the dig at the stock price is so ridiculous. i mean, yes it's dropped since the IPO, but it's still valued at over USD 40B. which is a lot.
Facebook the Devourer
61–70 of 101 posts
Re: Facebook the Devourer
#62Why on earth does this have upvotes. 1. Thomas Reynold's post comes across as a pathetic childish rant. 2. If you don't think connecting with your friends is valuable then don't write a blog post about it, keep it to yourself, because I don't give a shit what you think.
Damn straight. They'll have to pry your right to emote, see baby pictures and gain acceptance from peers out of your cold, dead hands!
Re: Facebook the Devourer
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I generally agree with you, I think people like us are somewhat to blame for not providing an alternative to FB that is as easy to use. I also blame my friends, relatives and acquaintances that have been so easily seduced, but I'm not sure that's fair. Thankfully, my parents are too old to have any interest in FB, and my siblings are equally as cynical (aka "weird").
> I also blame my friends, relatives and acquaintances that have been so easily seduced, but I'm not sure that's fair. It's really not. That's like blaming people for driving cars before autonomous cars came out.
It's more like blaming people for eating at Chick-fil-A.
They're supporting a company that is, in our eyes, committing a moral wrong. The difference, in the case of Facebook, is that they aren't necessarily aware of this moral wrong.
Re: Facebook the Devourer
#64> Facebook ... produces nothing of value > If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, nobody would give a shit. There are plenty of people who would give a shit. You may not be one of them, but there are countless people who rely on Facebook to communicate with family members on the other side of the globe, or share their private pictures and memories with their loved ones, or just to keep in touch with friends who no longer…
> there are countless people who rely on Facebook to communicate They can try e-mail, IM, SMS, picking up the telephone, smoke signals. Let's stop pretending Facebook is so ingrained in people's lives that they cannot live without it. We're talking about a website that's merely a time waster. > a billion people log into Facebook every month I'd bet that number is way off once you account for spam profiles and how Fac…
I don't see how that isn't true for the other examples of Google and Amazon?
Re: Facebook the Devourer
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google has almost no lock-in at all for their main economic engine, search. If a notably better competitor comes along tomorrow, within a year the whole money empire could crumble. People would just go to the new place, one at a time. Facebook has TREMENDOUS lock-in. For any new place to have value, it's got to have the majority of the people Facebook has change over in a very short timeframe. The problem with techni…
> Facebook has TREMENDOUS lock-in. For any new place to have value, it's got to have the majority of the people Facebook has change over in a very short timeframe. Eh. I quit it a few years ago and honestly, no one cared. I kept up with the people I kept up with, they did the same. it completely vanished with nary a ripple.
Same here, it seemed like a big decision to give it up but I forgot about it overnight. Once you realize it's the worst way to talk to girls ever invented it kind of loses it's value.
Re: Facebook the Devourer
#66I have 340 Facebook friends (I feel like this is on the middle-lower end of typical). I scrolled down several "pages" on my timeline and saw zero evidence of any those people --- who are predominantly friends and family, or people I went to high school with --- were playing anything like Farmville. Most updates on my timeline are people sharing pictures of the city they're visiting, or of their kids. All of these peo…
I'm guessing you long ago hid messages from Farmville and similar games and forgot about it. There's no way you know 340 people who don't play Facebook games. Yet I can use Facebook today to find out about meat specials at my butcher, or someone selling artisanal pickles, or a new theater company, or someone making custom knives as their hobby hoping to try to make a living doing it. And because of the stupid blue "l…
How does it harm small businesses when people "like" Walmart on Facebook? You can't buy artisanal marshmallows at Walmart, and it's no cheaper for Walmart to collect "likes" on Facebook than it is for Hipster Marshmallow Factory.
I just don't see the controversy here.
Re: Facebook the Devourer
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can we stop this already? No we can't. Imagine yourself going back to the 80s and explaining the Web to someone. It's as close to utopia as you can get. Most people probably wouldn't believe it. But it's real, it's here and it's amazing. I'd argue that Facebook undermines a lot of what makes the Web great. And since it's being confused with the Web itself, by being so popular and pervasively devouring, it could be a…
While I generally agree with you, I think people like us are somewhat to blame for not providing an alternative to FB that is as easy to use. I also blame my friends, relatives and acquaintances that have been so easily seduced, but I'm not sure that's fair. Thankfully, my parents are too old to have any interest in FB, and my siblings are equally as cynical (aka "weird").
Sure we are to blame, we are the ones that know better and have the knowledge to build something else. That's what I meant when I said we failed to provide a decent competitive way to share stuff.
The hardest part in my opinion is not the users experience per se, Facebook's not that great. It's getting the traction and the cool factor that's needed to beat the chicken-egg conundrum (I use FB because everybody else does).
Re: Facebook the Devourer
#68This is one thing that has always made me skeptical about FBs survival. The majority of it's use seems to be for very short term things, like friends sharing what they are currently doing. There is little value in most FB posts that are years old. As opposed to wikipedia which is a gradually building blob of knowledge. Let's say FB was down for a week, many people would use G+ instead for their social networking need…
The thousands of pictures of my life all through college and the years since have immense value to me.
Re: Facebook the Devourer
#69Umm. Really? - the arab spring - a father sharing his son's first steps with the world - learning of the death of an old, lost friend - telling the world you are ok after your hotel has been bombed in Mumbai - watching your nephew learn to ride a horse. - learning about steve job's death and feeling the entire world grieve - discovering a new book to read - trash talking your friends about just how bad the Montreal C…
The thing is that Facebook doesn’t connect me to things that matter, it just connects me to lots of things. If my best friend would have been in Mumbai, he would have let me know he was fine through other means. If some acquaintance was in Mumbai, if it weren’t for Facebook, I wouldn’t even know they were there in the first place. And I don’t want to! I mean, I really don’t feel the need to know the lives of 400 different people! I don’t have the emotional energy to actually empathise with all of them. If my brother has a kid, I’ll make sure to visit, but I really couldn’t care less about the kids of all these people I met once in a bar.
Re: Facebook the Devourer
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing you long ago hid messages from Farmville and similar games and forgot about it. There's no way you know 340 people who don't play Facebook games. Yet I can use Facebook today to find out about meat specials at my butcher, or someone selling artisanal pickles, or a new theater company, or someone making custom knives as their hobby hoping to try to make a living doing it. And because of the stupid blue "l…
How does it harm small businesses when people "like" Walmart on Facebook? You can't buy artisanal marshmallows at Walmart, and it's no cheaper for Walmart to collect "likes" on Facebook than it is for Hipster Marshmallow Factory. I just don't see the controversy here.
it ruins your hipster cred.