I have been getting some unexpected invites for Facebook lately and am curious as to the universal appeal of this particular site. I has definately finished off Linked-in as far as I’m concerned with the few contacts I had there now on facebook. It has not however caused any migration from my Myspace people.
Damien Mulley gives a good synopsis of the evoloution of social media sites as they all take there turn being flavour of the month. What Facebook has done that is different for me is to root out a huge number of old and unexpected acquaintances. This must be due to what Damien calls the Honeytrap, facebooks automatic scan of your address book was the first thing that struck me when I signed up, it found people on facebook that I forgot were in my email address book.
As far as the other social media sites go they have there place too but some of them can be reminiscent of schoolyard politics with some kids having the cool trainers and a swearword shaved into their head while Facebook’s single skin does away with all this and discards that Juvenal element that can be off-putting to some.
August 4, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Facebook has been clever in appealing to peoples natural (curiosity / nosiness / nothing better to do with their time but gossip on people they know or half know.)
The seemingly harmless move of taking your address book and returning you the names of those people you know/once knew was a stroke of genius and should be commended as such (genius as in effective but not necessarily good). I don’t like the website myself but you can see how feckers with no life of their own could get lost in the web of contacts and profiles and pictures etc etc etc. collectively called bullshit
Internet, TV etc has brought out the voyeuristic nature in the masses, which I suppose was always there but was never such an accessible pastime. It used to involve visiting Mary (the local gossip) to pick up the gossip but knowing full well that Mary was going to be fishing for information from you to tell others, but such was the nature of the beast.
The interesting thing is a) humans are naturally voyeurs b) non of these voyeur sites would work if people didn’t post up information and pictures of themselves…so hence people also liked to be voyeured upon. (if there’s such a word).
Maybe things haven’t changed a lot since everyone visited Mary for a cup of tea, only now Mary has been made redundant and Facebook and the like have taken over the mantel as local gossip.
Perhaps a problem with the shift in “local gossip” is that it is now unrestricted. People used to spend only an hour or two with Mary a week therefore forcing themselves to do something a little more interesting/productive/challenging with the remainder of the week. Now we are in the “Social Networking” age the masses can spend more and more time farting about on such sites….End result: Everyone goes to college, specialise in something very specific and spend the rest of their time gossiping on such sites. Doesn’t make for a very rounded person or society.
Me thinks, I have taken this a bit far..…or maybe I a little jealous as I have no facebookbuddies except for the Rat.
August 4, 2007 at 11:12 pm
It’s when you combine Mary with the social network sites that you’re in trouble, it’s like Mary on steroids. There are loads of sneaky sites for looking up people like Bigulo.com and Wink.com, hopefully the voyeuristic element will dissapear after the novelty wears off of being able to scam through profiles, but maybe you are just jealous that I’, you’re only facebook friend.