"Social Media vs. Personal Media"
The real anti-Facebook is good old email
111–120 of 165 posts
Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
But getting someone's Facebook is less socially awkward than their email address. You can also remember them easier and communicate with them faster. Most of the people I met this summer didn't have an American phone number so Facebook (or Whatsapp) was the only way to communicate with them.
> But getting someone's Facebook is less socially awkward than their email address. I don't understand why this would be. Would you explain why -for your cohort- this is true?
I don't use FB at all for my work; though my coworkers can obviously look me up. I only use it for family, friends, and try to keep it sanitary. I don't want my coworkers knowing my private life, and Facebook makes it difficult to have discrete sharing amongst different "classes" of friends.
Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the difference is subtle, but a little different. Status updates on Twitter, Facebook, etc. feel like a part of the service - something that exists on Facebook. By checking your timeline you're only looking at events that exist elsewhere. On the other hand, receiving a mail feels like it came to you . It does not exist as an entity somewhere in the world, it's a message that came to your inbox (and possibly t…
Exactly. I think you put it better into words than me.
It's a subtle feeling. I spent like 10 minutes rewriting my comment because it was hard to express it precisely.
Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But getting someone's Facebook is less socially awkward than their email address. Really depends on the setting. Quite a few people I know would be more comfortable sharing a mail address than their Facebook info, even if we ignore the percentage that doesn't even have Facebook. (For quick messaging contacts the fragmentation of messengers is really annoying. I don't want 4-6 different messengers on my phone just t…
>> But getting someone's Facebook is less socially awkward than their email address. >Really depends on the setting. Quite a few people I know would be more comfortable sharing a mail address than their Facebook info, even if we ignore the percentage that doesn't even have Facebook. This is part of what's backwards about Facebook. Sometimes I've had a 5-15min conversation with someone at a bar and they're like, "Do y…
Hadn't thought about that aspect, but that's of course right: a random mail address only gives you a way to contact someone, but not other context.
It's great if you have something specific you want to follow up on, otherwise it just gets filed away. Or can be used to give Facebook/Twitter/whatever else information the next day if you want to (after thinking about it). Mail addresses can be more anonymous and easier to dispose in that way, if you have clearly separated ones.
Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is what diaspora tried to do. It has not gone well.
Diaspora was written by a bunch of college students who were unqualified to be implementing the security protocols necessary. Given that one of the biggest reasons people want to move off Facebook is security, that's a no-go. The fact that Diaspora failed at implementing this idea doesn't mean that the idea is bad.
> The fact that Diaspora failed at implementing this idea doesn't mean that the idea is bad.
I don't think the parent meant to imply it's a bad idea; only that Diaspora kind of sucked all the oxygen out of the "social networks done right" room, and now if you want to float an alternative you have to contend with a lot more skepticism than you would have before.
Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think email works better because people perceive it as a more direct message just to them. If say, you send an email and bcc people on it, they feel like they were sent a direct one-on-one personal message (even if they objectively know it is a newsletter). Status updates on Twitter, Facebook, etc, when it was obvious that they are for multiple people not just a one-to-one message don't produce the same effect. Peo…
I think the difference is subtle, but a little different. Status updates on Twitter, Facebook, etc. feel like a part of the service - something that exists on Facebook. By checking your timeline you're only looking at events that exist elsewhere. On the other hand, receiving a mail feels like it came to you . It does not exist as an entity somewhere in the world, it's a message that came to your inbox (and possibly t…
I think you hit the nail on the head. An email is yours in the sense that once sent to you, the sender cannot 'take it away' or 'modify it' or 'delete it'.
This is different than many other 'communication protocols' out there such as Facebook Posts, Twitter Posts, Slack comments, Shared Docs etc. which all have the notion of an 'owner' who can retract permissions, modify, delete etc. after 'send'. The email analogy would be the sender reaching into your inbox and deleting or modifying your email (ugh!). This is fundamentally what gives email the feel that there is no favored owner. Conversely, every recipient can feel that the email is theirs.
We're launching an email-like service, (https://tmail21.com) in the next couple of weeks. Our premise is to preserve the best aspects of email while fixing or improving on the worst.
We think one of the best aspects of email is the aforementioned 'democratic' (i.e. no favored owner) characteristic.
Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email
#117Facebook replacement, email replacement, Windows replacement, etc etc...we heard about these attempts for a long time and yet they failed. Why?
From the article, is the problem really the technical complexity or the empty rooms? Is it privacy? Or, is there really a problem at all? Of course there is! Just like any other businesses/companies there some people that will always complain!
In the case of TinyLetter, it is NOT a replacement of Facebook. It will NOT be -- far from it. People don't use Facebook just to communicate. Some people use it to advertise, to sell, to communicate (sure), to look for old friends, to pretend to be somebody else, to boast that they are successful, to look for missing people important to them just like this:
http://gary.littlethings.com/gary-bentley-nurse/?utm_source=...
Now, can you do this in a newsletter? Don't think so...
Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email
#118Glad to see pud is still knocking around. Didn't realize he was the TinyLetter guy. FC was one of the best things ever to hit the web. As for E-mail vs. Fb...
It is simply an issue of control: Content, speed, and the Signal-to-Noise ratio. And that goes for both the Sender and the Receiver. Makes e-mail the obvious choice.
Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email
#119Founder of TinyLetter here. Cool article! Glad TinyLetter is still going strong & a successful acquisition for MailChimp.
I would say mobog was the Facebook killer. Before its time though and when Instagram hit the mark Facebook promptly bought them and later WhatsApp. In Asia, primarily China, the Facebook killer is WeChat which is basically Instagram and WhatsApp.
> In Asia, primarily China, the Facebook killer is WeChat which is basically Instagram and WhatsApp.
And banking.
A huge 'value add' which has caught on is being able to send real-life money with no transaction fees to other people.
And treated in novel ways - 'lucky money' to send friends in your friend circles, paying for a taxi, utility bills, seeing a movie, train and plane tickets, etc.
Re: The real anti-Facebook is good old email
#120Except “good old email” is basically owned by Google now, so there’s small choice in rotten apples.
The difference is that email doesn't depend on Google to exist, and leaving Gmail isn't all that bad. They even support email forwarding, so that you wouldn't loose contact with people that only have your old email: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10957?hl=en
Are you joking or what? I, personally, don't use gmail, that's not the problem. The problem is everyone else does. And have you ever (in last 5 years or so) tried using your personal email server to communicate with them? I'm guessing you have not, because otherwise you would know how painful it is, as Google does everything to make it painful as hell. Large portion of my contact list are gmail users, especially that part of my contact list who I'm not friendly enough with to tolerate continuously ending up in their “Spam” folder. And that's exactly what you do, when you write to gmail from your own private email server — end up in their “Spam” folder, no matter what you do. So if you are ever going to communicate via email with whoever you might call your customer, you are basically forced to use gmail or another large email service which will be whitelisted on other large email services. 2015 is not the year of free Internet.