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The Facebook experiment has failed

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Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#251

Post by CyberDroiD »

jamesjguthrie wrote: post #192
xtracto wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Reddit, and Slashdot and WoW and usenet... Aren't there studies that find there is an element of addiction to browsing the internet?

"Withdrawal symptoms: If the person stops using the Internet, they experience unpleasant feelings or physical effects." It's a bit like having a drug addiction really. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_addiction_disorder

Wanting to stay connected and communicate with other humans is not a disorder, it's actually quite healthy!

I think it is fascinating that people feel compelled to visit Facebook or any website, and don't know why. It's like calling someone every morning: you want to communicate. If you stop doing that suddenly, you'll miss it.

Calling it an 'addiction' or 'some strange social force' or other conspiracy ideas are interesting, but flawed arguments.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#252

Post by fudged71 »

antoko wrote: post #150
alphang wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should mention 'forcing them to': "I'll wake up in the morning and go on Facebook just ... because," Casey says. "It's not like I want to or I don't. I just go on it. I'm, like, forced to. I don't know why. I need to. Facebook takes up my whole life." http://kottke.org/13/05/wanting-to-be-liked

replace "facebook" with "HN" in the quote above... How many of us could have said that? Are we forced to be here?

To me, it's the fear of missing something important. Something that I would regret not seeing.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#253

Post by robomartin »

hnha wrote: post #215
robomartin wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way a services can be non-intrusive is if you, the user, pay for it. If you paid for the full cost of developing and supporting a solution that did not require such things as advertising and social graph mining in order to build, grow and support a company you'd get a much better product. You'd probably get a product that is far more sensitive to the needs and wants of it's paying client user-base. That's on…

i use free xmpp servers to talk with people who I "met" on free websites. Many people provide services for free because they believe in a shared good. It's not all money money.

OK, sure. You go and try to run a real web-based business with employees, offices and the required infrastructure without "money money".

The point stands: If you as a user don't explicitly pay for it with cash, using an ad blocker means you have chosen to deny the service some revenue.

OK, don't call it theft. That's fine.

Here's a simple mental exercise: Assume that 100% of the entire world-wide Internet audience used ad blockers. How much of the internet would cease to exist as free services? The answer: A huge chunk.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#254

Post by robomartin »

moheeb wrote: post #219
robomartin wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way a services can be non-intrusive is if you, the user, pay for it. If you paid for the full cost of developing and supporting a solution that did not require such things as advertising and social graph mining in order to build, grow and support a company you'd get a much better product. You'd probably get a product that is far more sensitive to the needs and wants of it's paying client user-base. That's on…

So what would folks using an ad blocker be then, if they're " just short of thieves "? I was hoping you had a website in your profile so I could surf all over it.

Thankfully I don't do anything on the web that relies on advertising for revenue.

Here's a website you can surf: mcmaster.com

Have fun.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#255

Post by pyoung »

pseut wrote: post #171
zt wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My best friend and I actually run a ~100 person listserv to this end. We call it "Feed Your Brain" and people send out interesting articles, music, poetry, etc, they find on the internet. Sometimes there is a great discussion or debate, sometimes not. It is very private and intimate and it feels closer to early Reddit or HN than anything else I have found.

Would you mind adding a few details on how you set this up (I'm assuming that you're using 'listserv' as a generic term)? Is it on your own machine, through a web host, etc? I've thought about doing something just like that, but haven't spent the time to figure out a "good" way to set it up.

You could use google groups (it's basically a mailing list). Pretty straight forward.

We had one for our 'post-college' social circle. It was a good way to spread the word about happy hours and parties, without spamming everyone on facebook.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#257

Post by RandallBrown »

My first page is actually quite relevant to me.

A friend of mine has just arrived from across the country to the city I'm in. He just moved here and now I know he's here and we can hang out.

Another friend is looking for help with some yardwork. Free beer or pizza is involved.

Other friends posted pictures of their children, or graduation photos from college.

Another person I know recently got out of the hospital.

All of these are at least somewhat relevant to me.

What else do I use facebook for?

I put an album of photos from a hike I went on the other day. Lots of friends had asked me about it, now they can all see it.

I play on a kickball team and we like to hang out with eachother outside of our normal thursday night games. Plans get made in our facebook group quite often.

Long ago I realized that some of my friends aren't worth keeping up with. I muted or unfriended them on Facebook. Facebook is what you make it, and I've made it in to something that I use every day.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#258

Post by tracker1 »

roc wrote: post #216
austenallred wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google+ really was on to something with its circles: My friends are easily divisible into groups, and, apart from life events like getting engaged, what I want to share is only really relevant to a specific subset. I know Facebook has groups you can share specific things with, but it's not a feature Facebook has focused on, so even I don't really use it. I could use google +, but no one else does, and there's not muc…

> "Google+ really was on to something with its circles:... I could use google +, but no one else does" I wonder how much of Google+'s 'use' problem relates to this feature working extremely well. You section off people you like to keep in contact with, just not on a daily basis. You then don't send most of your day-to-day posts their way. They look at Google+ and see a wasteland. And whenever they mention Google+, yo…

I find that for tech follows, it works better than twitter and fb... but there's much less signal overall, which is nice... for random musings, I'll glance at a twitter feed now and then... it's more of a highest noise platform to me. FB is mainly to keep up with friends/family, some of whom I'd otherwise never talk/communicate with.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#259

Post by frostmatthew »

wambotron wrote: post #222
moron4hire wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> but no one else does You and I apparently have drastically different pictures of G+.

Seriously. I use G+ all the time, although not in the same way people use FB. I talk to my good friends offline and use G+ for the communities. It's almost like reddit with 90% less trolling.

"90% less trolling" - where's the fun in that!
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