1. I reached a critical mass of friends where every time I was on I could click on "Chat" and see a few friends on.
2. I started chatting with a Facebook "poweruser"[1] who said she was going to "teach me how to be cool" by using Facebook better.
3. Partly thanks to (2), I started updating my status a few times a week, whenever I had something interesting[3] to share.
4. People started commenting on and "Like"ing my status updates.
5. I realized that it was pretty cool to be able to connect meaningfully[4] with people in a way that I couldn't before.
I love creating and building things, but social interaction with people I enjoy is just as important to me. Facebook is an invaluable tool in that interaction, just as a great IDE is an invaluable tool in programming. Just like an IDE, Facebook is most valuable when you are using it to its full potential. If you don't have a large number of Facebook friends and you don't use Chat and status updates, it's easy to miss the point. Perhaps you've experienced the difficulty in explaining the benefits of emacs or vi to an Eclipse or VisualStudio user?
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[1] I was at a Taco Bell one night after my friends and I left the bar, and somehow we started talking to a girl and her friends. I walked them home, she got my name, she added me as a Facebook friend, and now we chat on Facebook a few times a month. If not for Facebook, I probably would have never seen her again. That is what makes Facebook relevant, the ability to create new (and keep old[2]) connections that weren't even possible before Facebook got huge.
[2] Just tonight I was talking to a friend on Facebook when another girl said hello to me, a girl that I was good friends with a couple summers ago but haven't seen or talked to much since. Now we're probably going to meet up tomorrow night to catch up over drinks.
[3] For certain values of "interesting"
[4] With Facebook-as-it-is-now, it is possible to tell people that you are barely friends with, "I appreciate you and I'm glad to be friends with you," simply by Liking or commenting on a photo, status update, or shared link. It was hard to do that in the past without being drunk or creepy.
Yeah, I don't either and really don't like to login to facebook at all. I definitely have an account, but I only reply to private messages and rsvp to events since that's how I get invited to a lot of things. I don't really mind facebook for that purpose, but I don't spend any free time there.
Every time I hear this meme repeated, I get the (depressing) image of roughly 400,000,000 stub accounts that were created to check out FB, and promptly abandoned to gather dust.
I don't think so. Facebook only had 132M unique visitors in March, compared to 400M users they are believed to have. To say that 400M were active last 30 days, Facebook need to workaround the pigeonhole principle.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like AOL's strategy was very content-heavy - they tried to provide all the news, movies, etc. their users would need in order to keep to on AOL properties as much as possible. Users are much more tied into Facebook via their friends and private info.
AOL also did a lot with 'buddy lists' and offline friendships. They didn't have social networking figured out, but they definitely tried to own communication and relationships as well as content.
The once-in-a-while that I do use it, I can't figure it out. Are there two or three home pages? It's impossible to find anything. Maybe I just don't spend enough time there. <insert #geezertag here>
Funny thing is that I know 4-5 other couples/families where the facebookiness is outsourced. It's just a huge timesink compared to other internet things.
Comments
i still dont use facebook that much.
I was in this same camp a few months ago. Then:
1. I reached a critical mass of friends where every time I was on I could click on "Chat" and see a few friends on.
2. I started chatting with a Facebook "poweruser"[1] who said she was going to "teach me how to be cool" by using Facebook better.
3. Partly thanks to (2), I started updating my status a few times a week, whenever I had something interesting[3] to share.
4. People started commenting on and "Like"ing my status updates.
5. I realized that it was pretty cool to be able to connect meaningfully[4] with people in a way that I couldn't before.
I love creating and building things, but social interaction with people I enjoy is just as important to me. Facebook is an invaluable tool in that interaction, just as a great IDE is an invaluable tool in programming. Just like an IDE, Facebook is most valuable when you are using it to its full potential. If you don't have a large number of Facebook friends and you don't use Chat and status updates, it's easy to miss the point. Perhaps you've experienced the difficulty in explaining the benefits of emacs or vi to an Eclipse or VisualStudio user?
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[1] I was at a Taco Bell one night after my friends and I left the bar, and somehow we started talking to a girl and her friends. I walked them home, she got my name, she added me as a Facebook friend, and now we chat on Facebook a few times a month. If not for Facebook, I probably would have never seen her again. That is what makes Facebook relevant, the ability to create new (and keep old[2]) connections that weren't even possible before Facebook got huge.
[2] Just tonight I was talking to a friend on Facebook when another girl said hello to me, a girl that I was good friends with a couple summers ago but haven't seen or talked to much since. Now we're probably going to meet up tomorrow night to catch up over drinks.
[3] For certain values of "interesting"
[4] With Facebook-as-it-is-now, it is possible to tell people that you are barely friends with, "I appreciate you and I'm glad to be friends with you," simply by Liking or commenting on a photo, status update, or shared link. It was hard to do that in the past without being drunk or creepy.
Yeah, I don't either and really don't like to login to facebook at all. I definitely have an account, but I only reply to private messages and rsvp to events since that's how I get invited to a lot of things. I don't really mind facebook for that purpose, but I don't spend any free time there.
Then you will soon be in the minority of internet users. In a few years, Facebook has the potential to basically BE the web for most people.
That worked so well for AOL when they were the "internet".
Except that facebook has a population already greater than "America". And AOL cost money to use - facebook is free.
It doesn't stop you using other services/sites/etc -- you just don't need or want to.
"facebook has a population"
Every time I hear this meme repeated, I get the (depressing) image of roughly 400,000,000 stub accounts that were created to check out FB, and promptly abandoned to gather dust.
The numbers they release are "monthly active users", ie people who logged in within the last 30 days, not stub accounts.
I don't think so. Facebook only had 132M unique visitors in March, compared to 400M users they are believed to have. To say that 400M were active last 30 days, Facebook need to workaround the pigeonhole principle.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like AOL's strategy was very content-heavy - they tried to provide all the news, movies, etc. their users would need in order to keep to on AOL properties as much as possible. Users are much more tied into Facebook via their friends and private info.
AOL also did a lot with 'buddy lists' and offline friendships. They didn't have social networking figured out, but they definitely tried to own communication and relationships as well as content.
"be in the minority of internet users"
That's okay. If a popular product doesn't add value for me personally, then I shouldn't use it.
I let my wife run my profile.
The once-in-a-while that I do use it, I can't figure it out. Are there two or three home pages? It's impossible to find anything. Maybe I just don't spend enough time there. <insert #geezertag here>
I find its user interface confusing. I'm used to cleaner, simpler, more task-focused web 2.0 sites.
Yeah, I've outsourced Facebook consciousness to my daughter.
Funny thing is that I know 4-5 other couples/families where the facebookiness is outsourced. It's just a huge timesink compared to other internet things.