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Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

blog.chaddickerson.com

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Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#21

Post by bscphil »

joe_the_user wrote: post #19
Gys wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> weirdly impersonal because it tells the recipient that you want them to know what you're up to, but you don't want to write a message just to them. Also, it would be very awkward to opt-out ("hey dude, um please don't send me your mass-email updates anymore.") You mean, like a post on FB ? Or Tweeting ? Readable for all ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ ? Who very likely are not really interested in your message ?

With FB, a person has opted in to being your friend. With a mass email list, whoever knows your email can send it. With FB, you go to the site to get basically this stream of opt-in announcements. With email, they are mixed with things that might require urgent action and direct personal messages and spam and what-not. Of course, I don't have FB on my phone and if I did it would be more intrusive.

>With FB, a person has opted in to being your friend.

And if for some reason you feel obligated to be someone's "friend" on Facebook, you can still opt out of seeing their updates. Not so with email, unless you write a filter that sends it straight to the trash.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#22

Post by sigfubar »

I’ve deleted my Facebook account a few months ago after almost a decade of using it exclusively to sign up for random things. Clicking on the big blue button seemed easier than entering my e-mail and selecting a password, so I kept doing it until the privacy implications of this practice convinced me to abandon it.

However, I won’t be starting a mailing list any time soon.

Perhaps others lead vastly more interesting lives than I do, but I don’t feel any need to launch a personal mailing list about my life any more than I felt the need to share a stream of minutiae on Facebook. Moments that are genuinely dear to me - such as those relating to my family life - are none of anyone else’s business anyway.

3,000+ contacts over 20 years? My goodness, that’s a lot of people. I’m an immigrant 2x removed from his home country, from where I left too early in life to have developed relationships that could continue in the online age. I came to my current country too late to have gone to school here, so I don’t have the implied social network which usually comes with that particular experience.

99% of people I’ve interacted with happen to have been colleagues of mine at one time or another, or folks I’ve met while sitting on either side of the job interview table. While I have enjoyed some very productive work arrangements in the past, none of these people have kept in touch with me after myself or them have moved on to another company.

All this is to say: I would be astonished if anyone wanted to read about the details of my life. These aren’t useful - or indeed enjoyable - to anyone but me and my family, which is where the details shall remain.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#23

Post by NotAnEconomist »

gnicholas wrote: post #15
Gys wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> weirdly impersonal because it tells the recipient that you want them to know what you're up to, but you don't want to write a message just to them. Also, it would be very awkward to opt-out ("hey dude, um please don't send me your mass-email updates anymore.") You mean, like a post on FB ? Or Tweeting ? Readable for all ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ ? Who very likely are not really interested in your message ?

If you follow someone on Twitter, that means you want to get their updates. And it's trivially easy to mute people on Twitter/FB so that you can stop seeing people's messages without risking offending them or hurting their feelings. Another reply mentions having people who don't want to read your email newsletter set up filters to get rid of them. This is possible, but more work than a two-click mute on social media…

> This is possible, but more work than a two-click mute on social media platforms.

It was four clicks for me to set up an email filter on Gmail in response to a message in my inbox.

And there's considerably more filtering options, had I wanted something non-trivial, than there are on FB or Twitter, which are all or nothing -- after all, on email I have the option to more than mute, such as to classify the message based on various parameters.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#24

Post by buzzert »

> My email list is broadcast-only but any replies go directly to me.

If I were to do this, I actually think it would be cool if those in the mailing list could choose whether they want to reply to the whole list or to just me (as easy as removing the list from the CC line). That way, there can be a semi-public discourse with your friends, if you still want something like the "comment thread" from facebook.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#25

Post by vertexFarm »

echevil wrote: post #12

For any social network to work you’d need most of your connections to get onboard the same thing, whether it’s Facebook or anything else. It’s easy for some people to start emailing their friends but it’s hard to imagine that the general public start doing the same thing, and without that, the alternative won’t go very far. In fact I’d find it much more annoying than Facebook if I start receiving such emails from fri…

Luckily I've solved both problems by removing all the friends from the equation. No annoying emails, no dystopic social media platforms! Just me and a bottle or five. What's the downside?

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#26

Post by sturgill »

bscphil wrote: post #21
joe_the_user wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With FB, a person has opted in to being your friend. With a mass email list, whoever knows your email can send it. With FB, you go to the site to get basically this stream of opt-in announcements. With email, they are mixed with things that might require urgent action and direct personal messages and spam and what-not. Of course, I don't have FB on my phone and if I did it would be more intrusive.

>With FB, a person has opted in to being your friend. And if for some reason you feel obligated to be someone's "friend" on Facebook, you can still opt out of seeing their updates. Not so with email, unless you write a filter that sends it straight to the trash.

Which I have in place for any email from my mom with a forward in the subject line. It helps maintain our relationship...

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#27

Post by BeetleB »

User23 wrote: post #8

Why stop there? https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html

Ha! I came here to post that one of his problems (Lesson 2) with Facebook used to be my angst with email. Although I had email at an earlier age, most of my friends who moved away did not - and phone calls were too expensive. So we kept touch for a few years via letters until everyone got email.

Initially, the fact that we could email each other instead of writing letters was awesome. But after about 2 years, all I got were 1-2 liners, and no one wrote thoughtful emails any more. And it got much worse once IM became popular.

Recently, a friend who thinks likewise moved to another continent. Although we do occasionally email, we mostly communicate every few months via letters. Hope it remains that way.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#28

Post by bacon_waffle »

gnicholas wrote: post #4

> My email list is broadcast-only but any replies go directly to me. This sort of mass-email is weirdly impersonal because it tells the recipient that you want them to know what you're up to, but you don't want to write a message just to them. Also, it would be very awkward to opt-out ("hey dude, um please don't send me your mass-email updates anymore."), unlike company emails which there's no awkwardness around unsu…

I have a few friends who send out periodic group emails like these, though IIRC only one uses mailing list software to do it. I really enjoy the mailings, and keep meaning to start sending them out myself.

Receiving one of the mailings feels much more personal to me than I guess seeing a fb post would (I've been off it for several years), and seems more likely to prompt a personal reply from me.

Not sure I understand the worry about awkwardness with opting out - surely it's just as easy to ignore an email as a post on "social media"?

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#29

Post by rubidium »

echevil wrote: post #12

For any social network to work you’d need most of your connections to get onboard the same thing, whether it’s Facebook or anything else. It’s easy for some people to start emailing their friends but it’s hard to imagine that the general public start doing the same thing, and without that, the alternative won’t go very far. In fact I’d find it much more annoying than Facebook if I start receiving such emails from fri…

Here’s the fundamental thing. We don’t need digital social networks. Email, just like mail, is sufficent.
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