Comments | lifeofmendel: after a few weeks of facebook.

lifeofmendel

after a few weeks of facebook.

Sep 10, 2007 23:48

so now that i've established my facebook and poked around the site a little more, there's a lot in my brain about it. i think i've decided that there's much more negative about the site than positive, particularly when it comes to the... conceptual paradigm of the site, what it's trying to accomplish.

we'll start with ( the positives first, though. )

friends, relationships, facebook, people, internet, cultural oddities, my lj, babbling, random encounters

Comments 13

girfan September 11 2007, 08:18:36 UTC

I don't see the point of Facebook and you have outlined some of the reasons. If I joined, I might get contacted by former co-workers and friends, but only if they knew my married name-and 99% of them wouldn't. Most of my friends use LJ and a few who are musicians have a MySpace so I don't see a pressing need to use Facebook for anything.

lifeofmendel September 11 2007, 08:25:57 UTC

the only reason i joined in the first place was because one of my friends works as an internal graphic designer there. once i got it, i started to see that the pros make it fairly worthwhile (for me) so long as i keep in mind that it should only be used as a conduit. i refuse to touch myspace with a ten foot pole, so for networking outside of LJ, facebook is the best alternative.

sleeplessone September 11 2007, 08:31:22 UTC

True, I've also found that playing with the news feed preferences keeps the "So and So added the SillyApp" messages to a minimum as most of those fall under "Profile Edits" and I raised Pictures and Notes because I'm more interested in those :)

lifeofmendel September 11 2007, 08:38:49 UTC

hmmm... i never thought about that. maybe when i get a chance i'll muck about those settings.

then again, my friends list is small enough now that it doesn't add too much clultter, and the one thing it gives me is enough exposure to what other people add and do to their profiles just to get a better feel of what's out there and what's possible. maybe when my list grows to above 100 or something and i get more famililar with apps, it will have more relevance.

Thread 5

sleeplessone September 11 2007, 09:53:29 UTC

Accept Friends is done through the Home page if I rememember correctly.

mamaslyth September 11 2007, 11:34:04 UTC

You can also add your LJ as a feed to your notes. And a careful selection of apps can give your page more depth if you want. Like most things in life, a lot depends on how much you put into it - like the heritage one. It could have left it as just a few flags showing my ancestry, but then I took advantage of the "heritage fact" part and gave some of my family history that included what several of my ancestors did for a living, which is really interesting to see their influence in my fields of study.

There are applications to ask your friends questions and collect their input. You can share booklists, which at least with a lot of my friends is far from a shallow activity. There are like three different platforms for that. You can also share links with the "my link" app ( ... )

lifeofmendel September 11 2007, 16:28:58 UTC

fair enough, i suppose, but finding that level of depth in the context of fb to me feels more difficult than it should be. Like, if i'm driving to work and it typically means i go from point A to point B to point C in a fairly straightforward manner that takes ten minutes. But i also have the option of driving to work by going from point A to point D to point F to point H to point Q then to point C. This may be more scenic or have some other stops along the way, but it's not practical to do that a lot of the time even though it's *possible*. fb feels kind of like that. i'm sure i'll find a way to make it work for me, to resist the temptation or the forces that give it the superficial feeling it emits, but time will tell whether or not the work that's needed to put into that is worthwhile in comparison to just keeping what i know is meaningful for me here on lj.

taren_ September 11 2007, 15:57:19 UTC

http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News&sid=2370

lifeofmendel September 11 2007, 16:44:38 UTC

nice. i don't agree with all of it, but overall this hits the nail on the head.

pearllessoyster September 11 2007, 23:36:23 UTC

yeah, there should be an option on the right-hand side of the home page where you can manage all of your requests. i think the reason why i prefer facebook the most over myspace or livejournal is the ease with which you can search for and network people, like the "mutual friends" feature and such.