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The Ghetto Called Facebook

pcmag.com

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Re: The Ghetto Called Facebook

#21

Post by juiceandjuice »

sixspeed wrote: post #14

Dvorak has a seriously warped view of Facebook and life-in-general IMO. Facebook's main competitor is Second Life? Who on earth thinks that? There's nothing "fake" about the community on Facebook. Ask Hosni Mubarak.

Dvorak hates facebook because it allows people like Dvorak a soap box to stand on.

In reality, my friends, on facebook and in life, are not Dvoraks. They are normal people with jobs, with hobbies, etc... People (usually) too busy to worry about online image or rant about popular internet culture. That's why I like facebook. If I had a bunch of Dvoraks for friends, I'd probably hate it too.

Re: The Ghetto Called Facebook

#23

Post by alexgartrell »

narkee wrote: post #16
shantanubala wrote: post #9

That's cool. I'm glad to hear Dvorak's opinion. Here's mine: Quit whining about Facebook. It's opt-in. People like it, so they opt in. Believe it or not, AOL was actually relevant and somewhat useful to people over a decade ago. Was it the best? No. Did it help people? Yes. I hate to say this, but people do need training wheels with tech. Facebook makes things simple. I no longer have to sign up for 20 different acco…

People had the same choice a decade ago, and chose against AOL. I think Dvorak is simply pointing out the fact that Facebook is being praised like the second coming of Jesus, while AOL is regarded as an internet backwater and failure, where they both provide/provided very similar functions.

One huge divide between people in the tech community and those outside of it is the meaning of free. Facebook's a walled garden to people who want APIs and generously licensed (or public domain) data, but, to most of everyone else, the only cost with Facebook is creating an account -- something many people want to do anyway for the other features of the site. This is in sharp contrast to AOL, which was very expensive and only offered its data to paid subscribers.

Re: The Ghetto Called Facebook

#25

Post by SkyMarshal »

zinkem wrote: post #18
drivingmenuts wrote: post #13

> Load World of Warcraft and play something that reflects real development efforts rather than cute marketing tricks. I love that line. The achievement of WoW is to inflate the importance mouse clicks to an insane level by a more complex mechanism. That is all.

I mostly agree with your sentiment. I think WoW and Facebook are very similar in function, connecting people socially through software. I don't really think one is any better or worse than the other. However, I do think something like WoW is a significant artistic achievement as well as a social tool. I really think this artistic product is the "achievement" of WoW.

I really think this artistic product is the "achievement" of WoW.

That's one take. Another is its achievement was taking an entertainment medium that people used to pay for only once, applying Skinnerian behavior modification techniques to keep them coming back and paying for monthly, then scaling that model to an unprecedented massive scale.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-gam...

Granted the social aspects of online games are truly fun, but the nice thing about Facebook is that it (initially at least) succeeded and scaled with just the social part and not the psychological manipulations mmo's like WoW relied on from day 1.

Some of the stuff that's been added recently, like Farmville and whatnot, exploits both the social and psychological, but the core value of FB is that it is still primarily a social experience, a way for people separated by distance and/or life (new baby, etc.) to maintain connections and know what's going on in each others' lives.

Re: The Ghetto Called Facebook

#26

Post by hrunting »

alexgartrell wrote: post #23
narkee wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People had the same choice a decade ago, and chose against AOL. I think Dvorak is simply pointing out the fact that Facebook is being praised like the second coming of Jesus, while AOL is regarded as an internet backwater and failure, where they both provide/provided very similar functions.

One huge divide between people in the tech community and those outside of it is the meaning of free. Facebook's a walled garden to people who want APIs and generously licensed (or public domain) data, but, to most of everyone else, the only cost with Facebook is creating an account -- something many people want to do anyway for the other features of the site. This is in sharp contrast to AOL, which was very expensive…

AOL's cost was money. Facebook's cost is your personal privacy. Yes, you don't have to shell out a dollar, but you lose all control over the information you associate with Facebook. In some ways, I'd rather pay real money.

Re: The Ghetto Called Facebook

#28

Post by jevans »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #13

> Load World of Warcraft and play something that reflects real development efforts rather than cute marketing tricks. I love that line. The achievement of WoW is to inflate the importance mouse clicks to an insane level by a more complex mechanism. That is all.

I just thing people don't care how technically difficult a game was to make; they just care if it's fun. The issue of these games all relying on the same underlying psychology to cultivate addiction is also relevant, of course

Re: The Ghetto Called Facebook

#30

Post by kaiwen1 »

As I see it, the problem with Facebook is that it is monopolizing a space that we should all desire to see open and dispersed. Is it good to have one company monopolize all online social interactions among all humans on the planet? Of course not. People spend egregious amounts of time on Facebook, which is wonderful for Facebook and stifling for the rest of the internet. If you recognize these problems you should abandon Facebook and reject it on principal. With so many people and business on board, this is actually quite hard to do, which is exactly why it should be done.
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