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Why Facebook?

njmac

njmac

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 6, 2004
1,757
2
I know I'm about to show my age here :) ( I have never sent an IM, maybe that will give you a clue ;) ) I don't have a facebook account because I don't really understand why I would want one. What good is it?

When I was in High School, my classmates would always say to each other "keep in touch". Now, no one except close friends really kept in touch because what's the point? Do you really care about the person you had a few semesters of English with? If you see them walking down the street you would say hi, what's up? kind of thing.

But now on facebook you basically have everyone you ever meet and you get updates on them? Is this the way it works? If so, is it overwhelming?

One more example, when my kids were in preschool and they made a lot of friends and of course we say to each other... "let's keep in touch and get the kids together, blah blah blah." Well, truth is, we never do unless our kids are really actual friends and not just school mates. When I see someone at the playground randomly, the kids have a blast and to tell you the truth if I had to actually keep in touch with everyone it would take up all my time.



Or am I completely missing the point?
 
Before facebook allowed all comers it was a good way of contacting friends who were in class, leaving them a message for later.

Now it's just like myspace. I use it to invite people out who I'm not on phone terms with and they're never on IM.
 
facebook is complete **** now. it was so much better when it was just open to college students. we used it to keep in touch with old friends from HS when we went off to college. now in the past few months they added that anyone can join and al these ****ing apps and its just **** now
 
Yeah, for me, it's just a great way of staying in touch with people I know I could never stay in touch with (i.e. calling them up), mostly because we weren't THAT good of friends, but a friendly message/post seeing what's up, how's life, etc. is much more comfortable and effective.

Even if you don't want to talk with them, you can at least see what they're up to, where they're living, working, what they look like now, as opposed to 5 years ago :), etc. by viewing their profile once you are "Friends" with them.
 
Veritas&Equitas said:
Yeah, for me, it's just a great way of staying in touch with people I know I could never stay in touch with (i.e. calling them up), mostly because we weren't THAT good of friends, but a friendly message/post seeing what's up, how's life, etc. is much more comfortable and effective.

Even if you don't want to talk with them, you can at least see what they're up to, where they're living, working, what they look like now, as opposed to 5 years ago :), etc. by viewing their profile once you are "Friends" with them.
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That does make sense, but just from what I read on the internet people check their facebook everyday? It seems useful if you checked your facebook every few months when you wanted to see what's up. But then I guess you'd miss people trying to get in touch with you.

I didn't know Facebook use to be for College students only, maybe that's why I've never used it :)
 
Oh, I definitely go on every day, probably 3-4x a day, and that's on the low end of people on I know. It's really addictive.

Yeah, it was started a few years ago by Mark Zuckerberg when he was at Harvard strictly for college students. They then opened it up to high schoolers, then the public. Zuckerberg dropped out to run Facebook full time in CA. Think it worked out for him though...reportedly just turned down a $1.3 billion offer for it from Yahoo last month.
 
Imagine all of your friends keep a short blog (just a sentence or two about what they're up to). And Facebook is like an RSS feed of all of them.

It's also an aggregation of people's photos, so you can see what your old friends now look like or see photo albums posted by your friend who took all those pictures at the camping trip last weekend. Or, more "useful", the pictures taken by the friend of your friend, who you wouldn't otherwise have thought to talk to. You can tag yourself or your friends in photos, and cross-reference them. It's interesting to see, for example, how many people have photos including me in them.

It's also a useful alternative to email for casual messaging, especially when you want them to be public (posting on their wall is like commenting on a blog site or forum).

Some people make events out of parties, outings, etc. and it's a semi-formal way to keep track of those, as well as people's birthdays.

The apps are just silly. People throwing sheep and playing games and adding all kinds of icons -- no. I don't regard Facebook as my site for personal entertainment, just a bulletin board for keeping track of my friends.

It's also a great way to stalk someone, so be careful what you share online.
 
ethernet76 said:
Before facebook allowed all comers it was a good way of contacting friends who were in class, leaving them a message for later.

Now it's just like myspace. I use it to invite people out who I'm not on phone terms with and they're never on IM.
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Yeah. I used to like Facebook because it was what I considered to be "Myspace for adults." Now it's becoming the same playground filled with silly applications, groups and forums that Myspace is. Oh well. I still use it but I wish it could have just stayed how it was.
 
All of these sites, and each type of online communication, have their advantages and disadvantages, but they all serve the same basic purpose, as meeting places and communities. The MacRumors forums provide that too. Although our primary purpose here is disccusion of Apple-related topics, some members use this site to keep in touch with their friends, including friends they made here.

There are specialized websites for finding former schoolmates, making business connections, sites focused on certain agegroups, and sites like MacRumors based on common interests. Once you pick one or more online homes, it's the electronic equivalent of hanging out on the street corner in your neighborhood, to see who's around and to trade news and stories.

I've reconnected with some high school classmates, some by finding them in person, but mainly online. For the most part, if they aren't online, I don't keep in touch with them nearly as much.
 
My wife uses it as a means of communicating with our two kids at uni in the States. I've still not dared to darken its door. :)
 
It's really, really addictive. If you force yourself to use it for a week (to really test it out), there's are a great chance that you'll end up using it (and check it every day, or more... I usually check it 7/8 times).

What was surprising to me was the number of people that I knew that actually had a facebook. I just kept searching people's names that I hadn't seen in years and they just kept popping up. ;)
 
psycoswimmer said:
It's really, really addictive.
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The one annoying thing about Facebook (and probably largely what's so addictive) are the proliferation of silly apps that you're supposed to add to your profile. They're garish, clutter your page, mostly pointless, and worst of all, they're viral!

You'll occasionally get a message like "Joe has invited you to start using X!" and you'll think, "ooh, my buddy's inviting me to do something with him, I should probably check it out." But it's just social engineering, because Joe was probably coerced to invite 10/20/all of his friends before he could even start using X for himself. So you add the app, thinking your buddy's got some personal interest in this, when in fact he doesn't. And, oh yes, you are forced to invite friends to start using X, too, in order to discover that you never wanted to use X in the first place.

And if you do decide to use the app, it adds to your profile, making it longer and more cluttered, ... Many of them are pointless anyway. "Joe threw a sheep at you! Click here to throw one back!" Um... no thanks, I'm not in grade school anymore.

So don't play that game. Stick to reading profiles, updating status, putting photos in your album, writing on the basic wall (not the FunWall, ...) and you'll be fine. Non-intrusive, non-addictive. Just ignore all those "requests" and "invites" for things that really have nothing to do with the original concept of a face book.
 
notjustjay said:
Stick to reading profiles, updating status, putting photos in your album, writing on the basic wall (not the FunWall, ...) and you'll be fine. Non-intrusive, non-addictive. Just ignore all those "requests" and "invites" for things that really have nothing to do with the original concept of a face book.
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Good advice to stick by. I've been doing the same all along.
 
Facebook is great. Facebook apps suck. I hate getting messages say

"Your friends invited you to use Vibrating Hamster"

I mean come on!:mad:
 
njmac said:
That does make sense, but just from what I read on the internet people check their facebook everyday? It seems useful if you checked your facebook every few months when you wanted to see what's up. But then I guess you'd miss people trying to get in touch with you.
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My Universities was one of the first schools to get facebook, back when you could count them all on one hand!

I signed up about a year after most of my friends and never updated my profile. Then I studied abroad in Germany for a year and I checked it nearly daily to stay in touch with friends. It's not the best way, but it's certainly the most efficient way to keep in touch. When I went back to Boston, it was easy to setup dinner dates and barbeques with various friends through facebook.

I think the best thing about it is that you can see how many of your friends are abroad and it's a great way to find a couch (or floor) to bum if you're backpacking.

MattG said:
Yeah. I used to like Facebook because it was what I considered to be "Myspace for adults." Now it's becoming the same playground filled with silly applications, groups and forums that Myspace is. Oh well. I still use it but I wish it could have just stayed how it was.
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Some of the applications are ok. I've added a map. But yes, most of them are silly. But I don't think you have to stop using facebook. You can actually block invites from other apps (unfortunately one by one as they come). And how you use it is up to you. I have a policy of not friending people unless I've met them before and therefore keep my list rather small.

You can also make your profile, pictures, etc private and available only to friends. So it is definitely not like myspace in the open sense.

The one thing that irked me about facebook last month was that damn sean kingston song "way to beautiful girl....", kept playing everytime I loaded a page. I wrong them an angry email and avoided Fb for a week and afterwards I didn't see it anymore. Thank God. I think any ad that automatically plays music, well their creators should be burned at the stake. ;)
 
Facebook is just plain incredibly addictive...I have an RSS feed of my notifications so I'm no longer checking the Home page every few minutes :)
 
Duff-Man says...I tried Facebook for about a month. I initially resisted but then got 'requests' from a few people so I caved in and signed up. I've since ditched it as it was mostly just a time-waster. Anyone that I want to be in touch with knows my email address and that I will respond to them that way.

MySpace is only useful for info on the bands/musicians I like - I can log in and look at the bulletins and get most of the news about their doings that way instead of checking every one of their websites. Of course I had to disable "accept invites from bands" as I was getting stupid requests from every talentless band out there. I have almost no info on either of my profiles - I am just gtetting really wary of all this info being 'out there' for just about anyone to see.

I have a LiveJournal and should update it more often than I do as that is where I find the most intelligent people, where responses are generally thought about for more than 5 seconds....oh yeah!
 
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