there. I did try Cardiogirl in different ways but those bastards blocked me every time. Of course it never occurred to me to go with smith or jones. Grr.
I do like the idea of email: extended.
I do not like Facebook. Not at all. I joined because of all of the pressure to do so, but I just find it insipid. I do not want to know that Mary is “going to bed” now or that Bill “is tired”. I’m more of the blogging crowd–where we use paragraphs to tell our feelings and actions.
Facebook scares me when it tells me I should be friends with my friend’s daughter’s boyfriend. That or my daughter’s friends brother in the 4th grade. That’s just plain weird.
I lurk a bit to catch up on folks, but that’s about it for me. And oh yeah–I like to check out folks’ photos too. ;)
When there are posts like that it feels like Twitter only with unlimited characters. It does seem like some people over there use it like a mini-blog, but I agree I prefer this one for chit chat.
Um, yuck on the youngins.
You know, that’s not a good representation, just for the record. I’ll email you.
If you are not into building a huge friend list, be friends with only people you actually know, then it is great thing. I have got to know a long list of nephews, nieces, cousins, second cousins and friends spread all over the world whom I had lost touch with. I get to know what is happening in their lives.
I am able to wish them on their birthdays and anniversaries, see photos of their vacations and kids, comment on their photos, thoughts (status), and what have you. Otherwise how would it be possible to keep in touch with my niece in New Zealand, cousin in USA, aunt in London and friend in Mumbai. And when you meet them, there is no great barrier because you have a fair idea of what is going on in their lives.
Plus there is a lot of commerce happening on Facebook. I ran into this jewellery designer who was having her exhibition on Facebook. An eatery which specializes in Burmese food and home delivers too. I am a part of a Human Rights Campaign which runs on Facebook. Etc, etc, etc.
It is just a tool. It depends on you what you want to do with it.
I guess it is like anything else in that you can customize and use it the way you want to. It seems like the explanations over there (which I can’t really find) are sparse. I’m not sure how to privatize certain stuff for certain folks and find events, etc.
I suppose if I were more diligent I’d figure it out.
There’s a privacy section in your Account tab. I know. I have a psycho stalker ex. Still. Ugh. That reminds me, I need to go check and make sure he hasn’t made any new auxiliary profiles.
I think I’ve figured that piece out. My main goal is to block my name from showing up on a random search from someone who is not approved.
I think I’ve accomplished that.
Funny you post this, I was just about to run a post today about how high school seems to never end, and Facebook helps perpetuate that problem.
I have to share an anecdote about un-friending people. I had this friend from like first grade, and back in high school we always said we’d be each others’ maids of honor when we got married. Well, in college, she went through a really rough patch, attempting suicide and stuff on multiple occasions, and I did my best to stay friends and help her but it turned into one of those relationships where she was so self-destructive that it was taking its toll on me, so we kind of lost touch.
Then, when I got engaged, she suddenly started calling me again, but after a year she still couldn’t remember my husband’s name (just kept calling him “that boy you’re marrying”) and I hadn’t seen her since the week I got engaged, so I decided not to invite her — it just wasn’t a path I wanted to go down.
A few days before the wedding, I got a text message saying “Hey aren’t you getting married soon?” And I responded with “Yep, this weekend, can’t believe it!” After a few months I noticed I hadn’t seen her updates on my Facebook feed, so I did a search and discovered she’d unfriended me, and I know that that was her revenge for not being invited to my wedding (I later got confirmation on this from a mutual friend).
So at least people don’t get notices when you unfriend them, so often they won’t notice. (Or they will, and you’ll get another friend request from them saying “So weird, I thought we were already friends on here!” So weird! We were, and I unfriended you because I haven’t talked to you since fourth grade!)
Oh man, that’s nice. I love your response: “Yep, this weekend, can’t believe it!”
That’s interesting that you do not get a notice when someone dumps you. I guess FB has a heart, eh?
I ended up with a couple of hundred of friends but that’s because you meet some people in the bar and then they fb you and you end up with tons of friends you don’t know. I love fb, I’ve been on it since it was only for college kids. And it was more about just joining stupid groups and tagging drunk pictures of each other.
On that note, I unfriend people all the time. And ignore people and hide them on my feed because I hate people talking about Jesus blessing them with a great Christmas tree.
It’s not the same fb it used to be. All those apps really annoyed me and then my inlaws sucked me into Farmville. Facebook is all about having your filters in place.
That’s so crazy, Liz! Now, instead of trading phone numbers people whip out their Blackberry and add you to FB? Oy, I feel like a dinosaur.
I need to check into those filters.
Actually, when I was in college, most of us still had normal phones but you’d find the friend request the next day.
All about the filters.
Facebook was alive and well when you were in college? I thought FB was only a year or two old and you’ve been out of college for three years.
Well, I’ve been out for two years, I was on the five year plan. But yes, I remember using FB at my first apartment and I moved out of there in 2005. Back then you had to have a college email address to join. i.e. mine ended in @uga.edu.
I’m not a junkie, but I enjoy FB. The whole e-mailing thing is easier there, so I don’t have to hunt down a long-lost address. I do not accept casual friends (i.e. ones I can’t remember or never liked!), and if the friends I do have get too chatty and start sending me drinks and crap, I drop them. I find it nice knowing what all my relatives and long-distance friends are up to. And I think the best blessing, for me, is reconnecting with friends from high school who I liked and missed. We all scattered and went our separate ways, but now want to be friends again. Four of us actually just got together this October, for the first time in 25 years, and went on a cruise together. It was better than therapy. We all knew each other’s skeletons and stupid teenager screw-ups, and loved each other anyway.
I hadn’t thought about the email address thing, although Outlook lets me type in part of the name as well and pops up with a suggestion.
I’ll have to remember not to send you a drink request :)
That’s cool that you were able to reconnect after scattering. I just found a good college friend yesterday and I’m looking forward to talking more with her.
You start accepting those apps & suddenly you realize that the ads on other random sites are using pictures from your Facebook account.
True story.
I usually have over 100 “requests” at any given time. I delete them several dozen at a time. How annoying that crap is.
You know what is great? Finding out that guy you KNEW was gay in high school is a drag queen now. A pretty decent-looking one at that. That is great.
A lady I hadn’t seen in eight years let Facebook pull her hotmail account and she friended me. We found out that during the time we had fallen out of touch, we had moved within three miles of each other. THAT was really great.
Otherwise I rarely check anything on there. Yawn.
Yikes. It uses your photos?! That is not cool at all.
That would be awesome finding that high school dude years later — I guess he’s workin’ it, eh?
And how fun is that finding out your friend lived just down the road! I wish I had a good friend just down the road.
The EXACT same thing happened to me. He looks awesome as a drag queen too. Of the boys I went to school with most weren’t a surprise to me when I saw they were gay, but this guy was a total shock.
Man I wish I could find someone from school like that. Did you look up the name and see a profile pic that was glammed up?
He added me as a friend and his picture is him in drag. It really took a pair because we grew up in a seriously conservative town and he’s out there for the world to see. You can tell it’s him if you knew him then, but it’s really quite amazing, but drag queens crack me up.
I’m going to pull an Oprah and recommend, “The Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil?”
I love FB. But like all sites, you have to practice safe computing. FB has a nifty part of the settings – go in there, and you can set your privacy levels as you want. As in, my mother and various other family members can’t see certain parts of my profile, a creepy actor friend can’t see my pictures, people whom I find morally repugnant are blocked completely, and so on and so forth.
Applications are different. You have to give them permission because they are frequently third-party businesses and so on. (Quizzes are frequently the 13 year old down the street.) So, pick and choose what you want. If you no longer want it, go to applications, edit, and delete them!
I wouldn’t say it has replaced email, but I do communicate more quickly and with certain people almost exclusively through facebook. Plus there’s the whole “events” notification system. This works a heck of a lot better than spamming people with email about my shows – I just set up an event, invite them, and then they can find all the information on a website and not their email.
The messaging/inbox system can be useful, but it is buggy, so watch out.
I admit, I am a time-wasting game addict. But that’s because my schedule is so strange… when I’m in a show, I barely have time for facebook… when I’m sitting around answering phones as a temp… or sitting at home with nothing to do… I play facebook games.
I love facebook. Perhaps a bit too much.
But yes, play with caution. :D
I’m still not positive about the events thing, but I don’t have any friends who actually pull of events so that might be the reason why.
Don’t you worry about getting busted at work for using FB? Or do you bring your own laptop? Um, I haven’t been out in the workforce for nine years now.
…Work? Only at temp jobs that allow it. You forget I’m an actress, CG. I don’t have a regular job. Some temp jobs allow facebook, some don’t. If they do… and I’m just sitting around answering phones – I’m on it!
As for pulling photos and all that – you can lock that down, too. Also in settings and privacy. Facebook has to allow you to lock stuff down, and they do.
I’m surprised that some jobs do allow it. But it would take care of just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. I’ve done that gig and it was bo-ring.
I’m going to have to email you to get into the nitty gritty of available lock down options.
Can you block people…yes. Do they know you blocked them? Yes. Anastasia’s homophobic brother blocked her and her lesbian niece awhile back. No one knows why, other than he claimed that the niece was dropping to many F-bombs in her posts. Neither Anastasia nor I noticed that. In any case, he has now unblocked Anastasia. I’m not sure about the niece.
I’m hooked on the games. Farm Town and Mafia Wars. I can’t stand the constant game update posts and I wish there were a way to filter those out. I don’t care of Thelma Lou just reached level 27 in Happy Aquarium.
I also like to lurk and see the photos.
You used to be able to hide update posts from certain applications yet still be able to get non-application related updates from your friends. Being a Mafia Wars Addict myself..lol I gave instructions to my friends on how to hide my MW updates so it didn’t overwhelm their walls. Since the recent FB “improvements” I’m not sure if you are still able to hide applications.
@Lola That sucks about Anastasia’s brother. Damn, you’d think your brother would be kind. I’m not sure I’d want to be friends with him again after he dumped me.
I’ve seen that Farmville thing, but am not sure what it is besides something that will take away more time.
@Buf I think I need to get a primer from you on how all this stuff works.
“The third pro is that you can look up your mortal enemies to see if they’ve been ravaged by time.”
That pretty much sums up my reason for joining.
YES! A woman after my own heart.
Hey I wanted to comment on “noise” over at your pad but you closed the comments. It was probably Thanksgiving and you didn’t have time to reply. Damn holidays.
I love the idea of edible noise from a can. Sweet!
I like FB but it is a major time suck…lol While I have over 800 friends, only about 50 of them are real friends, the rest are mafia members. The key is limited profiles! I have different groups set up and only grant access to specific areas and sub-areas to certain groups. For example my MW friends only can see my posts and very basic info, family and friends can see most everything although certain photo albums are limited to even smaller subgroups.
I really do have to get with you on the filters. That sounds like a pretty solid feature.
Do the people who are filtered out know they’re being blocked?
I sort of like facebook. I don’t play the games. I don’t actually do much on it. It has allowed me to re-connect to some high school and college friends, and even a few of my coaches.
I love reading my high school coach’s updates. He posts about how the team is doing. Both my high school and college Alumni meets are planned using facebook. You can create events and such. Some of my closest friends from the old school days have settled down in other parts of the country, so facebook has been nice.
It can be a little disconcerting at first. There are lots of privacy settings. That whole suggesting friend thing, I think comes out of privacy settings.
For example, my hubby recently joined but couldn’t find his cousin, but I was already friends with his cousin. So I sent a friend suggestion to said cousin. It turns out his cousin’s privacy settings prevents people from searching for him by name.
Now that’s a nice feature I didn’t know about! I love the idea of not allowing it to search by my name.
That’s cool that you can read your coach’s log. I guess it’s like a mini-blog, eh?
Here’s my FB data, for anyone who gives a whoopitty-doo:
I have more than 400 friends. I’ve only allowed three or four friendships with high school people, so most of these people are those I know from my adult life. Yes, I acknowledge that’s a lot of people. I’m very social and am an actor (ie, NEEDY), which drives up the volume.
I do NOT become connected to friends-of-friends whom I don’t know. (There are probably about 15-ish people that I don’t know well, but have as friends for a variety of reasons, including the 2 men mentioned below.)
My biggest celeb friends are Billy Mumy from “Lost in Space” and Nick Gilder who sang “Hot Child in the City.”
I have a couple very young friends (tweens) which makes me uncomfortable and makes me wish I could hide my feed from them. Not that I say much online that isn’t past a PG, but, you know — the occasional late-Saturday night drinky update..
I block ALL applications except for Farmville and Scrabble.
I happily block any friend’s feed if they’re posting too much (I’ll lift the restrictions after a while). I work at a computer all day with dozens of projects going on, so I leave FB up in a window and check it throughout the day in a quick and timely manner. I don’t keep track of all updates all the time.. more like watching the river flow.
I hate the fact that people don’t email me anymore, and use FB.
I love it overall, though. I always say it’s the greatest, low-effort way to keep tabs and keep connected with my tribe at large.
You think I’m done? Oh, no, there’s a LOT more wordiness about the social networking scene on my bloggie: http://beckyhaycox.com/hamblog/?p=1251
Hee! B
400 friends?! Damn woman, you are a social butterfly. I also enjoy the fact that you’re not afraid to block a feed, but you give a chance for redemption later.
I also enjoy the primer over at your pad. Thanks for doing the legwork for me, Becky!
p.s. I couldn’t comment over there, but I love the image of being a “free ‘n’ easy hippie running through the woods.” And I am now paranoid that they’re going to steal my stuff since I have my feed from here over there. Do I need to stop that for safety’s sake?
If your blog is imported through a feed to FB, then the content doesn’t live on their servers, so it’s not their content. If I post a link to one of my blog entries on FB, I ask people to comment on the blog and not on FB. And, if I post pictures on FB, I cross-post them on flickr. I love FB but I don’t TRUST FB. :)
(wipes sweat off her brow) That’s a relief.
You’re such a fun, free spirit that I always, *always* forget that you are a tech-savvy computer guru. I like how my worlds collide within you.
I’m addicted to the games. Cafe World, Farmville & Fishville. I actually had to make some new “friends” to progress.
But if I wanted to talk to someone privately, I’d send an e-mail.
I’m just happy that I’m once again having almost daily contact with my BFF & my nieces are on there so I can talk to them too. :-)
There are a lot of things you don’t have to do if you don’t want to. Like invite friends to take a quiz that you’ve taken. I usually click “continue to result” because I figure if they wanted to take the quiz, they would have already.
I have become more…involved with some internet friends I know from other places too. People I don’t normally talk to as much @ the other places.
It’s making me a social butterfly!
Gotta go, my pancakes are ready @ Cafe World. ;-p
I wish I could try these games and then get rid of them if I don’t like them. I also get freaked out by the request to pull information to allow me to play.
Save a pancake for me, will ya?
Facebook is great – once in a while. I am curious about how people are doing (and aging!). I’m friends with people I have never met, most of them bloggers, but I feel like I know them…
The apps annoy me to no end, so I don’t accept any of those invitations anymore.
My wife and I have gone through a couple friend blocking incidents. A ‘close’ friend of hers flipped out on us, for non facebook related reasons, and enacted a vicious backstabbing against both of us…
Sure enough, she also blocked Nicole on FB but stayed friends with me, then tried to use me to keep tabs on my wife. Then members of her family we had nothing to do with kept trying to be my wife’s friend, also to keep tabs on us.
Now we have blocked them all. And my privacy settings on FB are set higher.
Wow, a 21st Century freak out via technology. That’s somethin’ else. So far I haven’t experienced anything like that.
I didn’t bother to read their Terms & Conditions and Member Agreement. But I’m assuming that they don’t guarantee against loss of data. So don’t rely on them to store your photos for you. It’s also possible that anything you upload to Facebook becomes their property.
Importing e-mail addresses? That’s what started the episode of my daughter’s brief stint on Facebook:
http://square–peg.blogspot.com/2009/09/are-they-nucking-futs.html
My prediction is that Facebook will have more dead folks than living. I wrote about that before here:
http://square–peg.blogspot.com/search?q=myspace
I don’t like the import email feature, either. I do a one-at-a-time thing because I don’t want everyone in my address book knocking on my door.
Man the dead folks on FB sounds like a story line on Law & Order just waiting to happen.