A lot of web apps - both the established players and the startups - seem to be in a "sort of, but not really" state. I'm pulling this from a column by Thomas Friedman about Russia ( http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/friedman-ru... ) where he says that Russia is "sort of a democracy, but not really". Applied to web apps, Facebook is sort of a way to keep in touch with friends and family, but not really, because it's mainly a pile of uninteresting crap streamed from a bunch of people you hardly know. Twitter is sort of a way to follow interests, but not really, since it's mainly a vast swamp of mind-numbing, hash-tag inundated stupidity that most people don't read.
That's not to say there isn't value in these services, because there is - I use both. It's just that it seems so half-assed. When you consider the ways in which, say, the introduction of the telephone changed society, Facebook just looks silly.
> When you consider the ways in which, say, the introduction of the telephone changed society, Facebook just looks silly.
Or maybe just less elegant. Part of the problem is there's not really an obvious problem to solve. In the case of the telephone it was like: "what if you could talk to someone instantly across hundreds or thousands of miles, without a telegraph operator!". Then they did a lot of hard work to build a network to meet this end goal, which only does one thing with a dead-simple interface, and it changed the world.
With Facebook and Twitter it's a little trickier because what's the universal goal? We already had email, newsgroups, chat rooms, blogs, etc. So the premise is something like: "what if you could broadcast your thoughts and digital content instantly to thousands of friends and followers?". Right away it's sort of a head scratcher. If you think about it you come up with lots of little niches where it's handy, but nothing that strictly couldn't be done before. The secret sauce is that it's engaging and people like using it so you have a powerful network effect. But at the end of the day it becomes a type of noisy commons; It's heaps better than the truly public internet cesspools like YouTube, but it is increasingly inadequate for individual needs.
"Part of the problem is there's not really an obvious problem to solve."
Isn't that just a nice way of saying that Facebook isn't useful?
I think the interesting take-away from this article is not so much that Facebook has changed the context by adding features that include a larger network of people, but rather that perhaps Facebook is most useful when you use it exclusively with a small network of people with whom you have very real, close relationships. Suppose Facebook had exactly the same features that it has now but was limited to college campuses where connections could be made only with close friends and classmates. Would the experience really be any worse than it was when the functionality was more limited?
When the author was in college and he had just recently joined Facebook (and presumably most people he had ever met were just starting to use it) his network was necessarily small and limited to those people whom he had recently met and socialized with. As the years went by, more and more people joined his network. But few, if any left.
The problem is that that is not an accurate reflection of real-world relationships. Over time people prune relationships, either consciously or subconsciously, but the point is that in the real world, relationships evolve and end, but Facebook doesn't do a great job of evolving with those relationships. Recently I find myself using Twitter more and more to the exclusion of Facebook because on Facebook I get inundated with a mixture of every kind of update, a very small percentage of which I care anything about. I don't de-friend people because that is considered rude and what if I do want to reconnect with that person someday?
With Twitter there are definitely times that I get inundated with annoying tweets, but because I can quickly and easily stop following somebody, it is very simple to maintain my network and keep the information presented to me relevant.
I don't disagree with any of the rest of your comment, but:
> Isn't that just a nice way of saying that Facebook isn't useful?
No it's not—along two axes. First, I should have said "it doesn't solve an obvious problem", it solves many small problems of varying degrees of obviousness to different people. Second, it is not a unique solver of these problems.
Facebook is definitely useful, but it's not a home run in the way the telephone was because communication is no longer a technical problem.
I was always perplexed by Facebook's decision to get rid of the birthday gifting system (on someone's birthday, you could pay FB $1 to give them some sort of picture as a gift). It wasn't popular among my friends at first, but it eventually got to the point where every time it was someone's birthday, they got at least one gift from someone.
I can only imagine that if Facebook had pushed it hard enough, it would only have become even more commonplace. When you have 500M+ users, each of whom has a birthday once a year, and each of whom has numerous friends to wish him a happy birthday, $1 gifts are nothing to balk about.
The opportunity they had reminded me of the story behind how the diamond business itself created the profitable tradition of giving engagement rings and wedding rings.
Your post immediately made me imagine a go-between that enabled people to send a physical/voucher gift to an email address or social media account. Sender would choose something and pay for it, but assign the recipient as a virtual address. The recipient would then hit the go-between and arrange fulfillment, choosing the postal address themselves.
If you could get it tied into the networks and built up as something of a tradition within Facebook/Twitter /Pinterest (as you said, Facebook would be perfect for it), it could get some traction.
Maybe have it trawl recent posts for gift suggestions in various price brackets.
Very similar to my thoughts. Plus, I have some other experiences to compare to, and FB doesn't come out very well in those comparisons.
Some websites allow you meet new people and to get to know them better over the years. You'd think "social" networks should do that as well, but they aren't. In fact, Facebook sort of works in the opposite way. For the most part, it's a collection of people whom you used to know, but whom you know less and less as the time goes. It doesn't allow for much real communication (which is essential in preserving any kind of meaningful relationships) and it's designed to discourage speaking with "strangers". (Remember all those warnings about not friending people you don't know?)
What irritates me to no end is that there are lots of people who seem to be (socially) incapable of using email, IM or phone to share the same information they share on Facebook.
I don't see what you mean by "designed to discourage speaking with 'strangers'", it seems to me that the interest tags that Facebook has implemented and the stream of people it suggests for you to be "friends" with encourages exactly the opposite behaviour.
There may be some lip service to online safety, but everything else points to pushing users to expand their networks.
As unintuitive as it seems to me, a sizable minority of people use Facebook as a way to meet others, either for dating (read: hooking up with your friends hot friends), shared interest, or just adding another source to the stream. Perhaps this is what keeps others active on the network? The few who activity seek out new connections keep everyone else just engaged enough to keep posting pictures and a few lines about their life.
That stream of people supposedly represents people you already know but aren't friends with on Facebook.
I agree with OP in that Facebook that greatly taken away the ability to find people who are into a specific topic. I would like to find people in my area who like the film "El Mariachi". There is a Facebook page for it here: https://www.facebook.com/ElMariachiMovie I can see that 30,000+ people are fans of the film. Great! However, I can't see any of these people (let alone their proximity to me). The best I can do is maybe post something to the page, which will NOT appear by default, and may or may not get lost in the noise about other posts about actual Mariachis or maybe Mexican restaurants with the same name. The functionality related to one of my favorite books is even more bare (https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Man-with-the-Golden-Arm)!
This leads me to believe that (in the wake of privacy concerns) Facebook is no longer designed to help you meet strangers. You might find someone with similar interests, but it is likely to be a friend of a friend. This might be intentional. It's not necessarily bad or wrong, but I think it is important to call it out.
There are definitely plenty of examples of exceptions, so you're right on with the sizable minority. People who meet friends of friends, find dates, and talk to people they never would without a social network like facebook. But I have to agree, as much as it's not necessarily designed to obstruct communication with strangers. Its just not how it is used. At least not what I've observed personally.
I love this line, "..For the most part, it's a collection of people whom you used to know, but whom you know less and less as the time goes." Because it's so true, for me. Other than the small subset of people of which I am close to. Everyone else fits this bill for me. People that at one were acquaintances or slightly more, but over time I want less and less to do with these people. I know less and less about them, despite their personal life flooding into my feed. Interesting to me, without facebook, I actually might have more interest in at least a few of their lives. "I wonder what so and so is doing, I should give them a call." With it, I know what they are up to, every day, and I'm not interested at all.
Every so often I find myself jumping into discussion, ranting, or arguing with people I have never met personally. But there is absolutely no incentive for me to go out of my way and randomly message, comment, or talk to anyone I'm not close with via facebook. I will admit that I think facebook has tried in the past to encourage some of this behavior. It's just something that I don't think they've ever been able to pull off.
Part of what I mean is that Facebook design implies that you need to friend someone to interact with them on a persistent basis. And neither me, nor anyone I know would "friend" a person just because they've had some interaction with that person on Facebook itself. Even the wording (e.g. "friends") suggests some kind of offline connection.
Sure, there are people who operate differently, but I really don't see any evidence that FB is designed for that kinds of use. If you "friend" people indiscriminately, your list will mean less and less with each person added.
Facebook is also great for organizing events. I don't know anyone who uses e.g. Evite anymore. Social chatter.
I'm not generally a fan of how ubiquitous FB seems to have become recently, but when everyone is on the same network and that network has some simple tools for doing socially useful things (making plans with people lots of people and carrying on idle chatter), that's handy.
More than anything I miss the "How are you connected" feature that was sort of a six degrees of Kevin Bacon for every person in your school. I would spend a lot of time picking completely random people almost always finding a connection.
"So should I un-friend that girl I met at a party five years ago but haven’t spoken to since? Oh wait, you make that nearly impossible. Plus, how then will I know that she needs my help to kill a rival Mafia?!"
If you no longer care about someone's updates or anything that's going on in their life, you can remove them as a friend. I know tons of people who have removed people from their friends lists. Or if someone plays too many games and you dont like seeing that update on your feed, mute those types of posts or posts from that user.
It's actually quite difficult to remove a friend. You have to go to their individual page, scroll down, look at a text link on the bottom left of the page, click "Yes" in the confirmation box.
I wish I could just navigate through my friends list and remove friends right from there just like how I can add them to groups or lists or anything I want.
Actually, you can just hover their name anywhere on the site (including your friends list), hover the “Friends” button and click “Unfriend”. It hardly gets easier than that.
A: Anything you have to do by hand up to 400+ times is not particularly easy. It's an hour's mind-numbing work.
B: It's only easy if there's no cognitive load to unfriending someone. If you have to call them up in your mind, decide if they're still a friend... that's thought, and the emotions involved can be literally overwhelming depending on your personality.
C: Do the people you unfriend get alerted in any way? Take everything I alluded to in point B and raise it to the third power, because now every click is also a social signal...
A: True, but “mind-numbing” does not mean “quite difficult”. Also, if you have 400+ Facebook friends you wish you hadn’t I think it’s your fault, not Facebook’s. I don’t expect any service to provide marginal functionality like that. You do that once and from then on you think more carefully before accepting someone’s request.
*"It was my Birthday a couple of weeks ago. From my 527 friends, I received 52 birthday wishes on Facebook. That’s 10% of my friends — more activity in one day than I saw in an entire year prior. Who are these strangers posting on my wall? I haven’t spoken to some of them in 5 years. What a wonderful treat to hear from them on my birthday."
This paragraph pretty much sums up why I deleted my Facebook account - either two or three (bad memory..) years ago on the 10th of January, the day after my birthday. I never hated Facebook, I never had any problem with the company... I just realised, having got a bunch of emails telling me that people who don't know me well enough to tell me in person, or on the phone, or on skype/msn, or via sms, had left birthday wishes on my wall, that I hadn't had a use for it in quite a while before then.
I wish Happy Birthday to people I haven't spoken to in 25 years (apologies for being old). I wish it to people I don't really know (members of a creative collective I belong to). I wish it to any of my friendsters that have birthdays on the day that I happen to visit FB. It's not so random as it sounds, either, I have fewer than 200 FB friendsters.
Most people think it's nice to receive birthday wishes, and if you're simply not getting them from the people you want to get them from, that's not their fault.
Then again, I turn off email notifications for this stuff so I don't get that kind of inundation that I saw in years past. The only email I get from FB is, coincidentally, the one that tells me whose birthday it is this coming week.
It's a nice sentiment, but sometimes I wonder what is the point as well. I've often thought of deleting facebook for similar reasons. Not necessarily because a flood of emails regarding people of whom I'm not invested in decided to jump on a birthday band wagon. But I think a piece of what he's saying, is why bother. It's just a reminder that the majority of people you've told yourself you're there for(facebook that is), you know to keep up with these peoples lives, aren't really all that important to you. If it takes a flood of copy and pasted "happy bday!" messages from people who don't talk to you on days facebook doesn't tell them exactly what to say..To open peoples eyes to that... so be it.
Could probably rephrase this, as a nice sentiment can be very nice with no point at all. But the "happy birthday!" messages on facebook, imo, have lost their meaning and relevance a long time ago. There's no thought or effort that goes into this action. In the early stages of facebook, there was still a couple more steps that had to be taken to get that message to the old acquaintance. Thus, albeit small, a little more meaning. "Oh, frank, he actually took those couple steps, thats so nice."
Now, as a society, as well as on facebook, we're a step away from automating our wishing people happy birthdays. That progression is what is slowly chipping away at that "nice sentiment." For all I know, you write heartfelt messages to old acquaintances, leaving them feeling awesome that you cared to write to them on such a day. But the vast majority don't, facebook tells them to say happy bday to these people [list of names]. Without even leaving the page, and following exactly what facebook tells you to say, you've said the most generic thing you can possibly say to someone on their birthday.And to top it off, you haven't said anything to that person since last year on that day. And again, by "you", I mean the majority of people, not you personally.
The occasional person will go the "extra mile" sticking the persons name at the end of the message, or saying something like "hope you're doing well!"..It's just an illusion that that doesn't mean much of anything. I'm not saying I hate getting 100s of "Happy bday's" from people I don't talk to or, in a lot of cases, even know. Or that people are assholes for routinely wishing every single person on their friends list a big happy birthday. But the sentiment really isn't even there anymore, to me. All facebook has done for us, as far as birthdays and keeping in touch with old acquaintances in this manner is concerned, is make the actual efforts, like phone calls and real personal messages, even more valuable.
That's all in your interpretation. You have devalued the birthday wishes you receive, you feel your birthday wishes are insincere, your friends aren't sending you the kinds of birthday wishes you want. None of this mentions your wishes for other people.
Now, as a society, as well as on facebook, we're a step away from automating our wishing people happy birthdays.
The dystopia you imagine is already here in the form of Christmas Card lists.
It's not for any real point. It's like saying hello or goodbye to someone you meet on the elevator, or saying cheers to someone in the coffeeshop. You don't have to know anyone particularly well to do that - in the end it just brightens up the general mood.
Yeah, it is a nice thing to do - I didn't mean to sound like I found it annoying that they did it.
Essentially it served to remind me that I hadn't been on the site, or had any email notifications, for quite some time before that. The reason I mentioned that the people wishing me happy birthday were people I didn't know particularly well was to make the point that, by deleting my account, I wasn't losing out on a method of communicating with good (or even faint, but still kinda) friends.
I hide my birthday on Facebook anyways, but I also locked down my wall so people can't write on it. That cut down tremendously on the amount of account-hijacking spam that was getting posted to it from my Facebook friends. I still got 3 Facebook messages about my birthday and my wife posted it on her wall for another 20+ birthday comments. I'm tired of it. I only wish people a happy birthday on Facebook if I either know them really well, they're hitting a milestone like 16 or 50, or if they're really sick.
I understand the authors position, but FB's value is different for lots of different people. Your journey on Facebook might be very different than mine and I don't think that means there should be a blanket statement about Facebook's value. Part of that value is that everything is inter-connected.
My girlfriend used to change her birthday every month or two, to see who would send her birthday wishes repeatedly -- she believed that people shouldn't rely on Facebook for such information. I finally convinced her to stop after I got sick of seeing the same 50 people write on her wall every month. Luckily I was in on this and put her birthday into Google Calendar...
My brother updated his birthday to the 9th of the current month for 8-9 months straight and got birthday wishes every month. He carefully monitored for and deleted people giving it away on his wall, and reading the posts (often the same people for several months) was hilarious. 'hey man, I totally thought your birthday was in May? oh well, happy birthday!'
Who are these strangers posting on my wall? I haven’t spoken to some of them in 5 years. What a wonderful treat to hear from them on my birthday.
I couldn't tell if this was sarcasm. Is it really a treat? An empty "happy birthday" posted out of obligation that took practically no thought from someone that has otherwise not bothered to contact you in 5 years and will probably not do so for another 365 days?
I have, and continually remove people from my friends list -- it makes no sense for them to know what is going on in my life if I barely want to speak to them in person. And wildly more important I really don't care what is going on in their lives.
I take the Larry David approach and prefer to have less friends and acquaintances
How did they know about my Facebook usage habits? Is this a thickly veiled privacy article?
Though seriously, it's easy to look back in retrospect and summarize webapps like this. It would have been more interesting if they discussed what the future could hold for Facebook. They are in a bit of a "serves no real purpose" limbo for me and I'm sure many other people. I have some fuzzy ideas on where they can take it to become more engrained in everyday real life, but I don't think society is ready for what I have in mind yet...
That's not to say there isn't value in these services, because there is - I use both. It's just that it seems so half-assed. When you consider the ways in which, say, the introduction of the telephone changed society, Facebook just looks silly.