I've admitted that I'm getting old. It's true — 4 days and counting, and I'll have crossed the threshold into (I'm feeling queasy, just trying to type it ... ) middle age. And maybe that's why I just don't get facebook.
I totally see the value proposition of LinkedIn — professional networking, that's cool. And recently, I even started posting my own photos on Flickr, not just linking to and viewing my friends' pictures. And, of course, I'm blogging. But facebook ...
When Manya first invited me to be her friend on facebook, I admitted, "Okay — I signed up, but I don't get facebook. It's like a yearbook ... but what am I supposed to *do* with it? I'm embarrassed to ask Andrew, since he's got, like, 300 friends. Is it a way to keep in touch with people as they move around? Like an address book that updates itself?" She replied with some version of "yes", and I felt okay about it.
But recently, colleagues (you know who you are) have been "poke"ing me, and you know, my profiles says I'm married so, I assume that it's like elbowing a person. And then Manya and Andrew "wrote on my wall". Oh god. What wall? I look at what my other friends have written on their walls, and I wonder ... how well do I really know them?
So I suppose that one use case is that I can find people that I've been out of touch with for years, and even people in bands that I like, but whom I don't know. But there is facebook, asking if I want to send this person a message or if I want to poke him ...
I must be getting old, because that just does not sound appropriate.
To a large extent, Facebook reinvents the wheel. last.fm, del.icio.us, and Twitter do most of what I need in the social space.
The main thing I find annoying is the number of applications on Facebook now; it was explained to me as 'myspace without all the visual noise' but now I get 'jimmy has bitten you and turned you into a zombie' type nonsense every day or two. Why would I install a third-party webapp to find out what Harry Potter character someone is? Why can't they just post it and have done?
None of this matters, of course. Facebook has the userbase - its where all my friends use, so its where I have to contact them :(
Posted by Dick Davies on September 17, 2007 at 07:04 PM EDT #
You know, I sometimes feel like I live under a rock. I had no idea that there were so many other people who didn't see the value of facebook -- just Google "I don't get facebook" and you get a reported 23 million hits. Presumably, not all of them are good hits, but you get the impression that we are not alone in our diappoitment.
I guess the only consolation I can give you, is that facebook is bound to be replaced by something else eventually. Hopefully, something better.
Posted by Jen McGinn on September 17, 2007 at 07:14 PM EDT #