People really just don't seem to understand that experiences with social media are specific to the individual. I guess it's understandable. I see the same Google Maps as everyone else does. I see the same Hacker News as everyone else who visits HN.
But Facebook isn't like that. Your Facebook timeline is based entirely on your friends and how you interact with Facebook.
And so, every few weeks it seems, we get these posts from some techie who believes that his (it's always a man) experiences with social media are universal.
It just ain't so. This may be a pat little summary of why using Facebook is unrewarding for the author, but to generalize that to a "failed" experiment for everyone, would require talking to other humans about how they experience Facebook — i.e., doing actual research. (Even then, the conclusion would only hold, at best, for the types of humans with whom the author has spoken.) And as usual for these rants, there's no evidence this research has been done.
This piece of writing, therefore, does not contribute meaningfully to the discussion around Facebook.
Brilliant. This is a perfect analysis of this article.
People are using Facebook because they want to, not because some weird social power is forcing them to. My friends love it, my parents love it, heck my grandma thinks it's absolutely magical. We get to share things and communicate with family in a way we've never been able to ever. It's not replacing the deep connections and interpersonal relationships—you need to actually meet up with someone and talk to them in person or on the phone for that. But we already have ways to do that!
The annoying people on Facebook are the ones who don't like it, like the author of this article. They're the ones that just post "Dang Facebook sucks more every day" or useless stuff like that and never actually use it for its capabilities. They expect Facebook to do their social for them, when it's really just a tool that you have to use optimistically.
"I'll wake up in the morning and go on Facebook just ... because," Casey says. "It's not like I want to or I don't. I just go on it. I'm, like, forced to. I don't know why. I need to. Facebook takes up my whole life."
http://kottke.org/13/05/wanting-to-be-liked
Wanting to stay connected and communicate with other humans is not a disorder, it's actually quite healthy!
I think it is fascinating that people feel compelled to visit Facebook or any website, and don't know why. It's like calling someone every morning: you want to communicate. If you stop doing that suddenly, you'll miss it.
Calling it an 'addiction' or 'some strange social force' or other conspiracy ideas are interesting, but flawed arguments.
I somewhat question the effectiveness of ... let's say Reddit as actual communication, though. Maybe I'm projecting, but I find my online social interactions are nice, but don't really compare to actually hanging out with friends, or even taking time to do something I enjoy, like cooking a nice meal or whatever.
At the end of a couple of hours of commenting on people I know's pictures of cats or whatever I look back and think "Wow, where'd that time go?" whereas if I've done something "productive" I feel much better. It's possible that's just because I've filed time-on-the-internet under "wasting time" and so I'm judging myself, but I think the feeling bad was the reason I decided I shouldn't do it, not the other way 'round.
I'm not a heavy FB user, but having lived in various places around the world, it's one of the few ways I can passively keep in touch with what my dear friends have been up to half way around the globe.
That is real value that Facebook does deliver, something I must admit despite my wide ranged mistrust and distaste for various other aspects of the service.
That's its value to me, too. I sit in Budapest and I'm actually in closer contact with my old high school friends in Indiana than I have ever been. And my kid's friends' parents in Puerto Rico. And yeah, some people here in Budapest. It does exactly what I want it to do, and it's way more effective than remembering to send Christmas cards.
I travel a lot and have done multiple study abroads on different continents when I was in college. I find this to be a gift and a curse of Facebook. Its great when they are genuinely interesting people that you share lots of interest with. But its awful when you have a good night or even a good week with the person and then you friend them on Facebook only to find out later you don't have much in common with them. It really dampers your mood when you look back at the old pictures and you're having a good time with someone you deleted because of all their irrelevant wall spam and complaints. Some relationships are much better when they are fleeting and you only have the good memories.
Well, friending someone on Facebook is starting a relationship with that person. Just like I wouldn't call someone the next day if I didn't want to start a relationship with them, I wouldn't friend them either.
Friending them just to realize you have little in common is akin to dating someone only to realize you have little in common.
This is also where I receive value from facebook; I grew up in Saudi Arabia and all my childhood friends scattered around the globe. There is no other tool like facebook that lets me both maintain meaningful contact with friends & find undiscovered friends spanning large geographies. Relatedly, I've always found facebook's geography-based search tools (friends/posts & content in a city/region)have left much to be desired.
I agree with the article author's opinion that Facebook IS growing less useful for me. As Graue said in above post, though, this really only applies to me and my reactions to MY OWN social circle.
And that thin veil is held together by its complicated breakups, baby pictures and cat memes. If it wasnt that everyone enjoyed sharing these things id hate to think what might happen.
Im in the same boat as you here. And it worries me. Imagine if we had to go back to the old days of using msn status updates and actually having to gasp converse with one another in order to get our fill of socal interaction.
Have never seen a single baby picture or cat meme or anything like it on Facebook. And several of my friends have kids.
There is a temptation when people comment on Facebook to extrapolate their experience with the vast array of different societies, social norms, perspectives, ages, interests, backgrounds, maturities etc.
One baby picture so far on FB and that was in a private message. The only source of memes is Mr. Takei. We have evening planning chats with people from (guesstimate) 10-15 different countries (all living in our town in Germany), groups for special topics. Conversing gasp with people who moved back to their home country is another regular activity. And it's all held together by an interface that makes it really easy even for the most non-tech people.
So right now the first few stories in my news feed only has 3 posts I find interesting. And? I look at my feed every now and then and if often there is nothing interesting it doesn't hinder me. Some stuff is really interesting and helps me break out of the internet bubble I'm in bust mostly facebook is groups and chat for me. And that's why I love it.
I love baby pictures, they're really cute. I love seeing my friends' and family's babies grow up through pictures on FB because I can't always be there in person.
Completely agree. Most every point he makes doesn't apply to my use of Facebook.
The one that is interesting is his comparison to Google and SEO. In Google's world there are three players: (1) the searchers, (2) the advertisers and (3) the black hats who try to game the system. Unfortunately for Facebook, (2) and (3) are the same, so the people they make money from are also the people who are degrading the system. They don't have Google's luxury of cracking down hard on (3) because that's who their income comes from, which ends up sucking for the rest of us.
> And so, every few weeks it seems, we get these posts from some techie who believes that his (it's always a man) experiences with social media are universal.
Moreover, if my news feed of middle-Americans-quite-pleased-to-share-indiscriminately is any indication, Facebook is what most people need. MOST PEOPLE. This whole elitist attitude in the tech community is breeding "innovators" who don't have the first clue what the world really wants or needs.
There is a trend towards emotional populist content on social networks. It's interesting to you because it's your friends and it feels personal.
However in a broader context its creating a society that is inward looking (walled garden of your friends) and concerned with re-enforcing social norms (the like button).
How does this activity improve us as a society? Where is the creativity and freedom?
Your comment is fair, but I think you've imagined a creative, free society where the walled garden didn't exist - where it never existed in actuality.
People have always been insular and self-contained within their circles. Said circles form early in life and change very slowly. Even when you move people around geographically, they quickly fall back into the same closed circles. In these circles they reinforce whatever social memes have developed - inside jokes, similar views, etc.
Very few people in the world (though they do exist) actually continually meet new people outside of their existing groups.
So sure, Facebook doesn't improve us as a society, nor is it a magical bastion of creativity and freedom - but life never was, and Facebook hasn't made it worse. Facebook is merely a magnification of who you are. If you were prone to sharing stupid motivational pictures, now your'e sharing a lot of them. If you surrounded yourself with constantly insightful, smart people, now you get to talk to a lot more of them, a lot more frequently.
Facebook is what you make of it. I have a habit of squelching friends who don't post meaningful things. Click on the top right corner of their post and you can adjust their weighting in your feed - I have many people who essentially no longer contribute to my feed, and that's fine. Looking at my front page right now, nearly all of the information is stuff I actually care about.
A single social networks doesn't have to be everything and all-encompassing to be useful; the place where you organize a family lunch is usually not the same where you run a LAN party or perform body painting.
I do wish that social network wasn't Facebook, though.
> And so, every few weeks it seems, we get these posts from some techie who believes that his (it's always a man) experiences with social media are universal.
On the other hand, technical people are like rats. They're the first to pile on to fresh meat (there was even a prominent website by this name...), and they're the first to flee when the place is burning down.
Your argument made sense in the years past where there only were technical people on the internet. But now it is less so. People are comfortable making their own choices on the internet and don't need the recommendations or advice of technical people like they did it in the past.
Look at the success of Pinterest or Instagram for example. Neither grew because of technical people.
Dating the smartphone revolution at anytime before the first iPhone is disingenuous and you know it. Even then, the bulk of Internet-using smartphone users were tech heads.
Yep - this is an old thing, it applies to twitter, LiveJournal or to any other social network where you pick who you read. It's more about your choices than anything else: If you don't like the content you're reading, read different people.
However ... Facebook is probably the only social network where I feel a high level of obligation to add people like Aunt Jemima, and Bill who I went to college with, years ago. It's "for" keeping in touch - i.e that's how most people use it. It's the fallback social network for contacts who don't fit into other, targeted social networks.
I'm beginning to wonder if I'm the only person out there who has used the "unfriend" button before. I've deleted hundreds of people; many of whom I only met for one night 5 years ago or didn't even talk to way back in high school. Now, my Facebook feed has content that only features people I care to hear from and "interest pages," which is sorta meh. It's really not this social media wasteland I keep reading about?
I never friended people I didn't wish to hear from to begin with. I've only ever unfriended one person, and I've never broken the 200-friend threshold, so I can't claim to have unfriended hundreds.
> And so, every few weeks it seems, we get these posts from some techie who believes that his (it's always a man) experiences with social media are universal.
...
> And as usual for these rants, there's no evidence this research has been done.
This piece of writing, therefore, does not contribute meaningfully to the discussion around Facebook.
Too harsh. I agree that there is not enough rigor to speculate on the universal experience, but this absolutely has value in the larger Facebook discussion.
The increasing frequency of these anecdotal experiences is a hint that there exists a segment of frustrated users. It would be a mistake to summarily ignore their frustration due to the presentation of the argument.
These "increasingly common" anecdotes are from the same demographic of people.
Facebook is used by 1.15 BILLION people. Think about that for a second. It's an absolutely staggering number and they're adding MILLIONS of new users every single day.
Do you think the people in Africa, South America, Iceland, and even China, are going to have the same experiences as the person writing this article?
Agree to what you say. Facebook is great in some cases, like finding your old buddy from college or school. I use FB to find them, but after that I get their email ids and from then on its email communication. So for me FB is the place to find people.
But FB is not for getting news about the topics I like; because, IMHO like the OP, Facebook news feed is broken for this purpose. Yes it is broken if you like to get news and information related to your interests. The prime reason, which I have discovered over the years of using FB, is I like things which my friends do not like a lot and vice-versa. I cannot blame Facebook for this. So when they like something which I do not, I still get the news in the feed. The same thing is happening in Twitter.
I felt that it would be better if we can follow information we like rather than the people we like. This way we will be able to get the information that we want/like rather than the noise. A critical step towards this is tags and if we can follow a tag it would be better [1].
I agree, but people have always followed the information they want.
Online, that's as old as Usenet, and it continued through topics on CompuServe and AOL. It continues today through specialised forums and bulletin boards, especially the forums on subject-based websites. Good ones include AV Forums, Hydrogen Audio, DPReview, Doom9 etc.
Anyone who thinks Facebook is, or is meant to be, a substitute for Doom9 is extremely dim.
I think Facebook is getting into "follow information" as well. Recently I've started getting items in my newsfeed from pages I've never visited or liked, with the header "<page> posted about <topic from my profile>"
I Agree.
The difference between a blogger and a researcher is that the former can say what the heck he wants on the internet and state it as an objective and universal truth.
While a researcher, on the other hand, must back his claims with some evidence.
So this post should just be downvoted. Another guy with an opinion on the internet, nothing to get too excited about.
It seems that the more controversy you create, the more popular you get on HN, regardless of whatever you have any ground to your claims.
I agree that his piece isn't well-researched, and the title is sensationalist, but I share most of his experiences and sentiments. I hope a more quantitative research around this area does emerge though.
Oh right, I forgot that having both an opinion and a penis is a crime. How does being a man have anything to do with it at all? Plenty of non-technical people have come to very similar conclusions, some of them have even been women. You are seeing what you want to see.
But Facebook isn't like that. Your Facebook timeline is based entirely on your friends and how you interact with Facebook.
And so, every few weeks it seems, we get these posts from some techie who believes that his (it's always a man) experiences with social media are universal.
It just ain't so. This may be a pat little summary of why using Facebook is unrewarding for the author, but to generalize that to a "failed" experiment for everyone, would require talking to other humans about how they experience Facebook — i.e., doing actual research. (Even then, the conclusion would only hold, at best, for the types of humans with whom the author has spoken.) And as usual for these rants, there's no evidence this research has been done.
This piece of writing, therefore, does not contribute meaningfully to the discussion around Facebook.