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Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

whatever.scalzi.com

51–60 of 111 posts

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#51
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But they will fix that with a little time.

why reinvent the wheel badly? They should just give users @facebook.com email addresses and put in a webmail UI.

That's exactly what they have done with the new version of messages.

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#52

A mail system that doesn’t have a Bcc function doesn’t belong in the 21st Century. This reminds me of a comment that we almost always get on HN when Facebook comes up, and its almost always right: it's not for you. If you want Bcc, it's not for you. The millions of people who are younger than you don't think to CC, let alone BCC. They want to communicate, and they want to do it now, and email is just that formal thin…

I can see what FB does right - identity and other apis are good, but the site itself has very poor usability, unfortunately. Author's point - that you usually have no idea where your message goes and who can see it - is one thing that makes me limit it's usage to a minimum.

And the very valid observation that FB wall is usually cluttered with senseless status updates and stupid game events from an otherwise intelligent people does not add any points, too.

But surely, seeing how well FB is doing for other people who don't want to learn all that complicated things to post pictures online, I give them credit. Just not 50B of it :)

FB will never become the new Internet, and probably will never even become Internet's identity DB. See interviews with Mark where he tries to reply to a direct question whether or not he understands what kind of responsibility he gets with owning 500mil user records. He has no idea. I foresee a horrendous crash of trust. Hope I'm wrong.

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#54
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But they will fix that with a little time.

why reinvent the wheel badly? They should just give users @facebook.com email addresses and put in a webmail UI.

It would have to be a heavily optimised webmail UI. Current webmail implementations are too heavy on legacy features that normal people don't use (BCC/CC), have issues with spam ("why do good emails end up in my spam bin where as this viagra ad does not?") and light on social link and media sharing features that facebook users would expect.

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#55
post #42

A mail system that doesn’t have a Bcc function doesn’t belong in the 21st Century. This reminds me of a comment that we almost always get on HN when Facebook comes up, and its almost always right: it's not for you. If you want Bcc, it's not for you. The millions of people who are younger than you don't think to CC, let alone BCC. They want to communicate, and they want to do it now, and email is just that formal thin…

I haven't used Bcc many times but generally Facebook messages seem all phony to me. It doesn't seem to be a real conversation; I don't "own" the messages the same way I do when I use a real email program. Even gmail offers me tools to work with the messages themselves: on Facebook there's very little I can do with the messages. Basically I can just reply or delete the thread: exactly the same options that I have with…

Er, what else would you want to do to the message? Or, to put it another way, what else do you think normal people do with the messages? 99.9% reply or delete. Perfect.

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#56
post #48
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why reinvent the wheel badly? They should just give users @facebook.com email addresses and put in a webmail UI.

That makes it too easy to communicate with non-facebooked rest of the world.

Actually, that would be great for facebook. Sending millions of emails per day to the outside world with a link 'XXX is already on facebook, why dont you join today' at the bottom would be priceless.

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#57
Facebook shouldn’t be telling me how many “friends” I should have, especially when there’s clearly no technological impetus for it.

Does Facebook do that? I get recommendations of people I might know, but I don't recall ever being told how many friends I should have.

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#58
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes it too easy to communicate with non-facebooked rest of the world.

Actually, that would be great for facebook. Sending millions of emails per day to the outside world with a link 'XXX is already on facebook, why dont you join today' at the bottom would be priceless.

Well, yes and no. A major advantage of FB is that, once they suppressed the crazy app invites, it's spam-free. The only people who can send me messages are people I've already "whitelisted" by adding them/accepting their add. Once they start allowing inbound email, it all goes a bit hatstand.

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#59
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used Bcc many times but generally Facebook messages seem all phony to me. It doesn't seem to be a real conversation; I don't "own" the messages the same way I do when I use a real email program. Even gmail offers me tools to work with the messages themselves: on Facebook there's very little I can do with the messages. Basically I can just reply or delete the thread: exactly the same options that I have with…

Er, what else would you want to do to the message? Or, to put it another way, what else do you think normal people do with the messages? 99.9% reply or delete. Perfect.

Forward? Add someone else to the thread?

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#60
Everything is getting more and more simple, isnt that good?

Lots of ranting towards Facebook here of late, I must say. Facebook is a great way of telling your friends that HTML5 has got a logo, for example. Also, this way your friends that arent on sites like linkedin will get an idea of what you're up to.

I'm sure people who are interested in programming and building webpages will go their own way in the end anyway.

Maybe I misunderstood this article and the previous about Facebook rants, in that case I apologize.

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