Why Bookface is crap
Cory Doctorow has an article in Information Week which sums up a lot of Facebook and MySpace's shortcomings:
For every long-lost chum who reaches out to me on Facebook, there's a guy who beat me up on a weekly basis through the whole seventh grade but now wants to be my buddy; or the crazy person who was fun in college but is now kind of sad; or the creepy ex-co-worker who I'd cross the street to avoid but who now wants to know, "Am I your friend?" yes or no, this instant, please.The full article is here.
I think I'm going to delete my Facebook again. (And I'd delete my MySpace, except deleting it doesn't seem to work.)
9 comments:
it's me isn't it? you don't want to be friends with me, so you're running screaming from facebook. well too bad because I know where you live...muahahahahahaha!
Cyber-harassment! Ahhhhh!
ah Facebook is good, who cares if you don't get accepted as someones friend who you obviosly never talk to, if people are too insecure than that isn't my fault if i don't want to accept their request. I find Facebook more useful than hindering.
John: I'm not bothered by that so much as getting people asking to be my friend who I barely know, and who aren't even going to talk to me on Facebook anyway - they just want to collect lots of friends.
Another annoying thing is the amount of requests you get from people trying to get you to add various applications, a lot of which do the same things. (The same with the amount of networks people want to you join - so many you can't keep up with any of them.)
Oh yeah, the other thing annoying thing is how they send you email notifications when you get messages and stuff, but they won't tell you in the email what the message is, forcing you to log in to Facebook to get the message.
It's just a tool like anything else. When you're a long way from home and want to stay connected to what people are doing it's simply wonderful. I've got no problem with ignoring all those application requests - they're not sent personally anyway. And I've got heaps of people who I've asked to be my friend who haven't accepted it - doesn't phase me either. It's like email (or a blog) - you have decide at what level you're willing to interact and engage with it. Tool, not a toy.
Oh, and you can turn the email notification option off.
Yeah, I get that it's a tool, but I don't find it all that useful. And it seems like most people aren't using it very well.
And I don't find the email notifications themselves annoying, I find it annoying that they don't tell me what the actual message I've gotten is, because they want me to log in to find out.
Whatever happened to just using email anyway? :P
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