You Kids And Your Facebooks

[rae_beta]

I am something of an internet recluse; I have (mostly neglected) accounts on a number of fora, blog (sporadically) in a few places, and occasionally write for online publications, but I avoid social networking like the nasty social disease (HAH! PUN!) I'm pretty sure it is

Comments

[tartysuz]

I say go for it, with provisios. Facebook isn't nearly the timesuck I feared it to be, because I won't let it, and it is a great way to arrange real life meet-ups.

For years, I avoided Facebook for most of the reasons you listed,but when Gilbert died, I realized the best way to reach his many contacts (most of whom I know in real life), was to join.

I put a minimum of personal information there. If you want to use the account mainly for professional reasons, you can just limit your information to what you would share with professional contacts. You can also choose between putting your profile on public view, or have it friends-locked, as on LJ. I don't think you can create further filters, but perhaps a more experienced FB user can advise us on that.

To minimize time suckage, I only friend people I actually know. I've had some friends requests from people who know people I know, and I just sent them a polite message explaining this.

Some friends are gabby. You can actually "turn down the volume" on them so that you only get their news when there's no other news. There's a new option with friend requests that allows you to friend them without letting their messages pop up on your wall. That way you can read their news only when you feel like looking up their profile.

Requests to join groups or to take quizzes are potential timetraps. You can either not taking the bait or exercise the option to block the app, so that when you refuse to accept the zombie app the first time, you won't get any other prompts to use the zombie app.

I would also caution you against replying in public to anyone's posts. Not that it's dangerous, but FB will send you a notice every time someone else comments. You can send a message to the original poster directly, but note that this all goes onto FB's server forever, so don't say anything you wouldn't say in public. Or you could just resist the urge to quip.

You can have FB notices sent to a unique email address that you check whenever you're in the mood, or you can have messages sent to an account that you check frequently. The latter isn't a bad thing, because most of the notifications repeat the content that's on FB, so you don't actually have to log into FB itself.

Oh, you should be aware that when you log in, everyone can see that you're logged in. So don't do it when you don't want people to know you're around!

[tartysuz]

Another reason to avoid apps on Facebook:

Facebook shares its users' personal information with developers who create games and quizzes in a way that breaches Canadian privacy law, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has found.