Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Facebook Addiction

MadDoc

MadDoc

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 25, 2005
329
5
UK
I'm free.

Yes my friends, I have broken my addiction to Facebook :eek:

In case you've been living under a rock for the last few months, Facebook is (yet another) social networking utility (like MySpace) where you create a profile of yourself, upload pictures, etc. Unlike MySpace, it provides you with a news feed that lets you know what all of your friends are up to all of the time without you having to bother to check their proiles all the time.

I used to check Facebook 10 times per day (easily). Over the last 2 weeks howevever, I only really check it once per day (mainly to see if anyone has posted any photos).

Why the sudden change? I'm a doctor and we all change jobs about 2 weeks ago. This means I know longer see everyday a huge number of friends in real life that are also on Facebook. Why it might seem that you would be more likely to use the tool if you ran the risk of losing contact I'm finding that a lot of the fun was chatting to friends about postings I had made on their walls or making funny status updates that we would then laugh about in the mess.

I'll keep using Facebook to keep up to date with friends as I am moving to Australia from the UK in a few weeks but the appeal has waned. If this can happen to me it could happen to any of the users. Makes you wonder whether Mark Zuckerberg should have taken that $1 billion from Yahoo - afterall, this could be just a fad :)

Just my two cents of course
 
I'm on that myspace, hooked on it. I put it off as long as possible telling everyone how sad it was... I've been sucked into it.

I keep getting messages from people I don't know wanting to be my friend.

I don't think I'm quite ready for facebook yet tho!
 
I was on MySpace for a while but realized it was pointless when I looked at my friends list, and followed their friends list, etc (if you've used these sites, you know what I mean...) and realized that most of the users seemed to be between the ages of 12-18. Among my own friends who were on MySpace, I was the oldest, sometimes by a wide margin.

Facebook is better -- I've reconnected with friends who I went to elementary and high school with.

I was at lunch with a friend of mine the other day telling her about Facebook. She came into the conversation swearing that social networking sites were a waste of time and she would never get an account. Well, by that evening I noticed she had made an account... and her friends list was already 2 pages long with people she knows from all over the country. It's just that engaging!
 
notjustjay said:
I was on MySpace for a while but realized it was pointless when I looked at my friends list, and followed their friends list, etc (if you've used these sites, you know what I mean...) and realized that most of the users seemed to be between the ages of 12-18. Among my own friends who were on MySpace, I was the oldest, sometimes by a wide margin.

Facebook is better -- I've reconnected with friends who I went to elementary and high school with.

I was at lunch with a friend of mine the other day telling her about Facebook. She came into the conversation swearing that social networking sites were a waste of time and she would never get an account. Well, by that evening I noticed she had made an account... and her friends list was already 2 pages long with people she knows from all over the country. It's just that engaging!
Click to expand...

in the words of Uncle Junior "we are living in interesting times"
 
Ive tried a few of the social networking sites and I think the reason I preferred Facebook over MySpace was the fact that (by default) only people in your network or that you approve can see your profile. I agree with tomoisyourgod in that I used to get tons of random people I had never heard trying to be my friend (I imagine it's shocking if you're a good looking girl for instance).

Although, Facebook is not without its annoyances. For instance, I keep getting requests from old school aquaintances who now want to be my friend despite throwing compasses at me during art class!

My addiction at the moment is twitter (here's my feed).
 
Sesshi said:
I don't get it. But that's because I'm a wrinkly. It seems like everyone under 30 I meet is on Facebook. What's wrong with picking up the phone?
Click to expand...

Picking up the phone implies intent. There's a reason I choose to call you. Either I want something, or there's an implied level of pre-existing comfort and friendship. Even if I call a long-lost friend to say hi, that's a "stronger" kind of saying hi than if I were to bump into them on the street and say hi.

Facebook is the equivalent of calling up people and saying "Hey, what are you up to today?" This level of casual connection would never work if everyone was phoning each other, you'd spend all day on the phone having 10-second conversations with everyone. It creates a level of communication that's more casual than phoning. I'd put it on par with IM, but there's also a backend database that cross-references everything with everyone (photos, groups, birthdays, events, etc).

Actually it's kind of the reverse. Rather than inquiring how your friends are doing, they broadcast that information to their network of friends. "Hey everyone, today I'm ____!" At a glance you know what all your friends are up to. That just doesn't work by phone.

I guess it depends on what kind relationship you desire from people. Some people like knowing roomfuls of friends, feel right at home in a big party with lots of people, and are always on the phone anyway. I'm the kind of guy that has relatively few friends, but those friends I do have are strong, meaningful relationships. I don't really feel comfortable phoning with "hey, how are ya" if you're not on that list. Facebook kinda provides a happy medium where I can keep up on what my friends (casual friends) are up to and they know what I'm doing.
 
So much for ditching one addiction. I wish you hadn't told me about Jaiku. That caused me to look it up in Wikipedia which eventually lead me to an article about Pownce.

Now I want a Pownce invite. I only just managed to integrate twitter on my blog and now I can see myself falling for one of these other sites.

Dammit (to quote Jack Bauer).
 
notjustjay said:
Picking up the phone implies intent. There's a reason I choose to call you. Either I want something, or there's an implied level of pre-existing comfort and friendship. Even if I call a long-lost friend to say hi, that's a "stronger" kind of saying hi than if I were to bump into them on the street and say hi.

Facebook is the equivalent of calling up people and saying "Hey, what are you up to today?" This level of casual connection would never work if everyone was phoning each other, you'd spend all day on the phone having 10-second conversations with everyone. It creates a level of communication that's more casual than phoning. I'd put it on par with IM, but there's also a backend database that cross-references everything with everyone (photos, groups, birthdays, events, etc).

Actually it's kind of the reverse. Rather than inquiring how your friends are doing, they broadcast that information to their network of friends. "Hey everyone, today I'm ____!" At a glance you know what all your friends are up to. That just doesn't work by phone.

I guess it depends on what kind relationship you desire from people. Some people like knowing roomfuls of friends, feel right at home in a big party with lots of people, and are always on the phone anyway. I'm the kind of guy that has relatively few friends, but those friends I do have are strong, meaningful relationships. I don't really feel comfortable phoning with "hey, how are ya" if you're not on that list. Facebook kinda provides a happy medium where I can keep up on what my friends (casual friends) are up to and they know what I'm doing.
Click to expand...

Well put!

I'm waiting to sign up for Facebook but I have to put my school e-mail address in, which conveniently isn't currently working.

Edit: Freaky coincidence. I tried logging into the e-mail after I wrote this message and it worked. :eek:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back