The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network
jimlastinger.com
The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network
1–10 of 28 posts
Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network
#2When 'Status'es on FaceBook became automatic Wall Posts, and therefore persistent, I commented to a few friends that this one simple change altered the nature of Facebook from a social facilitator to a social inhibitor. Before, if you wanted to know what your far-away friends had been up to, you had to call them up or send a letter, forcing some level of social interaction. Now you just have to dig through their wall posts.
It was once nice, simple, succinct. A 'phonebook with pictures.' Now, it's sterile and noisy, and not even useful as a phonebook.
[Edit:] This persistence of data I feel drives and encourages the issue the author describes - friending people you don't know just to see what they're doing (and to gain access to their photos, et cetera). There's a simple and obvious solution to the 'complete strangers' issue, but I don't feel that is the real problem.
Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network
#3If you do not friend people you aren't friends with, you do not have this problem. For real friends who are annoying on facebook, that's what the little 'x' is for on their updates.
I imagine it's harder if you're even just a little bit internet famous, but most people aren't.
Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network
#4[deleted]
Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network
#5The main problem this person faces but glosses over is the fact that they've added people they don't know. Why do that? It makes no sense and will only cause you to get annoyed.
I am quite proud of the fact I only have 100 FB friends, because I know each and every one of them. I lot of people I know from IRC and work refer to me as the Facebook Nazi because I won't add them, but they're not really my friends and I don't want to know what they're doing at 5am in the morning.
Toughen up a bit, delete those people you added because you know a tiny bit about them and things'll become that much easier to deal with.
This is exactly like the "Oh I get SO MUCH email" posts and then you find out the person signed themselves up to 50 email lists, 20 "email me when you get a new comment/status" things etc. Don't sign up for crap you don't want, it's that simple!
[Edit was just spelling fixes]
Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network
#6I don't have this problem. None of my friends have this problem. It looks to me more like user error of adding people you don't know and adding spam apps than it is Facebook's problem.
Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network
#7Recently I have been seeing an increase in the number of such posts titled 'Decline of facebook', 'collapse of facebook' or some other theory trying to explain why facebook won't stand the test of time. The point here is, why are we bothered? There are people who like it, and there are people who don't. The user base of facebook has reached a point where any categorization becomes too big a demographic hence no matter which feature one would talk about, there are takers and there are haters. It is all about which side is heavier here.
Facebook and twitter, in the initial phases of their global boom (after facebook moved out of it's college/university paradigm) was used as a global social networking tools by geeks, bloggers and web designers. People who have a very different look on how the internet should be. And even though these people 'make' most of the obervable internet (read: web), it is important to know that facebook also caters a whole lot to the social networking junkies who love the loads of like buttons, and a rush of social media. While some of may think it is lame, it is rarely a question of lame or cool, but what keeps the site running.
Either ways, these articles seem to offer quite a narrow demographic when they try to provide any insight or an opinion. And that is because, 'Facebook users' today is a demographic so large that it approximates quite good to the law of averages. Above and beyond, my only point is that, only time will tell.
Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network
#8I don't have this problem. None of my friends have this problem. It looks to me more like user error of adding people you don't know and adding spam apps than it is Facebook's problem.
Hi, I wrote the article. Thanks for the thoughts, but I've never added people I don't know or apps I don't use. Spam apps I was referring to are from other people that show up in my stream or wall, those "Billy answered a question about you" posts.
Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network
#9If you do not friend people you aren't friends with, you do not have this problem. For real friends who are annoying on facebook, that's what the little 'x' is for on their updates. I imagine it's harder if you're even just a little bit internet famous, but most people aren't.
I started two podcasts on CNET, Loaded and The 404, so I have some people who friended me on FB because of that. My solution? I hide unmercifully. If I don't care about someone, or they post 1-2 status updates I find irrelevant, they get hidden from my feed. I have 1k+ friends, but I still get the signal : noise ratio that I like.
Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network
#10I don't have this problem. None of my friends have this problem. It looks to me more like user error of adding people you don't know and adding spam apps than it is Facebook's problem.
Hi, I wrote the article. Thanks for the thoughts, but I've never added people I don't know or apps I don't use. Spam apps I was referring to are from other people that show up in my stream or wall, those "Billy answered a question about you" posts.
Maybe "people you don't know" is a little strong. But you wrote,
Back when Facebook was new . . . the friends that you had were people that you actually wanted to keep in touch with.
That's still the case with me -- I only make friends with people I want to keep in touch with. The friends you have may have changed in character . . . but I find that hard to parse as Facebook's fault.
It seems to me that regular prunings and a less promiscuous friending policy would solve your problem.