I resisted the whole social networking thing for a long time, mostly due to preconceived notions. In the past, I was a member of many different social networks: bulletin boards, Compuserve forums, etc. The explosion of users that came with the rapid Internet expansion lowered barriers to entry and reduced the value of those forums. The signal to noise ratio became so low as to make them useless.
Anyway, seeing as how we’re building social features into our product, it seems like I should get acquainted. Since the other guys at the office are members of Facebook, as are a number of my friends, I figured I’d sign up.
So what do I think, after just a few days? Facebook is definitely a Good Thing. I enjoy being able to post quick updates to let people know what I’m up to, and I like seeing what’s happening in their worlds, too. And, I’ve connected with a few people who I hadn’t heard from in 25 years or more. I can see where Facebook or something like it could become an essential tool for keeping up with friends and family.
Ah, congrats! I do miss the old Facebook of a few months ago though. It was less focused on Twitter-like friend updates, and more focused on actually having your own profile page. Now everyone’s stream-of-consciousness-like updates seem to all blend together, it’s hard to find specific features (like photo albums) without happening upon them in your update stream, and I generally do not like it as much.
Then again, everyone complains when anything changes. It’s just, most of the time I am the one person in a crowd of complainers that actually goes “well, it’s different, but it’s definitely an improvement!”; this time, I’m just asking why I need two Twitters, when I already don’t use the actual Twitter website for good reason (hint: I don’t like it).
Bah, well anyway I’m sorry this turned into a rant! Congrats on joining the social networking revolution!