Observation #2: Facebook
I am an obsessive Facebook user. I check it every 10 minutes or so. I think that it was Kelly that got me hooked on it. She was talking about how she was on like all the time, how fun it was, and I just didn’t get it. I couldn’t understand how…absorbing it was. I’d made my account a while back in like junior year but never touched it. It was creepeh. I started actively using it in my senior year of high school and that was the end of that. I think that it was the idea of being able to keep in touch with people somewhat after college that was really appealing. You can see what people are up to with the new friends they’ve made and everything… It’s neat. I couldn’t imagine what things would have been like without the Internet. SNAIL MAIL, NO WEIGH. I guess we can’t be friends anymore because you are not 2 clicks away from contact. >_>;
When first started using it, it was the applications that really drew me in. I’d play the little games and stuff. I was playing Elven Blood, Superheroes, and Pokey. I got sick of them once I realized how "friend-invite centric" they are. If you really want to progress in the games, you have to friend random people who don’t necessarily care about you, just the game. I don’t see how conducive that is for the site. Yeah, it’s supposed to bring people together, but the way that all the applications are built around adding and inviting more friends kind of skeeves me out. I'd rather just play a game on an entirely different site rather than be forced to friend people for no reason.
I actually did try the adding random people approach, for a little bit. I was starting to be inundated with the status updates of strangers that I didn’t care about, so I deleted all of them. The desire for doing better in my games still was strong… I adopted a ‘bait and switch’ method. I would add people who were playing the same game as I was from the application’s wall, send them an invite for them to join my group, and then once they had accepted, I would unfriend them. I would still get credit for my games and the updates of the people I was actually friends with would not get lost. Perfect plan. It worked pretty well, I mean the people who I unfriended didn’t notice or care they were no longer friends with me: the only thing we had in common was that particular application. I did get bored with having to add and unfriend people all of the time and eventually stopped playing Might of Many, The Blood Games, and Superheroes (since it changed entirely.)
What scared me about Facebook in the first place was all the invites I was being sent from the people I was friends with. People kept on sending me invites to things that I THOUGHT they were REALLY suggesting for me to use. I now see that it’s just a built-in ploy by the creators of the particular application to get more exposure. What a pain. Bothers me that you have to spam other people with your product rather than let the ones who like it use it. I always do the Skip button ‘cause I know that I don’t NEED to invite people unless I really want them to take a look at the particular application. I don’t think that people realize that you don’t need to invite 5, 10, or 20 friends just to get into the application. Just press the skip button so I don’t get excited over that the “1 New Notification” came up so I could do some weird quiz.
People with 500 friends is shocking. I have close to 140, but I’ve met just about all of them in person, even if we don’t talk much. Just adding people just because is something I’m hesitant to do. Like when I first got to Salem State, people were adding me just cause we happened to be freshmen. I need a better reason than that to add people… I’d never really go down a list adding people just cause we happened to go to the same school. I want to know you first before you add me. But that may be the paranoia bout sharing personal things with other people kicking in once again. Who knows. :/
So, another new version of Facebook. I was just getting used to the older one. This one feels more cluttered. I don’t like it. It’s crowded. I liked the little box on the homepage for applications. And I liked the ‘is.’ But they’re trying to be more like Twitter now. This is gross. I don’t like Twitter. I don’t use it. Facebook was my Twitter. They didn’t need to morph themselves into it. And Facebook having its own Facebook is dumb. I want to punch it in the face.
I am having trouble distinguishing if this latest update bothers me because I dislike change or that it’s actually difficult for me to navigate. I feel that it is a little of both. I do remember that I wasn’t a fan of the second-latest change to Facebook (further referred to as Facebook2). Back then they had the option to try out Facebook2 and you could still go back and use the old one. I know that I was clinging to that older version until the day they did the massive switch to the newer version. I later got used to it and then they dropped this even newer version on me (called Facebook3).
I think that it was the lack of warning that got to me. I wasn't expecting a Facebook3 so early... It seems like we just got Facebook2. What was so wrong that it needed to be changed in such a short period of time. When we went from Facebook1 to Facebook2, there was a period where you knew that they were going to change things. They made it more public. This version they just switched as if it was nothing. It was a little disappointing.
What had bothered me about Facebook2 was that it was more difficult to edit the settings of the many applications that I was using. The tabs for applications on my profile weren’t that great. I liked my mile-long bar filled with Bumper Stickers. I did like that it didn’t take hours to load my Facebook page because of how many Bumper Stickers I had, which was great. Now that Bumper Stickers were not on my main page, my page loaded faster. That was about the only thing I liked about new Facebook.
The Highlights thing is a rip-off. All the time I go through trying to get rid of those stupid Facebook ads through Ad-Block and now they’ve integrated some permanent thing on my right-hand menu bar. BAH. It makes me mad. I hate ads, but I KNOW that they serve a purpose. Still, I hate being inundated with things I don’t care about. I don’t want your stupid product. I don’t want to see that idiotic movie. Leave me alone so I can creep on my friends in peace. I know Facebook needs to make money somehow, but I do not care. It doesn’t relate to me, so it doesn’t matter. It’s a crappy attitude to have, but at least I’m conscious of it. I know for a fact that there are people out there who just think the purpose of ads is only to annoy them, but they’re there for the particular site to get money for putting them up. Ads are a pain, but there’s just no avoiding them. Ads are like mosquitoes: blood-sucking pests that can carry viruses.
I hate ads and companies on Facebook. Those little polls they wormed in-between the status updates of my friends was annoying. I’d never do them. Online polls in general are just dumb, if you ask me. It doesn’t make me feel like my opinion matters just because I plugged it into some program that calculates how many people like or dislike the new Pepsi logo. It just doesn’t matter. Just cause you respond to the poll, it doesn’t mean that Pepsi’s going to change it back. That poll belongs on Pepsi.com. Facebook is for stalking, not product placement.
And then the rational side of me comes in, saying that if Facebook didn’t sell itself out for money from companies that want to place ads on it, I’m probably going to have to start paying to access it. Paying to use Facebook? I could possibly see myself doing it. But if they create some paid service that only takes off all the ads, I don’t need that. With Ad-Block, I already do that for free. Thank you, Firefox. Just the fact that companies are still trying to push into social communities to bother people is disappointing. The Internet is where the people are, so that's what the companies are trying to target. I find myself wishing that they'd go and focus all their ads on TV so I wouldn't have to be bothered by them. I hardly watch TV anymore. I can watch the shows I want online or on Hulu, get bugged by a 30-15 SECOND commercial, and then go back to my show. Much better.
I don't know. I might add more to this later, but that's my opinion as it stands right now. :P
When first started using it, it was the applications that really drew me in. I’d play the little games and stuff. I was playing Elven Blood, Superheroes, and Pokey. I got sick of them once I realized how "friend-invite centric" they are. If you really want to progress in the games, you have to friend random people who don’t necessarily care about you, just the game. I don’t see how conducive that is for the site. Yeah, it’s supposed to bring people together, but the way that all the applications are built around adding and inviting more friends kind of skeeves me out. I'd rather just play a game on an entirely different site rather than be forced to friend people for no reason.
I actually did try the adding random people approach, for a little bit. I was starting to be inundated with the status updates of strangers that I didn’t care about, so I deleted all of them. The desire for doing better in my games still was strong… I adopted a ‘bait and switch’ method. I would add people who were playing the same game as I was from the application’s wall, send them an invite for them to join my group, and then once they had accepted, I would unfriend them. I would still get credit for my games and the updates of the people I was actually friends with would not get lost. Perfect plan. It worked pretty well, I mean the people who I unfriended didn’t notice or care they were no longer friends with me: the only thing we had in common was that particular application. I did get bored with having to add and unfriend people all of the time and eventually stopped playing Might of Many, The Blood Games, and Superheroes (since it changed entirely.)
What scared me about Facebook in the first place was all the invites I was being sent from the people I was friends with. People kept on sending me invites to things that I THOUGHT they were REALLY suggesting for me to use. I now see that it’s just a built-in ploy by the creators of the particular application to get more exposure. What a pain. Bothers me that you have to spam other people with your product rather than let the ones who like it use it. I always do the Skip button ‘cause I know that I don’t NEED to invite people unless I really want them to take a look at the particular application. I don’t think that people realize that you don’t need to invite 5, 10, or 20 friends just to get into the application. Just press the skip button so I don’t get excited over that the “1 New Notification” came up so I could do some weird quiz.
People with 500 friends is shocking. I have close to 140, but I’ve met just about all of them in person, even if we don’t talk much. Just adding people just because is something I’m hesitant to do. Like when I first got to Salem State, people were adding me just cause we happened to be freshmen. I need a better reason than that to add people… I’d never really go down a list adding people just cause we happened to go to the same school. I want to know you first before you add me. But that may be the paranoia bout sharing personal things with other people kicking in once again. Who knows. :/
So, another new version of Facebook. I was just getting used to the older one. This one feels more cluttered. I don’t like it. It’s crowded. I liked the little box on the homepage for applications. And I liked the ‘is.’ But they’re trying to be more like Twitter now. This is gross. I don’t like Twitter. I don’t use it. Facebook was my Twitter. They didn’t need to morph themselves into it. And Facebook having its own Facebook is dumb. I want to punch it in the face.
I am having trouble distinguishing if this latest update bothers me because I dislike change or that it’s actually difficult for me to navigate. I feel that it is a little of both. I do remember that I wasn’t a fan of the second-latest change to Facebook (further referred to as Facebook2). Back then they had the option to try out Facebook2 and you could still go back and use the old one. I know that I was clinging to that older version until the day they did the massive switch to the newer version. I later got used to it and then they dropped this even newer version on me (called Facebook3).
I think that it was the lack of warning that got to me. I wasn't expecting a Facebook3 so early... It seems like we just got Facebook2. What was so wrong that it needed to be changed in such a short period of time. When we went from Facebook1 to Facebook2, there was a period where you knew that they were going to change things. They made it more public. This version they just switched as if it was nothing. It was a little disappointing.
What had bothered me about Facebook2 was that it was more difficult to edit the settings of the many applications that I was using. The tabs for applications on my profile weren’t that great. I liked my mile-long bar filled with Bumper Stickers. I did like that it didn’t take hours to load my Facebook page because of how many Bumper Stickers I had, which was great. Now that Bumper Stickers were not on my main page, my page loaded faster. That was about the only thing I liked about new Facebook.
The Highlights thing is a rip-off. All the time I go through trying to get rid of those stupid Facebook ads through Ad-Block and now they’ve integrated some permanent thing on my right-hand menu bar. BAH. It makes me mad. I hate ads, but I KNOW that they serve a purpose. Still, I hate being inundated with things I don’t care about. I don’t want your stupid product. I don’t want to see that idiotic movie. Leave me alone so I can creep on my friends in peace. I know Facebook needs to make money somehow, but I do not care. It doesn’t relate to me, so it doesn’t matter. It’s a crappy attitude to have, but at least I’m conscious of it. I know for a fact that there are people out there who just think the purpose of ads is only to annoy them, but they’re there for the particular site to get money for putting them up. Ads are a pain, but there’s just no avoiding them. Ads are like mosquitoes: blood-sucking pests that can carry viruses.
I hate ads and companies on Facebook. Those little polls they wormed in-between the status updates of my friends was annoying. I’d never do them. Online polls in general are just dumb, if you ask me. It doesn’t make me feel like my opinion matters just because I plugged it into some program that calculates how many people like or dislike the new Pepsi logo. It just doesn’t matter. Just cause you respond to the poll, it doesn’t mean that Pepsi’s going to change it back. That poll belongs on Pepsi.com. Facebook is for stalking, not product placement.
And then the rational side of me comes in, saying that if Facebook didn’t sell itself out for money from companies that want to place ads on it, I’m probably going to have to start paying to access it. Paying to use Facebook? I could possibly see myself doing it. But if they create some paid service that only takes off all the ads, I don’t need that. With Ad-Block, I already do that for free. Thank you, Firefox. Just the fact that companies are still trying to push into social communities to bother people is disappointing. The Internet is where the people are, so that's what the companies are trying to target. I find myself wishing that they'd go and focus all their ads on TV so I wouldn't have to be bothered by them. I hardly watch TV anymore. I can watch the shows I want online or on Hulu, get bugged by a 30-15 SECOND commercial, and then go back to my show. Much better.
I don't know. I might add more to this later, but that's my opinion as it stands right now. :P