Yves Dorfsman wrote:
> I've seen of couple of messages on the lopsa mailing lists saying
> "check my facebook page" or something similar. I follow the link, and
> it page asks me to "join" in order to be able to see the page...
Personally, it reminds me a bit of the gmail craze, when people were
advertising that they had gmail invitations on all sorts of mailing
lists. I really consider sending facebook invitations to be personal,
and not the thing to send to a list, no matter how well meaning. That
said...
> What is the point of faceboot over say a personal web page ? What is
> the whole "friend" thing on facebook, is it a connection like
> linkedin ?
Facebook started out as just a high school/college kind of thing, where
you could, as a student, join, and see other people in your university,
or others. It branched out some time ago to be more "inclusive" and has
now dropped some of the older format (such as showing all sorts of
things about your network).
Like anything in the social networking world, it's different things to
different people. Facebook (and other social networks) have little to do
with a personal web page (we used to call those vanity sites), and more
to do with the need to feel connected, and a part of the world. It
occupies a different niche than Myspace, currently attempting to attract
a broad range of ages, cultures, and lifestyles.
> To me the point of a webpage is for visibility, why would you put
> your webpage on a restricted system, where only the members can see
> it ?
Not everyone is restricted. I don't have any of my information shared,
but there are plenty here that do. Facebook tends to be more for
connecting to people you already know, not for finding and meeting
people that you *don't* know. That's no different than the original
LinkedIn (although that one has lost much of its usefulness as it gets
taken over more and more by the MLM types).
> Sometimes I'm wondering if this is a generation gap, but when I look
> at the other "new" "social" websites, say reddit, they let you read
> both stories and comment, even people profiles without registering.
> As someone who has found no value in linkedin, what is the point of
> facebook ?
Reddit isn't really the same thing, though. Besides, almost everyone I
know is on Twitter. I don't know too many folk that are on reddit, or
care much about it. Rather like Tribe, and Orkut, and so many others
that have fallen by the wayside, it's seen its day.
On the other hand, as others have pointed out, what you put on a social
web site ends up available to the world, no matter what your intent is.
That's not too different from posts to this list, or the one over in
Usenix/Sage world.
What the heck; frequent contributors to places like slashdot have a thin
social connection. Same thing with digg (although it's been ages since I
visited). Now that I think about it, the forums over on Woot fall into
that category. There are little tendrils of all of us, all over the
interwebs.
--
Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die,
your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
George Carlin
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