Poll: Do you have a Facebook account?

It WAS a while ago. I think the main trigger was about the ownership of the submitted data. Can't check anymore, because t&c changes constantly.

But don't tell me, now everything is much better. That is what all software people say about the last release, isn't it? Just get it right from the beginning.

It was a good decision, though. Everybody should check t&c before signing something. That sheds a clear light on who is really evil and who is not.

I use a development version of webkit for logging into social network sites. My accounts exist purely for work purposes, and on the rare occasions that I actually need to log into one of them, I fire up webkit.

I'd be fine with them if they didn't broadcast my every move and everyone I know, but even then I wouldn't use them; I just don't see any point to them. If I want to know how someone's doing I'll contact them on Skype or by phone or just go visit.

Yup. When did I ever say that I was not a weird person!?

Nope, never had one. No Google+ so far either.

I find Twitter both entertaining and useful and a little LinkedIn is helpful to keep up with old coworkers and such.

My group of friends used to call each other on Thursday or Friday nights to organize what was going on. That eventually stopped happening because of facebook. It took quite a bit of peer pressure to get an account and see what the fuss was about.

I used it diligently for about a year to give it a fair trial. I actually liked it until I saw the illusion. I promptly deleted it when I'd had enough.

I found the mediated social experience wasn't adding any value to my life. A lot of friends I had spent a lot of time and energy in building friendships with became casual observers in the stream of events. Instead of being personally invited out with the gang I found that I was just filtering my feed for events and filtering for the ones I would be interested in. I would just get invited to everything because facebook makes it so easy to spam your network. I didn't have to talk to anyone. It was ironically anonymous and passive.

It just didn't work for me. I'm an introvert. I invest a lot of emotional energy in my relationships. I have few friends and I like to shower them with my attention and care. Facebook opened up a lot of opportunities to meet new people and attend parties I would have otherwise never been invited to, but I don't put a lot of value in such things. I'd rather focus on the people that mean a lot to me than to be buzzing about from one event to another and just watching life pass by on a web page.

I'm also of the mind that there are really very few things in life that matter. If some person I barely know in my family just had a kid I wouldn't really care. It never mattered before facebook and it still doesn't matter now. It's just mental noise. I like to take time to reflect and absorb things... too much information just keeps me busy with unimportant things.