I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
As Peter Griffin writes, FaceBook seems to have hit a tipping point. When your taxi driver asks if you’re on FaceBook it’s hit critical mass.
I have never been to FaceBook, I have never responded to a FaceBook invite. I’m not even tempted to look. I do not need yet another social networking site (YASNS). As a buddy said to me a few weeks ago in a FaceBook conversation “why would I want to meet anyone new - I don’t even have enough time to talk to the people I know now.”
I’m on LinkedIn. That’s enough. Although the only useful thing I’ve found on LinkedIn is the ability to find people deep inside competitors and send them friendly emails (hee hee).
So just say no to FaceBook. You don’t need it.
And don’t make me look in case I’m wrong.
blog
What ever you do… don’t go to http://www.facebook.com! I was like you just two weeks ago - I vowed never to sign up to any of these over-hyped social networking sites. Then my brother convinced me to check out Facebook and I’ve been hooked since then. It’s truly addictive and viral - I’ve got several others to join up since I’ve started too. (I’ll send you an invite if you want…!!) :)
Same regarding facebook. I find linkedin very good at keeping track of many many people I used to know at Uni (when it was easy to meet others :-) and who are now all over the world.
Not as many are software engineers as I would have expected.
Marc Andreessen compares the current crop of facebook and others to the old walled gardends of Prodigy, Compuserve and AOL - see below.
Who really needs another walled garden and argues that 71,531 social networks on Ning is more exciting (Ning is his current project - besides the fine blog with lots of great insights)
———————–
“I also think that in time, many people will decide they want to create their own social networks — echoing the 1990’s, when tens of millions of people who were introduced to the online world by proprietary online services like AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy ultimately decided they wanted to create and live in a world of millions of web sites, not just a world of a few large walled gardens.
I think both approaches — large proprietary walled gardens, and millions of specialized social networks created by regular people — will coexist just fine, but the more people learn what social networking makes possible, the more interested they will be in creating their own worlds,”
and later on
“I think the Internet is coming into its own as a medium, right now.
After 12 years of experimentation, when I and a lot of other people tried a lot of experiments to try to figure out how people everywhere were really going to use this marvelous collective invention, I think it’s becoming crystal clear what some of the defining characteristics of the Internet really are.”
I guess it’s true what they say…… “You can’t judge a facebook by it’s cover…..â€
On the surface, Facebook does look like “just another networking serviceâ€â€¦..but Facebook is doing it different. Real different. I won’t list all the features Facebook is doing better than anyone else…..because it’s a long list.
I’ve personally never seen a migration on the Internet to a community happen as fast as May/June/July 2007 for Facebook.
I didn’t join Facebook to meet people or to be part of yet anther Startup……….. rather, I joined Facebook to see an excellent example of Web 2.0. And to keep an eye on the exciting and cool apps which external developers have been cranking away on. (iLike, flixter, etc)
I like being part of Facebook because it’s let’s me see which “apps on tap†are sticking.
And I’ve been very impressed. really impressed.
Facebook have compiled the best features of most social networking sites into one. (e. g. outlook, i-tunes, picassa, i-phone) It’s the latest evolution of years of learning from LinkedIn, Myspace, etc.
So, ok, just say no to “yet another social networking site”. But say yes to checking out a GREAT implementation of Web 2.0 and excellent example of open source development.
It’s pretty fun to watch one of the world’s biggest software mashups happen right before your eyes. (plus I’ve reconnected with a few old friends…)
;-) c u there?
Salud!
Maitland
What ever happened to having your contacts in outlook and flicking a quick email to keep in touch?
Ning? oh my…. if FaceBook is the walled garden, Ning must be the kibbutz and everyone is on an acid trip - or maybe just I am.
Out of the all the social networking sites Facebook is the most interesting in terms of user experience and social interaction modeling - the rest of the big boys (beebo, myspace etc) are clumsy ghettos compared to the beautiful elegance that is FB.
There is some major overlap with linkedin though, so some integration would be nice. Interestingly neither LI, or FB are very friendly in terms of openly providing data in/out as freely as one would like…
I don’t think Facebook is about meeting new people, but rather re-connecting with people from the past (elementary school, high school, university and past careers etc..)
Facebook is all about the personal messages and photos. Unlike Linked-in, there isn’t a huge emphasis on careers. People are posting photo after photo and sending messages to friends they haven’t seen in years.
I was a huge sceptic and avoided joining for a long time, but I’m glad I have as it has served a purpose for me— I’ve heard from people that I’ve not seen in years, they’ve said hello, we’ve had chats, I’ve seen recent photos of them, and now that curiosity of “whatever happened to them†has been curbed.
As Facebook and other similar sites grow, I think the†high school reunion†parties that we currently know will cease to exist. I say this as I don’t need to go to mine- everyone is on Facebook if I want to talk to them.
Hahaha, talk about old school attitude. Sorry Rod, but you do come across as old with those comments :)
Like or not social networking is a massive phenomenon. It’s here to stay, our kids are growing up on it and it’s now mass market.
Back in the day when I was a kid, you had BBS and eventually the early days of the internet. Back then it was for geeks and nerds. Nowadays most kids are getting into this. Its unprecedented in history and the share volume of interest from the younger generation mean it’s not going away.
This is where your SAAS consumers of the future will come from. Ignore this phenomenon at your peril! :)
I think it’s interesting - for us mere mortals who don’t have a significant profile and who are interested in opportunities, social networking sites are more valid than for the likes of Rod who, lets face it, already has the cred to gain admittance to whichever hallowed halls he likes
horses for courses and all……
Ross - To be fair to Marc - he wrote a bit of a rave earlier about the astounding success of facebook / he does like it - just that ning is his thing if the rhyme isn’t to droll for you
see http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/analyzing_the_f.html
and How to effortlessly inject your content into Facebook, using Ning is also one of his other posts
Sorry Rod, you’ve got it all wrong.
http://www.jonbeattie.com/archives/141
Rod, you’re showing your age.
http://rowansimpson.com/2007/06/25/forever-young/
:-)
Rowan.
I think this is a fair call on the whole as we’ve avoided facebook due to it being YASNS but then after receiving over 10 requests from friends who don’t know anything about web 2, I thought, OK this one might actually be something I can use outside of the web saavy network.
I haven’t added anyone to my facebook yet, only confirmed friends who’ve found me, and it seems my network is already around 40 mainly people I know pretty well, so this is growing without nearly any effort from me, which is quite smart, otherwise i wouldn’t touch it.
Instant Community and distribution for websites
The big thing this has prompted in my business mind is how quickly you can now get distribution of a consumer focused web application. Instead of starting your own site and starting to build your community, you can piggy back on an existing community/user base. No new user accounts, no new passwords, no new trust network… the barriers to entry are now down.
-LinkedIn is aimed at the professional networks.
-FaceBook is aimed at personal networks.
At least that is the way i see it :)
As a Kiwi now living overseas Facebook is an awesome personal tool to keep in touch with mates. Its mini-blog roll of what people are up to is just awesome to keep track of what people are up to. You dont have to touch each person … it rolls it all up for you. Photo sharing kicks, movie reviews etc…
-CJ
I have never used a social networking site before, but perhaps people who are involved in these sites must be careful about posting too much personal details of themselves on these sites. Recently, there is a rise in the use of social network datamining, where informations are automatically harvested & categorised into a knowledge-base systems which is then searchable (most likely to be automated generation of an Ontology knowledge-based system). I think that marketers are OK in doing this sort of thing, but it is a worry when security intelligence services are doing it. There is no doubt that security intelligence services have been doing this for a while, such as described in the following New Scientist article:
Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites
I have seen some research papers from US government scientists at Los Alamos of how they mapped & discovered Al Qaida terrorist cells by using social network datamining. Social networking datamining is good for tracking terrorist & criminals, but it is a huge concern for issues relating to civil liberties. If I ever participate in a social networking site, I would definitely give minimal information about myself to that site.
To touch on Tim’s comment above…The killer side of facebook is the fact they have opened up their APIs. The potential of this is enourmous and there are some pretty savvy people out there building up traffic numbers quickly as a result.
Similar in a way to how businesses sprung up around e-bay…
You’re comparing apples to oranges. LinkedIn and Facebook are for very different purposes — you wouldn’t put party photos up on LinkedIn, for example, for the same reason you wouldn’t fnargle on about business opportunities on Facebook.
These two fruits are in fact very different kettles of fishies. :-)
Well I think it’s the last line that is most interesting “And don’t make me look in case I’m wrong.”
Rod- you could audition for mainland cheese advertisements with posts like that. I disagree completely with what you are suggesting =)
Friend Quantity over Quality with facebook
Stalker book. I’m not old, I can just do without Stalker book. Yea I’m a black sheep, whatever. I have enough friends who call and I don’t want to know what my ex boyfriends new girlfriend is doing today. I don’t want strangers or near strangers looking at my picture or profile. I don’t want to see that some friends had a party and I wasn’t invited. I prefer not to know.
It’s a popularity contest. You even see how many friends other people have. Quantity over Quality with facebook. I’ve tried it for a week. Damn addictive! No more, I’d rather use a phone and see people in person. I hope that seeing people in person doesn’t become oldschool.
When taxi drivers start asking you about something you know that it has reached the peak and is going downhill, be it a stock or a product or service.
as you all know facebook is supported by advertisers one of which my company,i invited 40 friends at once and had my account disabled, due to this we have pulled out from there campaign
here is a copy of there rules of which you dont see
Disabled - Rate Limits
Why was I disabled?
Facebook enforces limits on the site in order to prevent certain actions that can be considered abusive. Your account has been disabled for persistent and rapid use of a certain feature. Unfortunately, for security reasons, we will not be able to further explain these limits.
Why are there limits?
Facebook has limits in place to prevent abuse of our features and to protect users from potential spam.
What are the limits?
Unfortunately, Facebook cannot provide any specifics on the rate limits that we enforce. Please know, however, that the speed at which you are acting and the sheer number of actions you have made are both taken into account.