DISQUS

Bert · 2 years ago

Social networks are a bit overrated IMO. For one, I don't want to deal with people I have never met in person. I'm a rather private person, and I don't really fancy putting my info on the net for all to see.
If I need a job, I'll network with people I know and through them, their contacts.
I fail to see what having a social network profile can do for me. I'm not interested in getting email from people I don't know. What possible good could come from it?
If I want geek contacts, I'll join a local geek/computer/linux/apple/MS club and actually get to know people.

Bert · 2 years ago

I forgot to add to IMO, the Internet has taken meeting people out of the equation in too many instances. I LIKE talking people in the flesh, not over IM or via email.

Reid · 2 years ago

I agree with a lot of what you say about the two-point-oh social networking thing, for example I like the fact that friends can GPS/Google maps to my house without having to ask directions. Basically what excites me and what you're getting at is that we need to ask fewer questions of each other. People always argue that there is a distinction between being friends over a social network and being friends IRL. I suppose that although my IRL friends might have had a bit more face time with me, it is possible that someone who knows me over Myspace (I work in the Music industry in the UK, Myspace currently has a lot over Facebook in that sector) could garner all the necessary info on me before we meet.

Sam I Am · 2 years ago

Great post; couldn't agree with you more! Will you be my friend on FB? hehe By the way, I also found that Chris Pirillo video funny, especially for a Friday (well Saturday here) post! I had a big smile on my face reading the 'testiface' comments too....

Ilya Lichtenstein · 2 years ago

Facebook is the new business card? Oh please.

You are so far out of Facebook's target demographic...Facebook is a way to remember the name of the cute girl you met at the party last night, not a serious business networking application.

LinkedIn, maybe. But Facebook? Facebook is a toy.

Lazy · 2 years ago

seriously, why the hell do you care what Jason or anyone else thinks about facebook?
We all know you love it because if feeds your narcisisim. Great! Use it. But why be so insecure when someone else finds it useless? Why would you even care? Not everyone drives a Saturn. Do those people not "get it" either?

Truden · 2 years ago

Why do I need to go to FaceBook to become your competitor (your previous article).

I can become one just by opposing your ideas in my weblog. You'll make me your competitor :D

And I don't need to go on FaceBook if I want to know you better.
I know you from your blog.

My question is: why do you need FaceBook?
Do you think that you'll know me better from my profile there!?

BTHW, I hope that the trackback from my article will get here soon. Sometimes the network is very slow ;)

francine hardaway · 2 years ago

When you figure out how to make coComment work stably, and what I ought to do with it, let me know. When I downloaded it, it slowed down or stopped every one of my posts to everything and I finally uninstalled it. Connie Reece told me she had to, too.

Michel Vuijlsteke · 2 years ago

"I’ve actually had hundreds of people wanting into my social network, so I timed it: I can add hundreds in less than five minutes"

Um, sorry, you probably don't need anyone to tell you that that is not building a social network. That's indiscriminate trawling. Adding hundreds (thousands) of unqualified contacts is about as useful as harvesting e-mail addresses or Myspace friends you don't know.

Bragging rights, sure. Flatters the old ego, very probably. But ultimately useless.

leeaase · 2 years ago

I agree with you Robert. Facebook is the digital Rolodex. Did some people have hundreds of names in their analog Rolodexes back in the 80s? Sure. Were there some people they never called? Of course. When you accept friend requests, that gives you contact information that may be helpful in the future. It's just like when you exchange business cards at a networking dinner; you may not get to have a meaningful conversation with a person, but if the need to get in touch arises in the future, you have the contact info.

And Ilya's comment about being out of Facebook's target demo is soooo 2006. Facebook has 90 percent of the college kids, but is adding over a million users a week in the 25-49 group.

Dawn D. · 2 years ago

Robert, I don't know what your "new CoComment" link is, but when I clicked on it, my system totally freaked out. I had to shut it down.

I've never understood this "friend" stuff. Why do you have to give permission for somebody to call you a friend??? Why can't they just put you in their contact list and then if you don't want their contacts, you can block them. That's the way I'm working our system, though it's not really a social network, though we do have community features and contacts.

Calling everybody "friend" is ridiculous, too. We're letting the user define the words they want to call somebody via tags.

Maybe I'm too darn old, but this friends stuff is just plain silly if you ask me. More than silly, really; it demeans the concept of friendship. I don't want to be collected as if I'm a trading card and I don't want to treat other human beings with so little regard either.

Justin · 2 years ago

Its only a "modern day rolodex" if everyone else agrees that it is. But that just isn't going to happen. No one company is going to own the rolodex definition business. So it isn't a modern day rolodex, Q.E.D.
It really is just an _additional_ attention hog on top of everything else more fundamental we already have to maintain.

Louis Gray · 2 years ago

As I noted on WinExtra, there is no one right answer here. What Web 2.0 and the social networks are providing are new ways to communicate and link. Some might prefer Facebook. Some might prefer Twitter. Some might prefer blogs and comments. I personally believe LinkedIn is the modern business card, not Facebook, and I have used it many dozen times in the real world, with having never even thought of Facebook that way. I've recruited candidates via LinkedIn, and wouldn't look at Facebook. If I'm hiring someone, I don't need relationship status, religion, etc. It's none of my business.

Eric Rice · 2 years ago

Now that it's all out there in such great detail, can you assemble the patterns to create a profile and take that information completely stealth to stalk psychologically?

I just did an interview where someone has followed my work closely for three years. They remembered things I forgot. This was major stuff, not minutia.

What can people you don't even know do with a lot of minutia and patterns.

They ain't twittering it.

Perspective.

Ken · 2 years ago

Are we missing something here? It has always struck me that the type of people who thrive on social netwroks are a particular type of people! So fine let the social butterflies do what they will in their millions. But it does raise the question, "Are there other applications that can be developed that might appeal to other types of people?" Is 'social' networking the only type of networking that works because it fulfills a need in some people? Maybe the rest of us don't need to market ourselves, or are able to successfully target their networking rather than use a scatter gun approach.

Prokofy Neva · 2 years ago

Kyte? I thought I kept up. Now I'm hopelessly behind again.

Dean W · 2 years ago

"Facebook is the modern day rolodex. It is the replacement for the business card." Thought provoking, but no, it's more than that, different from that. A

ll the SocNets are different from one another, although it's becoming progressively more difficult to separate them as they take on one another's attributes and respond to people's actual usage.

Facebook (like MySpace, busy being forgotten but still twice as big) is also a venue for things to happen - e.g. causes, groups, events; Bebo is also a playspace. LinkedIn is supposedly more about "business" but actually tells you less about people in fact than the more "casual" and "expressive" networks do. The reason even business-oriented people are using Facebook more is surely because the more casual personal information being offered up there is also more revealing.

I think that your use and therefore your view of SocNets depends almost entirely on your psychology.

What surprises me is how SERIOUSLY everyone is taking Facebook profiles. Just because it's a less messy interface, doesn't make it any more real. Personally I take all information gleaned from profiles with a pinch of salt.

Alexa · 2 years ago

Using Facebook or other social networks and amassing a lot of contacts doesn't have to be a "scattergun" approach. Almost all of my contacts on there are real life friends - some who I haven't seen for years - but who I want to keep in touch with. Also, it has quite a few professional-oriented groups which can help you research specific topics or find qualified people to work with... So far I've found it to be much more than a toy! I do believe a lot of the social network-scepticism will disappear as the next generations become professionals. Younger people know the full power of social networks and will integrate them deeply into their approach to work in the future - but no doubt they will be new, more powerful platforms than the ones we have now. The S. Korean SN Cyworld is an interesting example, with much more sophisticated features than any of the US- or EU-based social network tools. Almost all S. Koreans are subscribed.

Dimitar Vesselinov · 2 years ago

"If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse."
Henry Ford

David Morris · 2 years ago

If Jason thinks Facebook sucks, then why is he on it in the first place?

I notice in his blog post about Facebook he makes some positive points. If he perceives that there are positives to the website, surely he should persist with it.

W^L+ · 2 years ago

@23 David Morris:

There are positive things about social networks, just like there are positive things about having a publicly published e-mail address. However, for most of us, we have real work to do and cannot take the time to find the occasional nugget in the trash that comes in.

My perspective back when I first got invited to Friendster: I already get too many unwanted contacts (through e-mail) from people that are only interested in what I can do for them. Why would I join something based on "we both know Joe Jones, so do something for me"? It just doesn't make any sense.

I look at a lot of these sites, but I don't generally join, simply because I don't want to deal with "friends" that aren't really friends but really just want something from me.

artphotowall · 2 years ago

I was reading an article in Mashable about social network aggregators built to consolidate all your various social networking profiles. The article mentioned that one of them -Profilactic - does what it does well, but that Mashable would like to see it interact with “the items in your streams’.

Which by association in my mind, immediately got me thinking about ‘Islands in the Stream’ by Ernest Hemingway.

(‘Islands in the Stream’ is a book about a divorced, hard-drinking, hard-loving painter living on the islands, visited by the sons of his ex-wives, who on hearing of the death of one of his sons, turns a mental corner, and becomes a a man with a mission. It is the life of a man who grabs the dissolution of his life and turns it into something that means something to him and in which he is involved.)

Which got me thinking how the motif in ‘Islands in the Stream’ probably does parallel the triumph of hope over absurdity evident in social networks and social network aggregators. By which I mean that we are crowded together on this planet like sardines in a can, and yet we look for and find people with whom to connect, on the web. And who is to say that we do not connect. But why this way? If a person has half a dozen good friends they talk with and mix with regularly, why would they want to make ‘friends’ with people they do not really know (yet)?

Perhaps there are many shy people who like this online approach. Perhaps people just follow what they believe is the next hot thing they can join in publicly and be seen publicly. Perhaps this is 15 minutes of fame gone global for everyone.

Rex Dixon · 2 years ago

I think Jason is just suffering from information overload. The cure? Turn off the cell phone, turn off the computer and get away for awhile.

You have to go with the flow. If I had resisted such flowing items as Facebook, twitter, Pownce, etc... I would be nowhere near where I am today.

For example - If I had just pigeon-holed myself as a blogger, I wouldn't be today working for Lending Club, Criteo and the new startup Lookery. All this happened due to me going with the flow.

Soon I will be unleashing a startup on the world that has ties to a big European VC. How? Because I decided that going with the flow was advantageous to growing my career.

What career? Well it's not where I thought I'd end up, but as I said in my recent post about taking some time away from blogging updates (http://rexduffdixon.com/?p=2972) or being on top of everything (VentureBeat, Mashable, CenterNetworks, TechCrunch - they do the job well).

So is Facebook, twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, LinkedIn etc.. all just a big waste of time? Maybe, but without it there is now way that Rex Dixon would be positioned where I am today.

Rex

Eric Rice · 2 years ago

@24 A pal of mine (DYKC) into'd me to the term 'lunchbox' to define just putting people into our own little box, like a million little trophy wives or something. Look at all my contacts!!1! It's like we're 17 year old girls.

So much of blogging is flat out promotion. I'm grateful about Twitter being so chatty where people can shoot the shit. Too few blogs form thoughts, it's just link to this link to that, I did this, I did that.

I will defend only since I've discovered some people that I got to work with and actually deliver. Maybe we would have found each other means, but still. Kinda sad we have to act like myspacers to get there.

Just much older.

Robert Scoble · 2 years ago

moiblepodcast: It's annoying enough to keep spammers from doing it.

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