I've resisted all this time having a Facebook account. Seems inane, invasive, trite nonsense. What do others think of it? Good way to keep in touch with loved ones far away? But calls are cheap / free these days... there's Skype, there's email, so many ways of staying in touch. Maybe someone that likes it and uses it could tell me what is good about it. I can't see anything worthwhile about it. Except for it seeming voyeuristic and high schoolish. Dribbly dum-dum stuff. "Look at me", kinda nonsense stuff. And then that stuff about privacy. Good grief.
When I was even younger I used to be against it, since I've simply been using MSN Messenger to keep in touch with friends but a lot of them began abandoning using MSN Messenger and turned for Facebook instead. I refused to join at first Facebook saying that MSN/WLM is better, but then it left me no choice to keep in touch with all my friends since noone of them are even using the MSN anymore for long time. Today even I barely even log to my MSN Messenger. In other words, I'm not a heavy fan of Facebook but I think it's a must to have one and use it actively.
It's a time waster to me - and the Facebook games suck big time - worse yet there's no real way to disable requests. But it can be useful, if you're heading out somewhere (such as to a bar) and want to find people to hang out with, you could post a bulletin instead of call up everyone individually.
Not possible staying in touch in other ways? I still resist friends that ask me to go on Facebook. There are such things as phone and face to face and email and Skype and such stuff. Why would it be a must to have one and use it actively, do you think? I still don't get it / don't understand the culture of Facebook.
Found a lot of people I hadn't seen in a long time. After the initial convo, you realize there is nothing to talk about. If you're someone with an upstanding family but rowdy friends, highly recommend 2 of them. I made the mistake of putting all on 1, now I really can't be myself as I don't want to put any of the old timers off. But anyway, it's good for the realization that those you see everyday are the ones that matter. Just don't be one of those who whine on your posts about stuff. People don't want to hear it. And stay away from politics/religion. Basically, take the rules of the bar, mix them with your grandma's house, and you have FB etiquette.
If people turn up out of the blue, from the long gone past and want to 'friend' you, what is the Facebook etiquette? That part I wouldn't like. Friending people I was done and dusted with. Gathering friends for a night out via a bulletin sounds useful. But I can still do that by sending a group text on my mobile phone. When you say there's no real way to 'disable requests', what does that mean? I am Facebook Uninitiated Incorporated.
Sounds like many worlds may converge at once: Life with family, the relatives - the friends, the distant acquaintances - the work (shudder) colleagues / and bosses.. and maybe someone met once for five minutes on the stairs at the train station, or in the supermarket... I identify with how you say, "After the initial convo, you realise there is nothing to talk about." The medium itself isn't conducive, I think, for 'genuine' conversation. Seems like a trite, hollow platform to me. But finding people you haven't seen in a long time - and people that you like - does sound like something worthwhile.
I only use it for family. A lot of my family and friends are abroad, so it is handy for staying in contact. I don't like it but my friend's husband "discovered" it and started whining I was to friend him as he didn't have any friends there. I had to talk to him until he found other friends, but it's a great lot of total crap people post on it so I escaped as soon as. My account is set to private. My friends don't use Facebook that much, preferring to text/phone/email and I don't allow myself to be friended by work mates unless I am very sure of them. It's intrusive. I don't want people I work with poking their noses into my private life. None of their business. Problems..I don't know official protocol if someone asks to be friends and you don't want to. I have purely ignored the requests and deleted them. I then mention to the person that I only open it to contact family abroad. They seem to accept it and as it's set to private, they don't know what I'm doing. You can set it to be invisible when you are online. A relative wanted to friend one of my family members. He was old and the person was young and socially active. It was inappropriate. The younger person wasn't comfortable and didn't want to be friended but didn't want to risk offending family members, so he consulted me. I advised the older person it isn't appropriate. He was offended, but he's a nosy bastard who only wanted to poke his nose in and live vicariously through the young person ...so I'm afraid it was just tough.
This right here... You should also check out Reverb Nation... Anyway, I have a Facebook page, and, I've reconnected with alot of friends from my younger days... I think it's OK...
I have Facebook, and I keep in touch with family members I don't see often, as well as work mates. I like it, but its not perfect. Facebook needs to up its security, for one thing.
Against. If they stop spamming people who are supposed to be completely disconnected, probably less against.
Facebook is a useless and pale imitation of what Myspace used to be. Myspace was the daddy, facebook is the illegitimate child, with a snotty nose and crusty food on it's face. Truth.
Facebook is a tool so can only be as good or as bad as the people using it. Users create the content and you can choose which content to view and which not to. The nature of my hobby means I've got lots of friends and acquaintances spread across the country (and further afield) and Facebook is a good way of generally keeping in touch. It isn't a replacement to phone, e-mail or actually visiting in person, just an added bonus. I don't use it all that much, keep my personal information restricted and friends list limited. There are a few with the habit of posting the attention seeking drama rubbish (not that they're immune to that in person!) but it's easy enough to skip over. I personally don't see the justification for the psychological hatred some people seem able to generate for something like Facebook. It just strikes me as attention seeking over-dramatic nonsense in itself (ironically).
I used to be on it to keep up with family/friends until I realized how bad their security was. I don't like my personal information to be out there available for the world to find and Facebook's privacy is terrible. I also feel that while it's nice that it's an easy way to stay in touch with multiple family members and friends, there is also a catch 22 that I really don't like. It helps enable and push more Cyber-bullying. Social Network companies need to find a better way to be able to help put an end to that or at the very least, reduce the amount of Cyber-bullying. Sadly they don't care as it's all about the $$$ to them...
I have family who uses Facebook every single day, so it's a good way to check in on them and see what they're up to. They also have teenage kids, which makes it nearly mandatory mom and/or dad have an acct too. And yeah, it's silly stuff mostly, but I look at it this way... they either don't work or have lots of time on their hands so if they wanna tell us what they're eating for lunch, it doesn't bother me. I don't have to read it. I agree with Last Drop. Not a good idea to mix family w/rowdy friends. I don't have many internet friends on my FB because I'm not into sharing that much personal info with people I don't know. And the reason I was quite alarmed when this forum made the FB connection. Not my cup o'tea. All in all, it's a good place to keep track of friends & family. I may check in once a week or so... unless I want to broadcast a message like Happy Birthday or congrats on the new baby. For the price, it's a pretty good value.
I don't think Facebook's privacy/security is especially bad, there is just an unrealistic expectation/misunderstanding of the scope and nature of privacy on the internet in general. The internet is basically an unencrypted broadcast medium. If you publish something you don't want to be public knowledge anywhere on the general internet, you've only yourself to blame for any consequences. If you wouldn't put it on a postcard, don't put it on the internet. That's another tool verses user issue. You could certainly argue that the various service providers could do better dealing with the various misuses of their services, but there is a limit to what is realistically possible from that point of view.
Facebook and all it's links , domain names , ips etc are blocked in my hosts . I do have an account but it was created for demonstration purposes and i have not visit it for years. I do not want to be connected with my family and i don't like get in touch with old friends . Facebook is ultra annoying running a hell load of scripts and i believe that it tracks all your net movements , i have a dangerous net life so the least i want is to get tracked .
My, how mysterious. Anybody who tracks my net movements needs to get a life... they've passed terminal boredom.
I was referring more specifically to how they provide information to 3rd party and commercial business. Back when I had an account, they did not inform the user that was happening all along. The security settings would reset themselves without any notification. It was just a shady deal going on. Not sure how much they have improved upon it...if at all, but it goes deeper than just what the search engines are able to pick up on.
