This is a reply to Hook’s rant about disliking Facebook…
I will not needlessly recap the article, as you can read it on the above mentioned address.
First of all, it is true that social web pages will gather your personal info, if you so choose and that is due to their nature and if you indeed to choose to participate, you cannot rant against that. If you’re a paranoid person stick to encrypted emails, chat and dark alleys without cameras. If employers have issues with people who had a good time during they education days, than I think it’s a safe bet, that workplace is boring.
If you do think your public image as the 14th century nun is important, than you should stay at home most of the time, just to make sure you don’t generate any ill content about yourself some place. And certainly don’t use the internet! It’s probably bad for you anyway ;).
Retarded people, who feel they’re actually worth something if they add a gazillion people on such social media sites, do exist, but it IS rather simple to ignore them. Just as you have stupid people writing comments everywhere, stupid people listening to lame music on their stupid phones on buses (actually they are a little harder to ignore), and so on… If you fall victim (are unable to see the big blue “Ignore” button) to their pointless quest, I feel for you, but don’t hold that against the service itself :).
What makes facebook special is that it’s not just a web page, but rather a platform on which third party organisations can build their services. Just like Firefox for example. They bot have some great and very useful plug-ins and, since it IS user generated content, some useless and very poorly made plug-ins. Again, it is the people that generate them and as such they are to blame for the quality. Only Apple upholds a certain quality by enforcing a fascist policy of submition to the App Store. Again, I conclude any and all crappy content is a fault of the users (the authors) and the users (end users) for writing and/or using them.
Additionally, Facebook being a platform, it can also be leveraged in other applications. You can use it the way OpenID is used, so for authentication on third-party and completely unrelated pages. It yould be used to automatically improve any contacts list with pictures and other data provided by users. Granted, their API is not the best, and they maintain it as a dead horse (almost not at all - at least for Java), but you can work with Facebook, using exclusively open-source implementations… You can even use c++ to tie in to the goodies. These language specific apis are unofficial, and as such facebook is not to be praised for them…
As for the facebook trying to be too many things at once, I’ve never viewed it in such a way. It is primarily a platform and if you’re not the kind of user that gets a stiffy for each new lame application, than it remains simple. It does nothing more than give you a small window into the lives of people around you.
It does have an integrated photo album, but not wit hthe same purpose of flickr and picasa. I wouldn’t use neither for my personal collection, since it will serve no purpose. Nobody will see it unless I explicitly rape people by email with it. Facebook provides just what I need. A place to upload my photos for free and people will be able to easily interact with them. The only real problem is, they take ownership of those photos…
They’ve also integrated a (poor) IM, but again, you can easily turn it off. Just like the Jabber interface in Gmail… Neat addition for people who need it. And it certainly doesn’t try to replace email. It just has a private way of communication (so you’re not forced to make everything public ;).
As for events: That’s probably one of the best aspects of Facebook, since they are user generated and thus, vary extremely. You can almost certainly find something of interest in your town and make your life less boring. Just last week, for instance a bunch of people met at Vienna’s subway (U-bahn) and had a crazy party on a train, all thanks to Facebook and the viral way news travels on it.
In general, as an Erasmus student I’ve come to appreciate Facebook. It makes meeting new people easier and provides you with an unobtrusive way to stay in contact. Even passively - just through updating your profile and following the updates of others - rather the whole point of it all. It so easy (and cheaper) to organise things - you don’t have to call 13 people, depleting your phone account, just to see who’s interested…
Concerning notifications and stuff, again this is a problem of ill educated users, who click on everything that comes in their way and thus add every single lame application. It is those tree hugers that generate the annoying notification, actions, reactions and all those dog farts. For us, enlightened users, options exists to ignore those pesky people or just their useless applications (and all content they generate).
I work at Marand, and we have leveraged Facebook and other similar websites on many occasions so far. Granted, it’s nowhere near perfect and it’s perfectly understandable not to like it, but to say semi-true things, or cut yourself and cry is plain wrong ;).
I’m sure I could go on, and I’ve surely forgotten something, but I am sattisfied for now :). If nothing else I’ve practised my written English, and Clarkson style humour…
