I was originally going to add this, but the post seemed to long:

To be sure Facebook has its problems. Here are a few:

• Like most social networks, FB has no good way to mark someone as an acquaintance. I really, really hate being asked to say someone is my friend when I really don’t know them. And Facebook doesn’t really help this problem much. I’ve taken to being relatively harsh about accepting friend requests from people. Pretty much, if I haven’t had a real conversation with you that I’ve enjoyed, I won’t take your friend request. But it is always socially awkward. Booo.

  This could be fixed with tiered friendships. Facebook has a “Limited Profile” group you can add friends to that may help, but I haven’t explored it.

• FB has some weird interface stuff whose point is not immediately obvious: Like “Home” vs “Amandeep Jawa” or “Wall to Wall” v “Write on Wall” – I think I know the difference between these options, but they could explain with a tool tip or something.
• I really don’t understand all the weird little gifts and requests that you get. And if there are useful ones, they get lost in the noise. I don’t want a vampire bite invite, or a piece of flair or a gangster war invitation.

My biggest complaint is the apps, gifts, groups and other nonsense that are constantly being thrown at you — “Your friends think yer dum. Prove them wrong by taking this ridiculous quiz while you give us permission to download your firstborn.”

The most unexpected aspect of FB for me has been the sociological behavior it has illuminated/engendered. I wasn’t sure what to think when all these college classmates that I hardly knew wanted to be my friend. Were they just collecting friends to reassure themselves about how popular they are (I’d seen that on MySpace)? Were they hoping to see that I’d gotten fatter than they had? Were they actually interested in what I was doing? Maybe this person even had had a secret “she’s such a cool girl” crush on me (I was kind of an in-yer-face punk queen back in the day.)

I had a hard time deciding whether to accept all requests or just those from people I actually had some kind of acquaintanceship with (more than just knowing someone’s name). The latter was my inclination, but of course I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

When my first high school friend found me (ugh), the same thing happened with even more people that I really didn’t know (some I didn’t even know their name after much memory searching). I mean I hadn’t seen or thought about most of these people in 25 years! Plus there was the added ick of thinking about high school while I tried to decide what to do about these requests. Even the band teacher asked to be my friend (I wasn’t friendly with him at all in school so that was just too weird and kinda sad) — I hope I didn’t hurt his feelings when I declined.

I also got a request from my first boyfriend (with whom there had been much drama; I ultimately declined the friend request, but things sort of worked out in that I decided to answer his FB message, he apologized, and I accepted).

In sum, be prepared for some possible emotional weirdness when you put stuff out there for public consumption under your real name. People you hoped to leave in the past, and consequently the you that you left in the past, might find you. But you may also reconnect at least at some level with people you never intended to leave behind.

Erin

Briefly, I think the guy is way off base in lots of important particulars about how FB is used, perhaps correct in his assessment of the owners of FB’s politics but it is mostly irrelevant & points out fairly generic critiques of modern web-enabled capitalistic society, but ones that we have already had to deal with (google personalized ads) and negotiate our own levels of comfort with.

The biggest thing he misses is my point that FB enhances actual human relationships that I have and made my real physical world better for it. His cries of “my friendships have been commoditized” rings pretty false to me. And I’d suspect to anyone who has actually used FB for a little while.

I’m always excited about technologies that make real life better especially connections with my fellow humans, and for me, FB does that very very well. But to each their own…..

much love and respect
‘deep

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

then i met my biological family. they’re all on myspace and were incredulous that i was “into computers” but had no myspace page. so i caved in to get to know them better. and now i have like 100+ friends in myspace. then the kuslers discovered it… now it’s my one-stop shopping for keeping in touch with my entire family and a subset of my friends (people who apparently didn’t get the memo that myspace isn’t cool).

and for all of the reasons you listed, i’ve begrudgingly come to like myspace. i love knowing what my “new” family is up to and i love that it’s let me stay in touch with the daily lives of the family and friends i already have.

but fear not, once the economy rebounds i’ll re-hire my personal assistant and then “i” will have plenty of time for facebook!

until then, my flickr rss:
http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=41808955@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200

myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/mrrmy

: b

ps.
ok shhh! don’t tell anyone, but i actually DO have a facebook account. and a twitter account. and a blogger account. and (insert meme of the month here) i’m just not comfortable being the complete luddite that kelly is. so i join these things, figure out how to use them so i don’t seem out of touch, and then pretty much never use them again i have zero friends in facebook, for example…

pps.
i’m convinced that 90% of twitter users are middle aged people and last-millenium companies (CNN, sfgate, etc) that jumped onto the twitter bandwagon in a desperate attempt to seem hip. like none of my 13-21 year old friends or relatives gives a flying feck about twitter. “it’s for old people”