Question.
I see more action on some people’s Facebook/Twitter accounts than on their weblogs. Are weblogs ‘dead’ for personal or stream-of-consciousness weblogging?
Comments:
Facebook is just so annoyingly cloying (say that ten times fast). For some reason, it reminds me of what I imagine joining the ‘preps’ in school might be like. It seems completely vacuous to me.
I don’t use either system, nor do I know anyone who uses either so my vote is “no”. I have actually signed up for a Facebook account, visited it once and decided it had nothing to offer me and haven’t been back since. As for twitter I really don’t see the draw in the first place, is there a reason it even exists?
Wow, I’m turning into a grumpy old man before my time (I’m only 34!)
-- C
It’s a generation-thing. Let’s face it: we are too old!
I had a (work-induced) Facebook account, but never figured out what all the buzz was about. You’re supposed to reveal as much personal information as possible, which in turn is harvested by the Facebook platform itself and little gimmicky apps running in Facebook. Just a week ago I put my account to sleep, because there’s no way to remove yourself entirely from the system (that’s scary by itself).
Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and others are just riding the wave of providing online exhibitionism platforms which are no more than concealed data aggregation monsters. There’s a huge privacy disaster on the horizon (just look at the GBs of leaked private Myspace photos) ...
I think “concealed data aggregation monsters” is what bothers me most. Seems like we pour out our personal data, marketers take advantage.
Not a very good deal.
I’ve been reflecting on the comments on this post, and this morning as I was coming up with pro-FB arguments, decided to check their terms of service. It’s not bad enough to stop me from using FB, but it did motivate me to remove my blog posts and photos that I had been pulling into FB.
Here’s my related blog-post on this cleanup:
http://www.coolweblog.com/bilodeau/archives/003815.html
Having said and done that, I still don’t think that I provide FB much more information then is already available on me from a variety of sources.
FB has helped me to get in touch with a lot of old friends that I hadn’t spoken to in years, and has helped me to keep in touch with more recent friends from Montreal (where we moved from a year or so ago) and from past jobs. Yes, the level of interaction is not that strong, but it is stronger then zero, which is what it would have most likely been without FB.
So for me, FB provides a real value. Knowing the risks involved, I am careful about what information I give to them.
Part of this goes back to Garret’s original question, about personal blogging. With FB, like with blogs, any personal information you publish carries with it a risk that that information will be abused by someone. It is also that personal element to our publishing which forges relationships and friendships over this interweb, relationships between people that have never and may never meet face to face, but who nevertheless have found in those traces something that catches their attention. We each need to find a balance between privacy and sharing, and that balance will be different for each of us. And that’s OK.
I think a lot of young people mistake the attention they get on Facebook, Twitter, etc. for popularity. And since their entire social world revolves around who is popular and who is not, they end up putting far too much personal information online where it can be misused and abused.
You know what else I don’t quite grok: texting. Why is it so socially necessary to be in touch with your friends every minute of every day? Maybe I’m just getting too old (34).
Damn kids, get offa my lawn!
@Cam, actually the texting I find very useful (or I did in one circumstance). Last year I spent 4 months in Amsterdam for work and made some friends. It was significantly easier to use text to keep in touch and plan things out than voice since I still had a US number (paid for by work) and didn’t want to saddle my new friends with the expense of a voice call when they were running late…
Not that I use that many texts in general, but there are some very usable places for it.
And I must be getting old, when I log into Facebook I honestly have no idea at all what I am supposed to do. What the hell are all these “applications” that people want me to sign up for? If someone sent me a friend request to an email address I didn’t use to register how do I just click on their profile and “Add Friend” from my existing account? Heck, how do I do anything with that site? Must just be me but I think the basic usability of the site is horrible.
-- C
I agree that the applications have been a disaster for Facebook’s overall usability. I know a lot of people enjoy them (i.e. scrabulous or whatever that scrabble-clone is), but they aren’t for me.
I also think that many of the applications are poorly designed, and that they send out “invitations”, which I have learned over time to ignore. You also have no idea what this application provider is doing with your data. I trust application providers even less then I trust FB.
As for texting, I’m (at age 38) with Cam. What’s the point? Mind you, I don’t even have a cell phone.
Ed, you said: “Having said and done that, I still don’t think that I provide FB much more information then is already available on me from a variety of sources.”
Yet this is Facebook’s marketing brilliance. Noone has to go dig for your personal information. They’ve got thousands (millions?) of users who are aggregating their own personal [and private] data in *one* database. That database is, no doubt, priceless even at this early date.
Cam, you’re right. This was one of the early attractions of weblogging, though, too - as you know. Getting on that ‘Top 100’ list was a thrill ... and many easily mistook that popularity for ‘importance’ or ‘life affirmation.’ Doesn’t happen that way anymore. On Facebook, it’s a little similar to the old days. You can become a ‘hero’ among your friends list, by posting endless trivia about your life, gradually exposing more and more of your private existence. Peer pressure applies, and people go farther than they should. Many of us writing weblogs in the early days had ‘crises’ that stopped that progression. Facebook’s is overdue.
I have a theory about ‘self-categorizing subgroups’ as being the only way for ‘social networking’ to be really useful. I must work on that post more, and stick it up soon. For instance, I’ve noticed a Facebook-like application is being built *just for journalists*, to debut soon. No public access, just pre-qualified individuals who want to filter the irrelevant away. We’ll be seeing more of this.
While I don’t think I’m the norm, I don’t believe that I provide FB with much more then my associations (friends with, studied at, worked at, live in), which while even in my case valuable, they are not much more valuable then what marketers and advertisers already know.
I also think that FB *wants* the world to think that it has this database is/will be tremendously valuable to marketers, since that is what it hopes to monetize. I have yet to see anyone using this data to any great effect. The ad targeting on the site is horrible, and if that is any indication of what is possible, I’m not impressed.
In other words, I think FB’s marketing brilliance is still debatable. 
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I know for myself I had started using FB to post more personal information, thinking that it was more appropriate and less in the open then on FB.
Recently, however, my thinking has swung the other way, and I’ve been thinking about how I can return the personal aspect to my blog (i’m not (yet) a twitter user).
Overall, I think moving the personal behind a wall, while potentially safer, make the web overall a poorer place.