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Doctorow: How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook

informationweek.com

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Re: Doctorow: How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook

#21

Post by brlewis »

Xichekolas wrote: post #20
damien wrote: post #3

I've never understood how Facebook got to be so big in the first place with their policy of requiring to sign up to do anything. I've never needed to see a Facebook page that badly that I'd want to spend the time signing up for yet another website that I never use. (And why is Facebook banned from BugMeNot?) Facebook is the new AOL... hadn't thought of it that way, but it does seem like an appropriate analogy.

Easy. Facebook was seen as the in thing on campus. If you had a Facebook profile, you were hip and cool and cutting edge. After a few months in 2004 it got to the point that not having a profile meant people simply forgot who you were (because they couldn't read your profile like they could everyone elses). Obviously it influenced none of your close friends, but people you just met would judge you by your profile and…

I don't think you've really answered his question. If not having a profile meant people simply forgot who you were, then you're talking about a time when facebook was already big.

Re: Doctorow: How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook

#22

Post by brianmckenzie »

I think Doctorow overstates the awkwardness of ignoring a friend request. People do it all the time, I know I do, and I've never accepted a 'top friends' request.

There's a hidden benefit if people use the 'ignore' feature properly: you get a better idea of who your friends are. Someone ignoring a friend request can be very telling.

Re: Doctorow: How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook

#23

Post by dreish »

Excuse me if this is a bad idea, since I ditched the social network trend after a few minutes on Friendster some years ago.

It seems that the design ought to have however many different levels of friends you want, with the inner circles seeing everything on your page that the outer circles can see, plus some more, without necessarily knowing the name of the circle they're in. That way you could have Public (not friended at all) Or a directed acyclic graph instead of a single path, I guess, as long as you only allow people access to that feature if they promise they understand how to use it. (Whose social life is that complicated?)

Re: Doctorow: How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook

#24

Post by dnaquin »

brlewis wrote: post #21
Xichekolas wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy. Facebook was seen as the in thing on campus. If you had a Facebook profile, you were hip and cool and cutting edge. After a few months in 2004 it got to the point that not having a profile meant people simply forgot who you were (because they couldn't read your profile like they could everyone elses). Obviously it influenced none of your close friends, but people you just met would judge you by your profile and…

I don't think you've really answered his question. If not having a profile meant people simply forgot who you were, then you're talking about a time when facebook was already big.

well there was transition. when people realized, hey i can invite everyone to my party and not actually have to go around inviting people or posting signs around campus. if you weren't on facebook, you weren't finding out about the parties. simple.

really, every decision of the masses can be attributed to laziness?

Re: Doctorow: How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook

#25

Post by brlewis »

dnaquin wrote: post #24
brlewis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you've really answered his question. If not having a profile meant people simply forgot who you were, then you're talking about a time when facebook was already big.

well there was transition. when people realized, hey i can invite everyone to my party and not actually have to go around inviting people or posting signs around campus. if you weren't on facebook, you weren't finding out about the parties. simple. really, every decision of the masses can be attributed to laziness?

At the point when Facebook was a viable substitute for posting signs, there must have already been a lot of people using Facebook.

Re: Doctorow: How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook

#26

Post by damien »

mrtron wrote: post #13
damien wrote: post #3

I've never understood how Facebook got to be so big in the first place with their policy of requiring to sign up to do anything. I've never needed to see a Facebook page that badly that I'd want to spend the time signing up for yet another website that I never use. (And why is Facebook banned from BugMeNot?) Facebook is the new AOL... hadn't thought of it that way, but it does seem like an appropriate analogy.

Facebook the new AOL? Absolutely the best analogy.

Has anyone written a Facebook App that gives Usenet access?

Re: Doctorow: How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook

#27

Post by run4yourlives »

damien wrote: post #26
mrtron wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook the new AOL? Absolutely the best analogy.

Has anyone written a Facebook App that gives Usenet access?

I'm going to write one that sends you free cd's with "software" on them.

Re: Doctorow: How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook

#28

Post by smelendez »

Dauntless wrote: post #4
brlewis wrote: post #2

This is the best anti-social-networking article I've read yet. Choice quote: You'd think that Facebook would be the perfect tool for handling all this. It's not. For every long-lost chum who reaches out to me on Facebook, there's a guy who beat me up on a weekly basis through the whole seventh grade but now wants to be my buddy; or the crazy person who was fun in college but is now kind of sad; or the creepy ex-co-wo…

I admit I have a lot of pending friends' requests... I was hoping they were going to expire but it looks like Facebook haven't implemented this very useful feature.

Just click the decline/ignore/whatever button. It doesn't tell them.

Re: Doctorow: How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook

#29

Post by Xichekolas »

brlewis wrote: post #21
Xichekolas wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy. Facebook was seen as the in thing on campus. If you had a Facebook profile, you were hip and cool and cutting edge. After a few months in 2004 it got to the point that not having a profile meant people simply forgot who you were (because they couldn't read your profile like they could everyone elses). Obviously it influenced none of your close friends, but people you just met would judge you by your profile and…

I don't think you've really answered his question. If not having a profile meant people simply forgot who you were, then you're talking about a time when facebook was already big.

Refer to my first sentence (Facebook was seen as the in thing on campus. If you had a Facebook profile, you were hip and cool and cutting edge.) to answer his question directly.

I can only explain everything after that to me being a blustery gasbag that likes to elaborate.

Re: Doctorow: How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook

#30

Post by aston »

damien wrote: post #3

I've never understood how Facebook got to be so big in the first place with their policy of requiring to sign up to do anything. I've never needed to see a Facebook page that badly that I'd want to spend the time signing up for yet another website that I never use. (And why is Facebook banned from BugMeNot?) Facebook is the new AOL... hadn't thought of it that way, but it does seem like an appropriate analogy.

Facebook's early growth was based in large part on tactical open-ups of the service. They started with just Harvard (where I'd say the "who's got the most friends?" game kicked things off), expanded to the Ivies and then elite non-Ivies (who desperately want to be like Harvard) and slowly, slowly worked their way down the college eliteness scale, adding similar types of schools at the same time (northeastern LAC's in one clump, west coast state schools in another, etc). Schools who weren't added yet wanted to be in the elite club, and schools that were already in were too busy editing other people's wall posts to notice the elite factor of the site diminishing. Eventually they opened it up to all colleges, but that was probably well after they had opened it up to the colleges that actually mattered, numbers wise. The college growth sorta has buttressed the rest of the growth, since it pulls in new users as they go to college and retains old users as they graduate.

Meanwhile, the site's features progressed along, making the site increasingly sticky (it really wasn't back in the day). The big hitters were and still are Photos and Events, which both happen a lot better if all of your friends are already signed up for the site.

All of this stuff happened well before there was a lot of hype from the Valley started kicking in. Facebook's growth since opening up to high school (and later, the world) is less interesting though, since they've basically been running on network effects, inherent virality and quality product. They didn't have any of those when the site first started.

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