Social networking and individual choice - part 1

[felineparadox]

In the 21st century it is all about communication. Science fiction might have imagined spaceships, martians, crazy robots and lasers of doom but none of them really grasped the direction the future would take. For anyone not thinking that the technology we have is incredible need only look back a couple of decades to see the massive leap forward.

Comments

[pipistrelle]

I don't understand why people are surprised by things like this. Facebook is a company. It doesn't care about connecting you and your friends, it cares about making money. It's found an ingenious hook that appeals to lots of people and then sneaks in as much advertising as it can, to make money. I agree that they've (like Ryanair) become too blatant about it - but whilst it's annoying, it's unlikely to change if they aren't losing money...

[felineparadox]

Facebook was originally a tool for sharing information and wasn't designed to be a commercially profitable enterprise, but has been adopted to become that because of it's incredible potential for targeted advertising. I've made my choice to use it less and i'm not looking to go on some big anti-facebook campaign. I've said my piece here to explain my thoughts about it and i'm happy to leave it at that.

The irony being that as soon as i'd posted that update i've had a sudden urge to post junk to Facebook!

[kasyx]

" The chances are if my friends are aware of it then they will voluntarily tell me, or I will already know about it." Don't be so sure. Since I left Facebook over a year ago I've found that my friends rely on it to passively spread information. They /expect/ that everyone who's interested in that barbecue will reply to them. They /expect/ you to know that Fred and Alice split up because of the Facebook relationship status update. They look at me funny when I ask them things. I get forgotten about because I'm not in a list that they can just click an "invite all" button. No one texts me out the blue unless they want something and they actually need to get in touch directly. I never get a random message asking how I am.

[felineparadox]

I don't know how you communicate these days! :)

[loupblanc]

I deactivated my Facebook account today and that is a good feeling. Given that I was neither posting not commenting, only vaguely checking it on occasion only to see people posting pictures of cats (mostly), I figured I wouldn't miss much anyway.