Facebook

[murlough23]

RedcoatJones found me on Facebook today (I'm not sure how, with a name as common as mine), and it reminded me that I had been meaning to connect with some of you long-time Phorumers who happen to be on Facebook. I can be found here:

http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Martin/1048993457

I'll try to look up a few of you whose real-life names I can remember. I know some folks don't do the "friends" thing with people they've only known in an online capacity, and that's totally OK, but for me, I've known some of you folks longer than I've known my wife, and you've had a huge influence on my musical tastes over the years, so I figure it's warranted.

[Vlad!]

Don't bother looking for me....I don't do any of this MyFace or Tweeter nonsense. It takes away from time I need to spend yelling at kids to get off my lawn and wearing black socks with sandals (mandals).

[Brenden]

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/TheBren

I used to write a lot more blogs about Rainforest Cafe and music and movies, but I've held back since I started writing for a web magazine that is paying me for my reviews.

[NinjaRob17]

Haha, wait what, how do you know Misty, Brenden?

Oh and, http://www.facebook.com/rlbandstra

[murlough23]

Don't bother looking for me....I don't do any of this MyFace or Tweeter nonsense. It takes away from time I need to spend yelling at kids to get off my lawn and wearing black socks with sandals (mandals).

I used to feel that way. I only just joined Facebook last year, and then only after realizing enough of my friends were on it that it would be a useful way to get better feedback on things like my blog entries and music reviews that already existed, as well as a different way to interact with some of those folks who I didn't see every day. It worked for me because I was able to use it as a repository for stuff I was already doing. If not for that stuff, I wouldn't have seen how it could be useful to me. People had previously pressured me to join FB and I had resisted - I didn't want to do it just because of peer pressure. Due to this, I don't give other folks a hard time for not joining FB. They should join it if they'd find it useful, and not join it if they wouldn't. It should never gets to the point where one "needs" Facebook or any other social networking site just to have a social life. (I try to be mindful of the fact that some folks aren't on FB, and make sure I send those folks an Email or whatever when I use FB to invite folks to an event or something.)

I never had a MySpace or Twitter. Didn't really see how they'd support the kind of interaction I wanted to have with folks online. Twitter strikes me as especially vacuous - I might use my Facebook status to "microblog" a lot, but I like having the choice to be brief or long-winded, rather than being restricted to a character limit, as if to say nobody has time to read your complete thoughts any more.

That said, not understanding the fuss about social media doesn't make one an old geezer. There are plenty of old geezers on Facebook. This in and of itself is actually a reason why some younger people choose not to join. I have no personal problems with friending family members on FB, but I know other folks who rightly wouldn't want their mothers poking their noses into everything they posted there. FB needs a better system for grouping your friends and choosing which group can see what - i.e. my fraternity can see the embarrassing pics I posted of my drunken endeavors, but my family cannot.

Then again, I've gotten into some arguments with family members that wouldn't have happened if not for outspoken views I expressed on Facebook. So I suppose some amount of caution is warranted.

NP: "This Too Shall Pass", OK Go

[Vlad!]

I have some friends at church who have the strategy that they won't accept friend requests from anyone they interact with in meatspace--it's solely for keeping up with people they used to know in person but who moved away or whatever. Personally, I barely have the time/energy/inclination to keep up with the people I really like, and I think that's a feature. If I don't like or care about someone enough to make the effort to actively stay in touch, that's a sign that I shouldn't be spending energy on that relationship. The passive "keeping up with" others that social networking seems to be encouraging just isn't for me.

(I didn't make that post to criticize people who have Facebook...you gotta do what works for you. I just have a fairly common name (not as common as David Martin, though!) and I know of at least one other Nathan Baker in Morrisville, NC, so I didn't want that poor kid getting friend requests from random Phorumers.)

[Brenden]

Haha, wait what, how do you know Misty, Brenden?

My wife and I are close friends with her former roommate from college, Buffy.

[murlough23]

I have some friends at church who have the strategy that they won't accept friend requests from anyone they interact with in meatspace--it's solely for keeping up with people they used to know in person but who moved away or whatever.

That's generally a good policy. I tend to feel similarly - I won't befriend any old person who makes a request based on a few passing interactions or even a tangential online relationship, but every now and then I'll give a person I recently met the benefit of the doubt if they request to friend me. It depends on whether I think there's a good chance we'll continue to interact in "meatspace". But some of you guys here, I'll probably never meet in "meatspace", but we've been interacting long enough that I'm interested in seeing what kind of stuff you have on your mind from day to day. That interaction can happen in either venue, so I'm cool with it either way.

I've been pretty good at keeping my FB friends down to a manageable number thus far, and not feeling like I'm whoring myself out to show off a big number of friends (or accepting requests from folks who look like they're trying to do that and truly don't know me very well). So far I haven't made the mistake of friending anyone who floods my feed with useless crap. If I ever do, such people are easily ignored, or un-friended if they really get obnoxious. Since I do take the care to read through my feed from day to day, I've found that it does give me a better since of what's interesting to people, stuff that might not always come up in conversation between me in them, esp. if it's folks I met locally who later moved away and we don't have regular conversations. None of this replaces the effort required to keep up personally with someone, but I've found that it can be a venue that nurtures that kind of renewed interaction if you're willing to put in the effort. It's a tool that can be used, but Facebook will not do that work for you.

(I didn't make that post to criticize people who have Facebook...you gotta do what works for you. I just have a fairly common name (not as common as David Martin, though!) and I know of at least one other Nathan Baker in Morrisville, NC, so I didn't want that poor kid getting friend requests from random Phorumers.)

Good point. I've gotten a few Friend requests due to name mixups, but no biggie, I just tell 'em they've got the wrong guy. I generally try not to send such requests to someone unless I'm certain from their profile picture or other info like their school that they choose to display publicly that it's the person I'm looking for. (Mutual friends are usually the best clue.) Every now and then I'll take a chance, but send a message with the request saying, "If you're not the [name] who I knew from [place] in [era of my life], then please ignore this and sorry to have bothered you."

One thing that has annoyed me about FB is folks who have accounts but never do anything with 'em. Probably because they only signed up due to peer pressure in the first place. But come on, if you initiated friendship with me, I'd at least like to think you occasionally skim through and look at what your friends are posting. Otherwise, seriously, just cancel the account.

There's one guy at my church who's trying to launch a music career. I've met him a few times and I like some of his music, though I mostly know of his musical talents due to his involvement with our worship team. He sent me a friend request a few months ago, and I figured, "That's cool, maybe being friends with a musician would give me the chance to pick his brain." Immediately after friending him, I looked at his Wall and realized it was almost entirely full of posts from other people asking/informing him about something, and he hadn't responded to any of it. I sent him a note at one point asking simple Yes/No question about whether he had any sheet music on hand for some of the worship songs he'd played recently in church, and never got a response. So basically, there's been no ongoing interaction with this "friend" that he wanted. Then, a few weeks ago, I got a request from this person that I become his "fan". (Musicians often have artist accounts separate from their personal accounts.) That irked me. I noticed a number of my other friends becoming his "fan" shortly after that, which may be legit because they do enjoy his music, but it was obviously spurred by a blast of requests that he sent out en masse. I felt like he was only trying to get higher numbers on display to bolster his popularity. So I ignored it. I haven't un-friended the guy or anything, but I do feel slightly used. I expect an artist's FB page to be mostly one-way interaction, but a personal page with people you've asked to be your friend should be a two-way street.

[ewok20t3]

Here's mine.
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/profile.php?id=502744925

[Wildcatblue7]

I can't wait to explain my long distance internet friends to people. 

just kidding guys.

[bloop]

http://www.facebook.com/bloop

makes sense

[bethany]

I'm here, but I'll warn you that I am one of those annoying people who uploads photos of their baby all the time.

[NewDimension]

A long time ago I signed up for a Facebook account just to explore the site and see what it was like. But there was a malfunction in Facebook's processing of my account, and they never sent me an "account activation email." So I thought about if I really wanted to use the website or not, and decided that there just wasn't enough motivation to contact Facebook and request the account activation. A year went by and I had almost forgotten that I ever signed up for Facebook, and Facebook finally sends me an account activation email. A little late, don't you think?  After exploring the site a little, I decided that I didn't really want an account there-- at least not at that point in time. I generally don't like how social networking websites are designed; so I deleted the account.

[RedcoatJones]

RedcoatJones found me on Facebook today (I'm not sure how, with a name as common as mine), and it reminded me that I had been meaning to connect with some of you long-time Phorumers who happen to be on Facebook. I can be found here:

http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Martin/1048993457

I'll try to look up a few of you whose real-life names I can remember. I know some folks don't do the "friends" thing with people they've only known in an online capacity, and that's totally OK, but for me, I've known some of you folks longer than I've known my wife, and you've had a huge influence on my musical tastes over the years, so I figure it's warranted.

It was from your link to the "mix-tape" covers. I was completely unaware you had FB until then. :-)

Anyone wants to add me I'm here. And I'm like Bethany, in that there are a nauseating amount of baby pics on my account.

[Vlad!]

I happened upon an interesting article today by a guy who just recently decided to cull his Facebook friends down significantly. I don't use any of the social networking services he listed, but for those who use multiple of them, it seems like following a similar path might be a good step toward injecting some sanity into your e-life.

[spacebrat311]

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/seancapener?ref=profile

if anyone wants to be friends.

[Wildcatblue7]

I happened upon an interesting article today by a guy who just recently decided to cull his Facebook friends down significantly. I don't use any of the social networking services he listed, but for those who use multiple of them, it seems like following a similar path might be a good step toward injecting some sanity into your e-life.

I did something similar recently and deleted somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 people.  I don't feel a need to chop THAT much--but most of those people I never talk to, see, or otherwise interact with, including online.  Also I am pretty private and so my life that I don't want on the internet...this is revolutionary, folks...DOESN'T GO ON THE INTERNET.  ANYWHERE.  So I'm a little more "free," I suppose.  I have a Twitter account...but only to follow some sports columnists/recruiting analysts. /sportsnerd

[Brenden]

I'm pretty much the same way. A girl from worked called me one day to ask me to cover a shift. Later, some other co-workers said they thought that was creepy. I told them, I put my phone number on Facebook just so my Facebook friends can see it and can call me if they need to. If I wanted my number to be private, then I wouldn't put it online. Private info doesn't belong online so I just keep that private.

[Vlad!]

It can be difficult to maintain that policy, though. For instance, there are things that I wouldn't mention on this Phorum even though I'd be willing to tell any of you pholks individually just because the Phorum is public record.

I have a friend who is very circumspect about what she puts online and tries to maintain a professional demeanor in her online presences. When she graduated and started looking for a job, she bet me dinner that I couldn't find any dirt on her online (in the theory that anything I could find, potential employers could also find). Of course, she ended up buying me dinner. I was able to use the archive.org wayback machine to find an archived version of her professional site which linked to a pdf hosted on her personal webserver, and once I had the address of that webserver it was all over. And this is someone who's very smart about how she presents herself online.

In 2000, Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke wrote a chilling novel called The Light of Other Days which postulates a scientific breakthrough allowing everyone to trivially spy on everyone else. More than that, it allows everyone to look anywhere in history, so it's not just that your neighbor can see what you're doing right now, but that your neighbor can see anything you've ever done. I don't know if Baxter and Clarke were intentionally creating an allegory for our modern society, but I think we're heading in that direction. None other than the Library of Congress plans on archiving all of Twitter. When Yahoo! announced they were giving Geocities the axe (if you're like me, your reaction was "wait, Geocities is still around?!"), multiple groups began backing up the content there (content which was probably also available on archive.org for the most part).

If every word you've written online, every post to every forum, were archived somewhere on the Internet, would the policy of "stuff I don't want on the Internet doesn't go on the Internet" hold up? What if a big company decided to release all your search data? What if people could determine your sexual orientation from your Facebook page even if you're trying to keep it on the DL?

I think that like it or not the world we're facing is one where privacy can never be assumed. You may think that you have the Facebook privacy settings configured correctly, but what if one of your friends installs an app and grants it access to his friend list, and the app happens to have a security vulnerability? Or is deliberately malicious? We're at the point now where the decisions other people make can impact your privacy without your consent.

Keep in mind that Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, considers us to have evolved past the need for privacy. Late last year, Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously dismissed privacy concerns about Google, which ironically came back to bite him (doubly ironic since he has been burned by this before).

In any case, I didn't intend for this to turn into a giant Vlad!-essay. Feel free to ignore it and continue posting links to your public Facebook pages on a public forum on the Internet. I'll just be over here lamenting our loss of privacy.

[enemy anemone]

I was just reading about the new/upcoming changes with Facebook and "making the web instantly more social and personalized". I suppose some (most?) people would be like "yay! more social! more personalized!" but I feel very uncomfortable with it. the scene in the movie Minority Report when the Tom Cruise character is in the mall and the ads are talking to him about the pants he purchased comes to mind. DO NOT WANT.
I do have a facebook account and have a tolerate/hate relationship with it. I like being able to keep tabs on certain groups and people, but the networkiness of everything bothers me. (Adama and his no-networked computers policy on the Galactica comes to mind.) I often think about deactivating my account, but I end up not doing so because of one thing or another.  

there are things that I wouldn't mention on this Phorum even though I'd be willing to tell any of you pholks individually just because the Phorum is public record.

well now I am very curious! would you send me a pm with one such thing?

[Wildcatblue7]

haha Vlad, I always thought you could pick out people who were likely gay based on whether they had "Interested In" displayed or not.  This has seriously never failed me, as those we were like, OOOOHHH, nothing displayed...turned out to be gay.  Unless of course they're married, but then again that question doesn't usually come up at that point.

[plvarona]

Personally, I'm still a holdout when it comes to Facebook.  I've actually heard a number of reasons not to join it, and very few good reasons to actually join it.  Maybe some day I might find it useful, but that day is not now.

[bloop]

South Park vs. Facebook

[Vlad!]

Just a note: when you paste in those ridiculous facebook URLs with the #!, the Phorum software apparently can't parse them correctly. If you want to make a useful clickable link, do this:

Code:

[url=http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=386443877426&ref=mf]text goes here[/url]

see?

(I have filed a bug with the SMF folks, so it will probably be fixed in about two years at the rate they're going.)

[ajyouthguy]

http://www.facebook.com/ajyouthguy

and while i'm fine with people NOT liking/needing/wanting a facebook, or anything else like that, it has had tremendous value for me personally in youth ministry and for our church as well.

[Vlad!]

Facebook's latest privacy fail:

"Hey, let's give selected sites access to your entire profile. That seems like a good idea".

[Vlad!]

Since I don't have Facebook then I can't try this out, but it looks kind of insidious.

[Brenden]

The only things that came up when I found my page were things like activities, music, movies, my friends list, the people I publicly list as my family, links I've posted, pretty much nothing I consider personal information.

[Aaron]

BAM!


http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=64803462&ref=profile

[Vlad!]

Facebook kinda freaked me out today.

My brother sent me a friend request, presumably so I can look at photos of his spawn. The e-mail included a list of other "people I might know who are on Facebook". That list is creepy.

Now, I know that Facebook knows everyone who's ever friend requested me, which is a little creepy in itself. Facebook also knows that I went to Virginia Tech because of my @vt.edu address. I think Facebook has also figured out that I live in the Raleigh area, probably because of previous friend requests. But using that information it suggested two people who I know who are not on the friends list of anyone who's friend requested me before and who are probably not friend-of-a-friend either. What's creepier is that one of them is the guy who sits in the cube right next to me at work.

Facebook is like that creepy guy who offers you a ride home and then drives right to your house even though you've never told him where you live.

[bloop]

I'd think you would like this kind of thing, given your expertise.  I, for one, welcome our new Overlords.

[Vlad!]

It's interesting and scary at the same time...

It's pretty impressive that out of nine suggestions, five are "yeah, I know that person", two are "holy cow, how did Facebook know that I know that person?", and only two are "wait, do I know that person?". But at the same time it horrifies me that even though I don't want to give Facebook any of my information, it can get all this without me giving them anything. They have a database of information about the owner of my e-mail address (that would be me), and in fact managed to pick out one of my good friends seemingly from the ether.

(No Phorum Phriends showed up on that list unless one of you is the mysterious "Elissa" whom I'm pretty sure I don't know in that list, so apparently the crack Facebook stalker-network hasn't breached this line of defense yet. And now that I've said that I'm waiting for one of you to send me a friend request just to annoy me by adding another tidbit of information into the Facebook hive mind)

[murlough23]

It's an impressive technological feat, but the implications of it are scary. It's a reminder of how much information you reveal about yourself just by having an Email account, surfing the web, and having friends on Facebook. I'm not a terribly private person, so it doesn't bug me that much, but I'm bugged on other people's behalf.

[bloop]

IDK - I have a really hard time being bugged on other people's behalf most of the time.  To me, it just seems like a trivial concern (I think Vlad might even see it as a bit trivial).

[Brenden]

It seems like if it really bothered someone that much, they just wouldn't get a Facebook account. I do agree that the feature is stupid, though. I get tons of people showing up on there who I've never met, but several of my friends know them because they went to college together.

[bloop]

I get some suggestions for people to add who, while I knew them, I knew them to be douchebags.  No thanks.

[murlough23]

I think it determines people to suggest based on people who have suggested you, and beyond that, mutual friends among those people. When I first joined FB, it suggested almost anyone in the system who went to my church. The reason was because a number of those people had sent me invites to FB, and many of them had similar sets of friends, so folks who I didn't know personally but were friends-of-friends came up a lot.

In that sense, it only gathers data on you based on who opts to indicate that they know you. It then proceeds to assume that if you know A, B, C, ... , N, and those people all have a mutual Facebook friend, then you might know N as well. Still a bit eerie, but there's no Big Brother watching you to see where you live, where you work, where you go to church, or where you went to school. All the information it has on you was either voluntarily given by your friends (so maybe talk to them about it), or else a best guess based on your friends' social circles as indicated in FB.

[Vlad!]

Bloop, you are correct...although it's creepy, it's probably not that big a deal.

Murlough, the reason why I was surprised is that of all the people who send me friend requests, none of them know A and B, the two people I was surprised to see suggested.

It appears to have chosen three people from my brother's friends list (one of whom I sort of know, one of whom I don't know, and one of whom is my mom, who I didn't even know was on Facebook but is probably there just to see pictures of her grandson), three people from the friends list of the person who last friend requested me (all from church, so I knew them all), and three people from Virginia Tech. What I found surprising was that I knew two of the three people from VT, even though there's no intersection between them, my family circle, and my church circle.

[murlough23]

People can also tag you in photos, videos, etc. even if you're not a member of Facebook. So it may just know that these folks know some mysterious non-member by that name.

[Vlad!]

I know I'm tagged in a few photos on Facebook, but only one of the three unrelated people might actually have tagged me.

I'm not saying that it's inexplicable or magic, but it is a bit freaky.