Do we need Facebook in ER?

Lsbcal

Lsbcal

Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Joined
May 28, 2006
Messages
8,809
Location
west coast, hi there!
I read recently that email is becoming the old technology. Then in a discussion with a friend about Facebook he mentioned that email was maybe going out of style.

I've resisted the Facebook trend but sometimes wonder if I'm missing the picture here. Don't want to hear from old high school friends or people who cannot be bothered to call me. Although I admit to mostly getting email regarding upcoming get togethers.

Watched our son the other day bring up his Facebook page to show us his college friends having the usual party times. While he was on it he got an instant message stream from a friend coming home for the holidays. It was all like text messaging with very little content -- but maybe a bit lacking in content because he told his friend that his parents were watching the computer screen with him :greetings10:.

I worked in Silicon Valley for many years and feel a little manipulated by those smart people ... you know, gotta have technology and applications. Sort of have a love/hate relationship with technology.

Is this a bad attitude? What's so great about Facebook? What capabilities does it have beyond broadcasting to an audience you choose.

Oh no, am I becoming a tech dinosaur?
 
I like FB. I use it to keep up with family and friends, see photos, etc. I get too much mail on it so I just kind of skim what's recent. It can overload me pretty easily. I also have become addicted to Frontierville (a FB game - some of my relatives and quasi-relatives developed that one...)

I have contacted a bunch of people I had lost touch with when I moved, via facebook. And it's been fun to do that.

I have a similar love/hate with technology - I do NOT need or want to pay for a phone that gets email or the internet. I acknowledge that some people do (esp. if they travel a lot). I have a cheap cell phone plan.

Luddites of the world unite! But I do like facebook.
 
I'm not particularly fond of facebook, but it does help me stay in touch with my kids, and up to date with what they are doing. Context: both DS and DD are in university, away from home.

R
 
Facebook is great for finding out if somebody died or got married. Other than that it's a great way to keep people with nothing going on in their lives busy looking like they are involved. Oo oo, somebody sent me a heart. Oo oo, somebody ate lunch somewhere. GMAB.

Email won't die unless it's replaced by some other way to say something meaningful that takes more than two pseudo sentences.

PS - Please notice this comment took 5 pseudo sentences. :D
 
Yes, you are a tech dinosaur, REW.
See, could have done that with a text much easier.

FB is worth having, but it offers what you put into it. I filter my newsfeed vigorously, block all application, and turn down most invitations. That leaves me just to tinker with my friend lists and decide who gets to see my most interesting pictures.

What I like is that the privacy is extremely customizable, so I can write something on my wall and decide who can see it, or post some pictures and dictate who can see them, comment on them, etc. The privacy controls are quite good, if you use them.
 
It took me a long time to join FB. The reason I would have a hard time leaving now is that there are a lot of people on my "friends" list who qualify as acquaintances rather than friends. I have no other way of getting in touch with those people if I ever need too.

At the same time, if I were not able to contact these folk it wouldn't exactly end my world either.

On balance it's useful, but I'd get over it if FB were to disappear.
 
Sarah in SC said:
Yes, you are a tech dinosaur, REW.
See, could have done that with a text much easier.

FB is worth having, but it offers what you put into it. I filter my newsfeed vigorously, block all application, and turn down most invitations. That leaves me just to tinker with my friend lists and decide who gets to see my most interesting pictures.

What I like is that the privacy is extremely customizable, so I can write something on my wall and decide who can see it, or post some pictures and dictate who can see them, comment on them, etc. The privacy controls are quite good, if you use them.
Click to expand...
+1. Use these things if you see something of value. Understand and manage the privacy implications or stay away.
 
Sarah in SC said:
What I like is that the privacy is extremely customizable, so I can write something on my wall and decide who can see it, or post some pictures and dictate who can see them, comment on them, etc. The privacy controls are quite good, if you use them.
Click to expand...

Customizable is good but reliability is suspect.

I'll admit it's difficult for an old dinosaur to trust my privacy to a company run by a pimple-faced kid. Whenever I see Zuckerberg I have the urge to shout "Hey! Get off my lawn!"
 
No FB yet for me. Yes, I know it can be a useful tool, but I am an introvert, and spend way too much time here on this forum already.
 
REWahoo said:
Customizable is good but reliability is suspect.

I'll admit it's difficult for an old dinosaur to trust my privacy to a company run by a pimple-faced kid. Whenever I see Zuckerberg I have the urge to shout "Hey! Get off my lawn!"
Click to expand...

Scratch that dinosaur comment...you are actually already in fact a fully-formed fossil, embedded in some tar pit out there in Texas. :flowers:
 
i'm on Facebook but spend little time there. I just use it to see what is going on with friends, I don't actually put anything personal on there.

However, what peeves me are friends who don't have time to reply to emails or anything more meaningful because they are too busy updating their status or posting about how they have achieved some badge in some game.

Personally I feel as if Facebook gives people an excuse to give up on real life interacting. There are so many people who put every single burp or fart they do on their facebook page. It seems to be more important to have 400 facebook friends rather than a couple of real life friends who you can actually have a real conversation with.
 
FB is what myspace wishes it had become. Email is dead, that was "cool" about 10 years ago.........now I wear out my delete button on a daily basis getting rid of spam. I am much more likely to return a message on FB from a friend than that same friend through "regular" email.........
 
I have used Facebook, and it is handy, but I get tired of the inanity of the interchanges on there. It's like 400,000 "Nice weather, Huh?" Or "How about them Seahawks?"

The other thing is I think it is full of privacy pitfalls. I plan to take my presence down in 2011, as soon as I figure out how. Which brings up something else. I have important, often pleasurable things to do. And for study time, or self-improvement, technology is not even in the queue.

Other than phone and face to face, I use texting, some email, and for people on this board, IM. And I sure am not going to do much or perhaps anything on Twitter. A wonderful way to ruin our minds.

Texting, as well as Facebook, is many things, but one thing it is not is a way to truly interact with people. My sister took up texting pretty much exclusively in preference to phonecalls, and IMO an important reason is so she can let her social phobia flower unmolested by actual human contact.

Ha
 
REWahoo said:
Customizable is good but reliability is suspect.

I'll admit it's difficult for an old dinosaur to trust my privacy to a company run by a pimple-faced kid. Whenever I see Zuckerberg I have the urge to shout "Hey! Get off my lawn!"
Click to expand...

This is exactly why you need facebook.

Then you could update your status with the message "Hey Zuckerberg, GTFO my lawn!!!!1 Lol" and you could instantly inform hundreds of your closest barely known associates, former classmates and former colleagues of your deepest feelings.
 
I joined FB only to get deals and discounts, this is a bit spotty depending on the company and their offers. As for using it all the time, you have to be weary of the friends that use it that post pics of their daily lunch meals, post what songs they're listening to and people playing online games. When you get 40 daily posts about song selection and online game playing, this is really annoying. At least there's an option to hide/delete all these posts.

It helpful to find old friend/school mates you haven't talked to from years ago.
 
I like facebook. It is a useful communication tool for me and enhances and streamlines my social life.

At times people or applications on there can be annoying. You can block these annoyances (like our ignore list here).

I can keep in touch with interesting people I have met previously if I want to maintain that relationship. And it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to maintain that relationship at a much higher level versus simply communicating by the occasional phone call or email (that occur less and less frequently).

I have reconnected with a few friends from high school, college, and grad school through facebook. Some have transformed from casual acquaintance back in the day to a good friend today (the kind you meet up with and talk to in real life). Others have gone from "friend of a friend I met at a party/gathering/wedding" to a person I can go to for specific types of knowledge and recommendations (and that I value as a friend or at least something more than a casual acquaintance). Think about all the cool people you meet somewhere that you would like to have a conversation with later. Add em as a friend on facebook. Six months down the road you find out you can't stand this person? Delete. :)

It is just another tool to help manage your social network. A pretty good tool in my opinion. I can spend a couple hours a week keeping up with my closest 200-300 friends.

As with any network, however, the success of the network depends on how many nodes there are. If your circle of acquaintances don't do facebook, then it may be a minimally useful tool. For those under 30, it is fairly ubiquitous. Much over that threshold and it seems like there is less interest.
 
Major Tom said:
I agree with much of what you say Fuego, but this sentence did make me chuckle just a bit. :LOL:
Click to expand...

I clearly said it a little tongue in cheek. :D

I actually only have 177 friends on facebook. Going through the whole list (quickly), I would classify 38 as "close friends" or close family. Or 21% of my total friend list. The remainder are to varying degrees people I want to keep in touch with. So I guess 139 people are people that I would probably do a very poor job of keeping in touch with absent facebook, but I value their (limited) friendship enough to not defriend them (or never have friended them in the first place). And I enjoy seeing updates on their lives and photos from their journeys through life.
 
FUEGO said:
I clearly said it a little tongue in cheek. :D
Click to expand...

I realized that about 2 seconds after I posted.:blush:


Though I could quite happily live without FB, like you, I do quite like seeing updates from those in my "outer circle".
 
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