The Social Network

[chukky12]

I thought the movie was okay. Not great, just okay. I like Facebook. I know it gets trashed a lot by critics but people still keep using it. As with any thing in the virtual world, you have to be careful what info you put in there. I believe the social networks are a permanent part of our life and will only continue to grow.

[mroilfield]

And the biggest thing I can't stand about Facebook and the entire concept of Social Networking?

It's a gigantic waste of time. So many people spend HOURS on the bloody thing each day- and why? What do they get in return? This is what confuses me, as I just noted, those hours spent on facebook tweaking your profile and playing the various facebook games and so forth essentially constitutes free content for the site to put ads on. That's pretty much all facebook is, really; and this is shared by many social networking sites. You can't just have pages filled with ads, you need some content. It's a free content generator. for them to frame with ads. (which even in the last bit while I had a FB account was getting worse).

Before I even joined facebook, I was under the impression that all social networking was effectively pointless. After using it, my opinion has only been further enhanced in that sense.  What I see as pointless, is social networking for the sake of social networking. That is what facebook is.

Take.... oh I don't know- Flickr. Flickr is about photos (See, already has +1 on facebook, since it's not pointless); but, you can establish relationships with other users of the site, who are described as "Contacts" (see, avoids the f-word!). The positive of this is that you can have a single view where you can see photos recently uploaded by your contacts. You can also choose to determine individual Contacts as being "Friends" or "Family" (to be fair, I think facebook has something to this affect, but I can't remember) you can then share individual photos and albums with no one, with everyone, just with your Contacts, or just with Friends and/or Family. The distinction between Contacts, Friends, and Family is very helpful, I think—it gives you a much more sophisticated level of control over your privacy. On Facebook, someone is a Friend, or they're not. There's no in-between. (again, my info might be out-dated on that).

Clearly though, my point here is that Flickr has a Central goal; to share photos. The Social networking stuff is extra; you can choose to engage in it or not. Facebook, on the other hand- what's the point of it? Some have told me it's so you can "reconnect with people you've lost touch with" And to a degree I can understand that. But the thing is you add them as a friend, they are all "OMG it's been so long" etc you have a short conversation, and that's it. maybe every few months you exchange a few words, and you realize that the reason you lost touch was because your interests had forked away from each other, or something along those lines. (this is taken from personal experience, YMMV of course). Basically, the whole "reconnect with people you've lost touch with" is an admirable goal until you realize that obviously you lost touch with them for a reason; if it was really important to have kept in touch, you would have. It's not like exchanging E-mails or IMs or something are  that difficult. In any case, Facebook's real purpose is- of course, Social networking. I find it comical that Facebook, despite the fact that it's sole purpose is to aid your relationships with people, doesn't even have the same "relationship management" that Flickr has (again, info may be outdated), where the social networking is (or was) secondary.

For some people that never go anywhere and are around most of their friends most of the time I could see where social networking could be considered a waste of time.

However for people like me that travel a lot and are away from friends and family for over half the year social networking has helped to keep us in touch in one central place. My wife post pics of my kids and the things they do while I am away so that i can see what is going on at home and have some clue as to what is happening in my kids lives and our other friends and family can also enjoy getting to see these.  If we have something that we need or want to tell most people we are close to we can do it in one place. Facebook has turned out to be a great place for us to share and spread information thru out our family.

Social networking does have it's benefits and it doesn't have to be focused around one thing like Flickr. The point behind social networking is you can make it into what you want and build your network around your life. You don't see people sitting in coffee shops having a cup of brew and wanting to kick people out because they are talking about cars instead of coffee. After all they are sitting in a coffee shop so how dare any one discuss any thing other then coffee while there.

I can see your point on the status updates and do think it is a little bit ridiculous how often some people tend to update their statuses and what they put there.

As to the games on facebook. I see people playing them as being no different then a person sitting at their computers playing solitaire. It is just these games are on a social network so you can involve other people if you want to where as solitaire you play alone.

[hyser]

I saw it shortly after it came out and it was OK at best.  It was more like a fake documentary then a flashy movie or true documentary.  I would wait for the DVD and watch from the comfort of your own home.  The back story is interesting but not at all what it was hyped up to be.

[jim0watkins]

Farmville=harvest moon, for example.
And... that is simply sad. Although I know plenty of other people who seem to have this "addicted to facebook thing"... personally I've never understood what there is to get addicted to.

You would if you had friends and not a lot of time to waste.  I'm not actually insulting you... I don't have any friends, but I think facebook is useful for people with particular lifestyles.

[Salmon Trout]

I have friends, and I really enjoy getting together with one or more of them for meals, drinks, etc, or a visit to the races, or lots of other things. What I don't enjoy is reading a load of idiotic self obsessed tripe from people I met at work 10 years ago or once knew. 

[BC_Programmer]

You would if you had friends and not a lot of time to waste. 

Your reasoning is non-sequitur and based on assumptions. You're presuming that since I don't use facebook, that I don't have any friends, and therefore that is why I don't understand what there is to get addicted to. Gotta love the pattern "insult.... I'm not actually insulting you" of course not, your making hand-wavy generalizations about my social life without any basis in fact and asserting they are true. No, of course that's not insulting. It's like if I said "your Mother is fat. I'm not actually insulting you, my mother is  fat too" or something.

First, let's go with your assumption that I don't have any friends. Why would "having friends" in that case reveal to me how it is addicting?

Again, I <had> an account. I had a number of friends, (both real and those that decided that since we both like a certain cereal we should be friends) and it was pointless. Aside from the fact that several of my friends weren't on facebook at all, For the most part when I wanted to contact them I didn't waste my time logging into facebook, I either phoned them, or more often, either e-mailed them or IM'd them.  Thing is, I just didn't have time to maintain what was essentially excess baggage; I didn't have time to maintain and keep it up to date, so I had a facebookectemy and had the vestigial membership removed.

What I don't get is how, with Phones, cellphones, Instant messaging, E-mail, and so forth, people seem to think that facebook, and social networking in particular, is "revolutionary" and there is nothing like it. Social Networking is like a niche in an open field.

[patio]

Biggest waste of time i've seen in 20 years...
Thank goodness the popcorn was fresh and she was cute...

[BC_Programmer]

Social Networking is like a niche in an open field.

+1 insightful

[Mulreay]

I do use Facebook as part of my social life.. but as 'a part' of my social life. It is true that I have reconnected with a LOT of old friends that I had not seen for years, and yes we did have that one off conversation and just the odd bits here and there. But that does not seem reason to delete them from my friends list.

I also used to play a few of the games but as bc said they are so generic and there only purpose is to get you to come back as much as possible to click a few 'collect', 'fight' or help buttons. This is not so you get a sense of enjoyment/fulfilment out of the game but so they get 'hits' on there ad banners. Hence I no longer play them.

I must admit though when i was young I moved to south Manchester from east Manchester and I lost touch with people I went to primary school/high school. After connecting back on facebook I have been back to see them, *censored* they even came out in town for my last birthday, so in that sense it worked for me.

As far as the film goes, I did watch it and quite enjoyed it. I think the reason I thought it was OK was because I left the idea that it was a true story at the door and just watched it as a film about some guy's starting a website and the internal struggle... to be fair I never really thought about the website itself throughout the film unless it was specifically referenced.

Just my humble spin on things. 

[BC_Programmer]

As far as the film goes, I did watch it and quite enjoyed it. I think the reason I thought it was OK was because I left the idea that it was a true story at the door and just watched it as a film about some guy's starting a website and the internal struggle... to be fair I never really thought about the website itself throughout the film unless it was specifically referenced.

You should read  "Masters of Doom" it's very similar in many ways; there is a lot of internal tension among the employees, and so forth. words can't really do it justice. I've read it three times now.

[lau]

I have not seen the movie (I have not heard of it until I read this topic) But I think it would be interesting to watch - see how this whole thing started.

I am not on Facebook, or MXIT or Twitter - if you want to talk to someone phone them, or email them. But I really couldn't care what you are doing every 5 seconds of the day.
I do love Google though, but that's for getting useful information. And when I am on holiday you wont see me sitting on the beach with my laptop so I can check who has updated their status, I'm much more concerned with real things - like landing the big fish I have on the other end of my line... 

[Mulreay]

I do love Google though,

I'm not sure how that is relevant but we all love people speaking there minds.

[Mulreay]

You should read  "Masters of Doom" it's very similar in many ways; there is a lot of internal tension among the employees, and so forth. words can't really do it justice. I've read it three times now.

Ordered from waterstones. Look forward to reading it.

[soybean]

I'm inclined to think some of the social networking craze is a fad that may fade over time, so declaring it a huge phenomenal success may be a premature conclusion.  I have a facebook account but, after the initial novelty wore off, it has become less interesting for me than it was in the beginning.  The most positive aspect of using it has been getting in contact with some classmates from high school.  But, even there, it hasn't been all positive.  One female classmate seems to have nothing else to do than be on facebook and play FarmVille and maybe some other games.  I don't have time for that and I don't like seeing one person's activity splattered over my facebook page.  So, I used the Hide option to hide her activity from being displayed on my page. 

I recall my early impression of facebook being a situation when facebook users seemed to just accumulate facebook "friends" for the sake of running up their friend count.  Yet, these "friends" were often people they had never met in person.  That's rather meaningless, IMO.

Here's an interesting article about Bill Gates decision to quit facebook: Bill Gates quits Facebook over 'too many friends'