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Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

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Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#71

Post by yashchandra »

cdcarter wrote: post #49
yashchandra wrote: post #27

For me, fb is useful only to keep an eye on what is going on with my family/friends specially for things such as cute pictures of their kids, marriage/birthday events etc. My wife uses her fb time to update me on those. So personally, I hardly login to fb anymore.

This is what Facebook's utility for all of us is. Just replace cute photos of their kids with cute photos of your crush (or ex), and replace marriage events with house parties, and you've hit what the twenty-somethings on fb do daily. Anything else is to justify being there.

Good point. agreed:)

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#72

Post by salgernon »

ryanmerket wrote: post #37
ams6110 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use email to keep in touch with family and close friends. I don't see what Facebook would do to improve on that.

The friction of sharing and reacting to life milestones with all your friends and family is an order of magnitude easier on Facebook. For example, try teaching a grandparent or technology inept uncle how to see photos of grandkids/nieces/nephews through email vs checking Facebook...

My kids grandparents are more appreciative of a photo in a frame or a drawing on the fridge than an image on a screen. Of course they can pick and choose if I chose to post those photos on Facebook, but I also take pleasure in curating and actually spending money to create a print (if I spend money on something, I'm more likely to do a good job.)

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#73

Post by hu_me »

"more than 1,000 Americans surveyed by Reuters and market research firm Ipsos, 21 percent said that they have no Facebook account, leaving 79 percent to answer questions about their Facebook use."

oh that must be so statistically valid. please base your assumption about 900m userbase from a 1000+ sample out of which 21% dont have an account to begin with.

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#74

Post by taligent »

jdminhbg wrote: post #21
simonsarris wrote: post #14

66% of users are tuning in? That's great! Every time a Facebook usage topic comes up there's the usual round of scorn usually backed up by a strange display of plumage involving the sentence, "I just deleted my facebook yesterday/last month/last year/never used it." And that's okay. But I want to point out to my fellow HN-goers why facebook is so wonderful. There's also a note about privacy at the bottom[1] since tha…

> These functions in times past were done with the laborous process of making a million letters or phone calls or in many cases (like my hometown page) scarcely made or not made at all. Or with Geocities? FB hardly invented the concept of a page on the internet where events are listed. I'm sure it provides some nice functionality around calendaring and networking, but we didn't go from xeroxed fliers to Facebook with…

See this says more about you than Facebook.

Nobody other than you is forcing you to use it. You don't have to do keep hiding apps, photos etc. You don't have to "keep up" with anything. The social obligation is all in your head.

I have Facebook. I find it incredibly useful for keeping track of people. And yet I only use it when I feel the urge to.

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#75

Post by taligent »

detst wrote: post #51
[deleted] wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

You couldn't be bothered to read two more sentences that demonstrate that he gets the difference, yet you could take the time to write a response? Some of us simply take issue with the revisionist history where we went from the stone age to this new concept of socialization brought to us by Facebook.

What revisionist history ? Is there some club I'm not a part of that has decided Facebook was the birthplace of social media.

EVERYBODY knows what Myspace is/was and that it was the first large scale social network.

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#76

Post by artmageddon »

rscale wrote: post #52
trebuch3t wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Facebook has turned into a stream of blabber and pictures of people's kids (no offence). What is NOT noisy is: * Path (just my close friends) * Pair (just my girlfriend) * Google+ (the "what's hot" news feed is actually pretty interesting)

Out of curiousity, what's the value-add of Pair versus just using SMS/MMS? I looked at their website but I didn't "get it".

Not too much, but it makes people feel nice by having an app that they know is shared with one other person. All the features within it can be replicated by using a combination of other apps(Draw Something, SMS, some kind of social-shared to-do list, etc.) but Pair brings it together nicely. The last girl I dated and I used it, and it was silly fun.

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#77

Post by taligent »

alttab wrote: post #61
nkwiatek wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this all goes into a FB database somewhere, which who knows has access to it, or backups to it. Enjoy being harvested voluntarily. Are you being ironic with a statement like this, or are you serious? The second there's even so much as a bug that affects some obscure privacy setting, the TechCrunch pitchforks are out, and the brand is on the line. Do you really think that FB is just gonna let anyone rummage through…

The way I see it is this: Would I invite Mark Zuckerberg to be permanently and pervasively privy to my friends, my conversations with them, and all of my pictures? Seriously - Facebook is Zucker's brain-child in that it face-scans, categorizes, and picks apart your words and photos. Its like inviting Zucker himself into your photo-album, allowing him to think and learn more about you while you are away. Facebook is f…

You could well need help with paranoia this strong.

Mark Zuckerberg is not going through your friends, conversations and photos. Nor is anybody else other than you and your friends. In fact due to its design your emails would be far easier to 'read' than Facebook would be.

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#78

Post by zem »

simonsarris wrote: post #14

66% of users are tuning in? That's great! Every time a Facebook usage topic comes up there's the usual round of scorn usually backed up by a strange display of plumage involving the sentence, "I just deleted my facebook yesterday/last month/last year/never used it." And that's okay. But I want to point out to my fellow HN-goers why facebook is so wonderful. There's also a note about privacy at the bottom[1] since tha…

you are missing the point of the facebook privacy complaints. it's not that i have any expectation that what i do on fb is secret - it's there on a public website, after all, with multiple people reading and commenting. i do have the expectation that any given conversation i have is mostly noticeable by the people involved in that conversation. having facebook aggregate my activity across the site and make it trivially accessible using my username as the key (and even worse, actively pushing updates to that activity to my friends' streams) violates that expectation violently, and is the main reason i reduced my interaction with facebook to a brief trawl through my friendstream once every day or two.

here's an analogy. suppose i'm at a party, standing in a group of people and having a conversation. this is by no means a private conversation - it is taking place in the middle of a large, open room, and anyone is welcome to come by and participate. i'd still be pretty annoyed if i found out that someone had a hidden microphone broadcasting that conversation to the poolside, despite the fact that anyone sitting by the pool could in theory walk by and listen in any time they wanted to.

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#79

Post by taligent »

salgernon wrote: post #72
ryanmerket wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The friction of sharing and reacting to life milestones with all your friends and family is an order of magnitude easier on Facebook. For example, try teaching a grandparent or technology inept uncle how to see photos of grandkids/nieces/nephews through email vs checking Facebook...

My kids grandparents are more appreciative of a photo in a frame or a drawing on the fridge than an image on a screen. Of course they can pick and choose if I chose to post those photos on Facebook, but I also take pleasure in curating and actually spending money to create a print (if I spend money on something, I'm more likely to do a good job.)

What makes you think they are mutually exclusive ?

Because I doubt your grandparents are going to be having hundreds and hundreds of photo frames of your kids.

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#80

Post by taligent »

_nist wrote: post #68
simonsarris wrote: post #14

66% of users are tuning in? That's great! Every time a Facebook usage topic comes up there's the usual round of scorn usually backed up by a strange display of plumage involving the sentence, "I just deleted my facebook yesterday/last month/last year/never used it." And that's okay. But I want to point out to my fellow HN-goers why facebook is so wonderful. There's also a note about privacy at the bottom[1] since tha…

> Without facebook, I'd have no idea cousin X is having a baby... You mean you can't use a phone to stay in contact with your family and friends? That's a bit strange... What bothers me the most is that a lot of the comments have totally forgotten about MySpace. That was a site where you could truly customize your homepage with a little html knowledge. And they didn't force things like retarded timelines where I can…

Maybe my extended family don't live in the same time zone.

Maybe friends and family can't use a phone because they are too busy working two jobs.

Maybe I have so many friends and family it would be literally impossible to find time to keep in contact.

Facebook makes "keeping in touch" asynchronous. THAT is the reason for its success.

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