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The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network

jimlastinger.com

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Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network

#11

Post by motters »

muppetman wrote: post #5

The 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 do…

Agree. I've always tried to keep social network friends to below 100, and periodically conduct a review to ditch anyone who is no longer of interest. It seems that many people routinely have thousands of "friends", but I can't possibly have any meaningful relationship with such a large population.

Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network

#12

Post by lotusleaf1987 »

muppetman wrote: post #5

The 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 do…

Read the comments, the author specifically says that is not the case: I haven't added people that I don't know. I was just stating that I get tons of requests from people I don't know. I do, however, know people that accept just about any friend request.

Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network

#13

Post by kin »

jimlast wrote: post #8
kin wrote: post #6

I 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.

To my experience, Facebook has a rather efficient algorithm that monitors who you show interest in and then populate your feed with what they consider relevant information. In the case that your feed does get junk, there's a reason why it's presented as a stream, a mixture of both meaningful and useless information that's easy to skim and pick what interests you, same as news sites. You really just look at headlines and click on what you want to read. Continuously browsing a friend's profile that spams your wall will only continue to spam your wall. Hope you get a better experience out of it soon.

Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network

#14

Post by gigawatt »

muppetman wrote: post #5

The 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 do…

> 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 be 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.

Maybe it's a personal shortcoming, but this is the main reason I still don't have a Facebook account. I don't want to have to explain to people I have to see every day why I don't want to be Facebook buddies. It causes awkwardness in real life, and getting status updates form people I actually like (but still might not care where they ate dinner last night) isn't worth the hassle.

Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network

#15

Post by muppetman »

lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #12
muppetman wrote: post #5

The 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 do…

Read the comments, the author specifically says that is not the case: I haven't added people that I don't know. I was just stating that I get tons of requests from people I don't know. I do, however, know people that accept just about any friend request.

When I posted my comment above, he hadn't replied to any comments. But yes, I can see now that he states clearly he knows everyone.

Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network

#16

Post by joebadmo »

rohanprabhu wrote: post #7

Recently 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 matte…

I pretty much agree with you, and I don't think FB is going anywhere anytime soon.

But that's part of why I'm bothered (and I think the source of all the wishful-thinking decline of FB stories). Well, that combined with: I don't like FB. I don't like the UI, I don't like the weak/ambiguous/unclear privacy policies, I don't like the narrowness of vision, the constraining of expression, the shallowness of engagement, the walling off of a portion of the internet, and I don't like the corporation.

I don't like FB, so I don't use it. But I do understand that it provides some utility to a lot of people. I want FB to "die" so I can have that utility without all the baggage or constraints.

Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network

#17

Post by ajslater »

randall wrote: post #9
krakensden wrote: post #3

If 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.

Your problem is cured by creating a Facebook Fan page. Many famous people's Facebook problem could be cured with that.

Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network

#18

Post by scott_s »

gigawatt wrote: post #14
muppetman wrote: post #5

The 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 do…

> 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 be 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. Maybe it's a personal shortcoming, but this is the main reason I still don't have a Facebook account. I don't want to…

It's trivial to remove someone from your update stream, but not remove them as a friend.

Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network

#19

Post by ajslater »

muppetman wrote: post #5

The 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 do…

The real problem with Facebook is the symmetric friend model. I have 70 FB friends and a couple of those would be removed if it were politically convenient.

Twitter does it so much better.

I wonder if the FB gods ever run statistics of how many people are "friends" and have mutually hidden each other.

Re: The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network

#20

Post by muppetman »

gigawatt wrote: post #14
muppetman wrote: post #5

The 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 do…

> 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 be 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. Maybe it's a personal shortcoming, but this is the main reason I still don't have a Facebook account. I don't want to…

You find this? All I've found is it makes people all the more desperate for me to add them, as if I'm hiding some super social parties from them or something.

I don't find it awkward to tell people "Sorry but I only add people that'd let me sleep on their couch at 5am in the morning" - in fact it often makes them feel awkward usually because they don't want to admit they'd not let me in!

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