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Ask HN: What Sucks About Facebook?

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Re: Ask HN: What Sucks About Facebook?

#11

Post by jacquesm »

wangwei wrote: post #9
jacquesm wrote: post #4

I think social networks are cyclic because they have a 'fashion' element to them. Whereever the 'hip' people are that's where the rest will follow. So once the 'hip' people (some would say the trend-setters) move out their groupies will follow. Of course after that it's a long way down that hill that you can literally shoot up on but I don't think there ever will be a permanent social network. It's more like a locust…

I do agree with you. But if you view it this way, are't most systems cyclic? companies, economic boom and burst. Even America might fall one day after its peak. The important question is how long the cycle is. Previous social networks have never gained such mainstream adoption and user participation as Facebook have. Facebook might fall one day, but my bet is that it's gonna take longer than you anticipated. Everythi…

The interval between shifts seems to be lengthening, I think this is due to the increased effectiveness of the predominant social network du jour to exploit network effects. Maybe that alone will be enough to counter the 'fashion' factor but I don't think we're there yet.

And sure, everything is eventually cyclic (well, almost everything) but I mean cyclic on a measurable (say 10 years) time-scale, not something geological.

Re: Ask HN: What Sucks About Facebook?

#12

Post by sandipagr »

bl4k wrote: post #10
sandipagr wrote: post #7

What sucks about facebook? That I can't stay away from it and I waste at least an hour or two everyday on it. Someone should ban facebook. I'm not even kidding

What are you doing during all those hours? I never got into it that much (other than trawling for hot women).

I am recent graduate, so I guess that explains a little. Normally, its being in touch with everyone. I moved here from Nepal 4 years ago and Facebook is a great way to be in touch with my high school friends. Maybe I like to keep an eye on what people are upto :) plus, lots of event planning and chat communication happen in facebook now. I see myself just leaving a msg on facebook than using my email client. It's very sad that how digital world is separating real life communications, eh?

Re: Ask HN: What Sucks About Facebook?

#13

Post by apsurd »

sandipagr wrote: post #12
bl4k wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you doing during all those hours? I never got into it that much (other than trawling for hot women).

I am recent graduate, so I guess that explains a little. Normally, its being in touch with everyone. I moved here from Nepal 4 years ago and Facebook is a great way to be in touch with my high school friends. Maybe I like to keep an eye on what people are upto :) plus, lots of event planning and chat communication happen in facebook now. I see myself just leaving a msg on facebook than using my email client. It's ver…

wth, this comment will always bother me.

  sad...
so contact people in real life! Write a hand written letter to someone.

If you don't know anybody that will sincerely appreciate a hand-written letter from you, make some new friends and get a new mother, father, sister, uncle, aunt, and dog.

Re: Ask HN: What Sucks About Facebook?

#16

Post by sandipagr »

apsurd wrote: post #13
sandipagr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am recent graduate, so I guess that explains a little. Normally, its being in touch with everyone. I moved here from Nepal 4 years ago and Facebook is a great way to be in touch with my high school friends. Maybe I like to keep an eye on what people are upto :) plus, lots of event planning and chat communication happen in facebook now. I see myself just leaving a msg on facebook than using my email client. It's ver…

wth, this comment will always bother me. sad... so contact people in real life! Write a hand written letter to someone. If you don't know anybody that will sincerely appreciate a hand-written letter from you, make some new friends and get a new mother, father, sister, uncle, aunt, and dog.

Communication is not a one way street, sir! I was just saying what I feel. My friends prefer texting over phone calls while I am the other way. I have texting disabled on my phone so that I can actually talk more often, though at the expense of few lost communications.

regarding "get a new mother, father..." it doesn't cost to have some respect for others, like seriously! I don't know why did I even bothered to respond

Re: Ask HN: What Sucks About Facebook?

#17

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

I actually like Facebook and don't have any complaints that come to mind. Perhaps demographic has something to do with it: I'm an engineer in my mid-40's who spends a fair amount of time online. But I got an account because of a very non-technical friend who used it to share pictures and anecdotes about her life. I log onto FB about 1-2 times a week for around 10 minutes each, so I'm not a heavy user. I'm using it mostly to keep in touch with people I haven't seen since college, or friends who live a long distance away that I don't talk to often. And for that it works really well.

I don't care about FB privacy because really, there's nothing there that I worry about getting out. My friends are pretty boring :-)

Re: Ask HN: What Sucks About Facebook?

#18

Post by audyyy »

I deleted mine a few days ago. Hopefully I'll make it through the 14-days where I can re-activate.

## My Facebook Rants:

* __Friends__ - A social network should just sense the people you're interested in and give updates accordingly. This would do away with your creepy co-worker demanding that you be his/her "friend." You wouldn't have to delete, and offend, that kid that you never spoke to in the 5th grade. In fact, Facebook kind of requires that its users adopt a kind of 5th grade mentality towards social interaction. "Will you be my girlfriend?"

OkCupid gets this part right. You can add people as friends but updates from people you've recently stalked show up in your feed automatically. If OkCupid wasn't a dating-oriented site, it wouldn't make a bad social networking site.

* __The e-mails__ - I block Facebook emails on gmail. There really should be a way to opt-out of this. It's annoying.

* __Tagging__ - This seemed neat at first and was what probably made Facebook popular in the Facebook but it was a mistake. When I had Facebook, I just blocked anyone from seeing pictures I was tagged in. If I went to a party or something; I would avoid cameras because I didn't want to have to worry about a picture of me drinking and playing dice in an alley to show up on my wall.

* __Vendor Lock-In__ - You can't download your own profile pictures, status updates, etc without the use of some ephemeral 3rd party tool that probably won't exist for very long.

* __The 14-day re-activation period__ - I quit smoking after 6 years; it was easier.

(Just pretend that HN supports markdown :)

Re: Ask HN: What Sucks About Facebook?

#20

Post by bigtech »

There needs to be some way to easily differentiate between close friends and casual acquaintances. I'm mainly interested in interacting with close friends, and there are some things I don't wish to share with everyone I know. Without this, everyone is on the same level and it leads to bad signal to noise ratio.
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