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Ask HN: I had more friends before Facebook. Anyone agree?

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Re: Ask HN: I had more friends before Facebook. Anyone agree?

#11

Post by Mz »

I hardly ever log in to my facebook account. It's not really my cup of tea. Nonetheless, I can somewhat relate to your experience in that at one time I had a good friend online who stopped emailing me and then popped in out of the blue to comment on something I had posted on my website. It turns out this person had begun following my website and that apparently met their needs and they felt no need to actually engage me in conversation. This was kind of an icky moment for me. The friendship later ended.

I continue to wrestle with my relationship to such things. You can only have so many actual close friends. There are only so many hours in the day and close friendship requires sustained, on-going interaction to maintain. For this reason, I tend to think "social networks" are doomed to be shallow affairs. Yet, paradoxically, I find that I share a lot more info online than I do with most folks I know in person. I'm not shy there just isn't enough time in the day to explain some things to everyone I meet, so I just don't want to open up some can of worms. Still, I wrestle with this process where I seem to gradually be working on developing an online audience where the relationship is inherently lopsided: Other people often know a great deal more about me than I know about them. But this isn't really what I think of as friendship and I like having friends, which have been a tad scarce of late (remaking your life usually causes you to shed friends).

I don't have answers for you. Just sharing some of my own internal questions, FWIW.

Re: Ask HN: I had more friends before Facebook. Anyone agree?

#12

Post by jneal »

achompas wrote: post #9

How old are you? I'm tempted to chalk this up to cointegration between you losing friends (like many others) while growing older and Facebook's popularity increasing. Its harder to make friends as you grow older, and you grow apart from friends over the years, so your net # of friends declines with time. Meanwhile, we're growing up while Facebook becomes more popular. Thus, it's easy to blame FB for a traditional phe…

You may be right..although I do believe Facebook is partially to blame at least. I am 26...and I've got friends who have moved away, friends who have gotten married, etc...BTW I've been married myself, but I never allowed marriage to keep me from having friends

Re: Ask HN: I had more friends before Facebook. Anyone agree?

#14

Post by starter »

jamesbritt wrote: post #10
starter wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope our generation figures out how to get out of this quagmire somehow." What is one thing we could do the reinvent the Social Network concept? I recently asked What to build into a better social network ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2586836 ) I'm on a mission to build a bigger, better network. I'm starting to see that people are longing for a social experience that is truly social. Better algorithm…

Better algorithms just aren't cutting it. What will? Make things harder rather than easier. I mean, I do not want 5-line bot scripts slurping up my associations. I do not want it to be easy for Joe Blow to learn what book I last read or what foods I like. I do not want to be fodder for every Social Media expert. Having some sort of speed bumps might help filter out the frictionless-friends from the real friends. Face…

Make things harder rather than easier. Got it.

Social media "experts" need better ways to spend their time and starting at schools with .edu addresses will help to build concentrated user bases. So, THAT won't be a problem.

Based on feedback, maybe FB's problem is simply that it's no longer theFaceBook. Its not exclusive, hardly worth my time and the structure is vastly overbuilt for what its meant to be: a people directory.

Re: Ask HN: I had more friends before Facebook. Anyone agree?

#15

Post by seangeo »

I can relate. I have an old high school friend that I used to maintain pretty regular contact with via email since I moved interstate. Early on in the Facebook rise we both had accounts, she still uses her's but I lost interest in it. However, to her online social interaction = facebook and we no longer email each other.

I find Twitter is a bit different though, since it is not like putting your whole life up on a page, it can just be short catchups fairly regularly. Maybe it's better in this respect because it doesn't try to take the place of things like phone calls and email in the way Facebook does.

Re: Ask HN: I had more friends before Facebook. Anyone agree?

#17

Post by petervandijck »

jneal wrote: post #12
achompas wrote: post #9

How old are you? I'm tempted to chalk this up to cointegration between you losing friends (like many others) while growing older and Facebook's popularity increasing. Its harder to make friends as you grow older, and you grow apart from friends over the years, so your net # of friends declines with time. Meanwhile, we're growing up while Facebook becomes more popular. Thus, it's easy to blame FB for a traditional phe…

You may be right..although I do believe Facebook is partially to blame at least. I am 26...and I've got friends who have moved away, friends who have gotten married, etc...BTW I've been married myself, but I never allowed marriage to keep me from having friends

It's likely the age. At 26, friends start drifting away and it's hard to make new ones. People have less time and inclination to spend hours on the phone at this age.
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