that facebook thing

5 Nov

I know this is an old and tired subject, but it has been on my mind all day, and I am participating in NaBloPoMo so I don’t have time to talk myself out of writing it.

Today I posted a note on my Facebook profile stating that while WordPress, Tumblr, and Twitter would be automatically updating my wall, I would not be present. Thus I began my Facebook vacation.

I don’t hate Facebook, but I dislike the false knowledge I glean from it, the pretense of knowing who my contacts are by reading arbitrary updates, photos, and links they post. I also wonder about the reverse: which assumptions are my contacts making about me from my blurbs?

Eventually I will return, but not without reconsidering Facebook’s importance in my life, and severely limiting the time I spend with it.

Has Facebook changed your life?

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  • Has FB changed my life? Not really. It's just another way for me to interact with people I already know. I mostly use it to play Scrabble with a couple of distant friends. I do note that I have a policy of only "friending" people whose lives I actually, you know, care about. It did connect me to a handful of people I'd lost touch with long ago, but would I call that life-changing? Nah.
  • When I come back to Facebook, I'm totally inviting you to a game of Scrabble! :)
  • Oh, it's ON.
  • mish
    Facebook is an odd combination of royal-pain-in-the-assery and great fun, imo. I really do think that the number of "friends" one adds will either make it or break it for the user.

    Curious... what made you decide to keep pushing your other feeds to Faceboook even though you won't be reading/interacting there?
  • I don't think the number of contacts changes the experience for me; I think that my perspective on it is broken.

    I want to interact with people, and Facebook can be a good vehicle for that interaction. Yet in 98% of the interactions, I am left feeling more alone than ever, unsure whether or not I have presented myself accurately -- which is always a concern online -- and whether or not I have "read" my contacts accurately.

    This perspective comes from wanting to feel closer to someone after an interaction, and instead I feel more isolated.

    To answer your question, it was a decision made of laziness. I don't feel like spending the time to dismantle everything if I am going to return eventually with a healthier attitude about it.
  • well said.

    I have been using FB for various ends and I find it sucks. Pardon the language but it does. it's really NOT a way to organize organically and for the grassroots, it's a race for "fans" that is meaningless (ask Gavin) and constantly changes in ways that are not benefitting grassroots efforts.

    I get way more out of the Twtitter back and forth between good people such as yourself and others, and being informed by what's going down "on the ground" when I can't be there myself.

    Facebook is too busy bolting on the world's biggest picture sharing service onto a proprietary social networking service that has NEVER made money (thank YOU Karl Long!) and lying to its users, well, all I can say is you escaped!
  • Thanks for weighing in, Greg! I agree with much of what you are saying here, though I hadn't previously put much thought into Facebook as a grassroots organizational tool.

    I think it can be handy for certain small businesses that want to keep in touch with their customer base, but so far as organizing groups -- I haven't had much luck with it. I created a page for the San Francisco Flickr User Group (SFlickr) and no one really uses it, perhaps because it duplicates the functionality of so many other websites (Twitter, SFlickr.org, Flickr groups). Yet people may be starting to expect Facebook pages (like we started to expect Twitter accounts) so I will keep it up as a signpost for now.
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