So now I have a question for you all, my three loyal readers. I joined this Facebook thing in an effort to reconnect people to people – specifically myself to more distant relations, and myself to long lost hometown friends. But I can’t help but think as a new user, why do people stay there?
I look down all the ‘status updates’ for the people I know (and some I barely remember) and there isn’t a single original thought, not a single question for input, not a single insight. If it’s an online diary, why is there no thought or apparent effort going into the writing? It’s clearly not a collaborative environment – there’s little incentive to keep up a conversation. It’s not designed to be a convenient way to connect to your friends and take conversations OUT of their environment, as they go to great lengths to keep you from getting those contact points. It’s the whiteboard on the dorm room door – unimportant notes that maybe someone will read, maybe they won’t. I see lots of mental detritus, thoughts of no consequence and provoking no response. Which begs the question – why bother at all?
What is it with the world’s constant need for updated status? How many times a day does someone need to visit myFlitterFaceSpacePlanet to read that their friends are still in front of their phones or computers, not doing anything interesting, because they’re reading someone else’s status? How many times can you see your friends say, “Having a pee,” “Look at something interesting someone else did,” “Going out for a bit,” before you realize that these events aren’t news?
Just because we have the ability to constantly stream what we’re doing doesn’t mean we should. What we should have is a system that makes it easier to share actual thought streams, provoke conversations without arguments, and help people get feedback from their friends in the real world. And I think Facebook has failed catastrophically at that.
1 response so far ↓
1 Gregg_Brown // Apr 6, 2010 at 7:40 pm
I’d like to start out by saying thank you for posting this link on Facebook… I really do appreciate your being there.
I do have to agree with most of what you said in this blog. But what did you really expect? Most people really have no idea what FB is or should be. When I joined I had no idea what it was all about. I joined because one of my son’s sent me a request. I just wanted to reconnect with him.
Then, magicly, I found other family members who I had not talked to in years. It’s not that we wouldn’t talk to each other, but our time schedules never seemed to make it easy to make the phone calls. And none of us really write, never really did.
Then I started finding old High School friends, I’m talking about people that I have not talked to in 35 years. This is an amazing site for doing things like this. Finding people that you have not thought about in several years.
For me, most of my conversations are in chat. I don’t use my staus updates for that purpose, although it certainly could be.
I’m just happy to see updates from everyone so I know that they are still alive and kicking. I really enjoy the photos that are shared by all. For instance, my High School friends and I have been posting pictures from that time period. It provokes some interesting memories and chats.
So my reason for joining and staying is to stay connected with my family and to, hopefully, reconnect with old friends. I’ll gladly put up with the nonsense that some people post for the opportunity to do so.
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