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I've been on facebook for a little over a month now. I'm still not quite certain how I feel about it as a social networking tool, but here are some of my thoughts/observations. I'd be interested in how -- if you're also on facebook -- they dovetail with your impressions...
Facebook isn't about depth. Rather, it encourages 'surface' interaction, along the lines of "Stephen is putting on his left sock now." While such things can occasionally be interesting to know, facebook seems to be the shallow end of the pool of communication. With FB, I can say "I believe this..." but with LJ I can give you the rationale for my belief and the data that support it. With FB, I can shout "This really pisses me off..." but with LJ I can go on a long rant with bells and whistles and 8x10 glossy pictures; I can explore the issue in depth and demonstrate to everyone just how much of an idiot I am (and they can happily point out to me the errors of my point of view).
That's not to say that every time I use LJ, I write an extensive and well-considered essay for an entry (though of course all of my posts are well-considered and brilliant). I don't. Sometimes my post is just the equivalent of "I'm putting on my left sock now." But if I want to go further (and I often do), the structure of LJ encourages that. FB feels to me like I'm walking down a hall and saying "Hey, how ya doin'?" to a bunch of people I know as I pass them. LJ feels more like a one-to-one conversation with a group of friends who want to talk about the subject de jour.
On the other hand, FB encourages connection to other people more than LJ. In fact, FB is downright belligerent about trying to hook you up with people. Through FB, I've reconnected with a few people with whom I'd lost touch over the years, and now I have some idea of where they are and what they've been doing -- because we occasionally pass in the hall and exchange a few words.
For those who are all about images and media other than words, FB has it all over LJ for displaying and sharing photos and video, etc....
FB is also far more aggressive about 'sharing' information on your profile with various apps and tools -- and that worries me. I also wonder how much it shares with organization and people without telling me. Of course, that's also a concern with LJ...
Perhaps it's also a case of "different tools, different uses." Maybe FB is a screwdriver and LJ is a hammer and though you need them both if you're making a bridge to connect to other people online, they're not really used for the same purpose and you want both in your toolbox. I feel more comfortable here on LJ, but perhaps that's only because I'm more used to its quirks and interactions.
What do you think?
Facebook isn't about depth. Rather, it encourages 'surface' interaction, along the lines of "Stephen is putting on his left sock now." While such things can occasionally be interesting to know, facebook seems to be the shallow end of the pool of communication. With FB, I can say "I believe this..." but with LJ I can give you the rationale for my belief and the data that support it. With FB, I can shout "This really pisses me off..." but with LJ I can go on a long rant with bells and whistles and 8x10 glossy pictures; I can explore the issue in depth and demonstrate to everyone just how much of an idiot I am (and they can happily point out to me the errors of my point of view).
That's not to say that every time I use LJ, I write an extensive and well-considered essay for an entry (though of course all of my posts are well-considered and brilliant). I don't. Sometimes my post is just the equivalent of "I'm putting on my left sock now." But if I want to go further (and I often do), the structure of LJ encourages that. FB feels to me like I'm walking down a hall and saying "Hey, how ya doin'?" to a bunch of people I know as I pass them. LJ feels more like a one-to-one conversation with a group of friends who want to talk about the subject de jour.
On the other hand, FB encourages connection to other people more than LJ. In fact, FB is downright belligerent about trying to hook you up with people. Through FB, I've reconnected with a few people with whom I'd lost touch over the years, and now I have some idea of where they are and what they've been doing -- because we occasionally pass in the hall and exchange a few words.
For those who are all about images and media other than words, FB has it all over LJ for displaying and sharing photos and video, etc....
FB is also far more aggressive about 'sharing' information on your profile with various apps and tools -- and that worries me. I also wonder how much it shares with organization and people without telling me. Of course, that's also a concern with LJ...
Perhaps it's also a case of "different tools, different uses." Maybe FB is a screwdriver and LJ is a hammer and though you need them both if you're making a bridge to connect to other people online, they're not really used for the same purpose and you want both in your toolbox. I feel more comfortable here on LJ, but perhaps that's only because I'm more used to its quirks and interactions.
What do you think?
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I wouldn't bother with Facebook except that it lets me play online Scrabble with my aunt.
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On a soapbox
In the early days of written communication, the media were hard to come by and hard to use: clay shards, stele, the occasional colosseum. With the introduction of paper, people started getting windier: You were going to use that sheet of foolscap whether you wrote Beowulf or "Pharoah sucks!". When mail came along and you had to pay for your writing to be read by others, the dynamic was similar: You might as well fill it up. Newspapers needed to fill column inches, pioneers might only take one or two books on a long journey, authors got paid by the word. Long discourse was in.
But really, most human interaction is social; as you walk down the street you simply acknowledging existence with a smile. I can walk out of my home and go to the post office and exchange a few words with a dozen people I see frequently. I don't really want to get involved in a long discussion with any of them, but the pleasantries keep my place in the world, and theirs.
Now we're back to Facebook. We've come full circle and gone off on a tangent. Since the overhead of communication is almost nil (on top of the internet infrastructure we take for granted), we can afford to write short messages again. We're back to erecting stele for people to marvel at as they pass by to their real work.
On the other hand, virtual storage space is cheap and the hypertextual nature of the web allows a few simple phrases to link to pictures, games, longer posts, ads, and so on.
The Profile information is self-entered, so you have control. Which is not to say people use the control wisely, anymore than they do so on their LJ page. As always, you have to balance your public persona with what you're willing to share.
When I greet someone out in the street on my way to the Post Office, I really don't know much about them. Their greeting tells me that every thing's okay, within tolerable limits, but if I want to know more about them I'd have to stop and have a conversation. This is often quite pleasant, but it's also quite inconvenient right then.
FB is very good at the balance: Allowing information to be available yet serving as a "Whazzup!" level social wheel-greaser. I'm not particularly concerned about whether you're putting on your left sock, but I'm willing to spend the .01 seconds to read it just to know that you're still alive. LJ is okay at the balance, but tends to encourage you to stop and have the conversation along the way. Country vs. city. Literate vs. grunting. Typists vs. peckers. Slightly different tools for handling similar situations. At some level, most people don't want to stop and discuss the weather, they just want to move on to the next thing.
LJ is still my "blog", where I engage in logorrhea (such as this response). FB is good for connecting to long-lost friends and rarely seen relatives. I have more than twice as many FB friends (since Nov.) than LJ Friends (since 2005). And while there's a certain amount of foafing, I know most of them: I posted pictures of maybe half my FB Friends, and could do more if I dug through my snapshots.
What was the question again?
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Re: On a soapbox
For example, people in the Pittsburgh area who work on movies have an active Facebook presence. As a result, I got to go to lunch with a bunch of people (one of whom I hadn't seen in 29 years) and got a tour of a movie studio in progress. I never would have made those connections without getting active on Facebook about two months ago.
I set-up a YahooGroup years ago for people from my high school class who were at one of the reunions. It was used occasionally. Some of the same people are now fairly active on Facebook.
Facebook is a good way for making fairly casual contacts and for finding folks. I agree it isn't for in-depth writing. I vastly prefer it to Twitter though, for making the same kind of comments.
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10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know (http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/) (http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/)
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Facebook is real life. Real name. Real info. It's more of a networking thing, a chatting thing, a fun social interaction. It's like a phone call, an online chat, whereas LJ is a journal.
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For me a huge part of FB is that it's not anonymous. I love meeting people via anonymous nicknames, hiding their Real Selves the way people tend to do on LJ and IRC (and other places). However, that's for meeting *new* people. Facebook is done with Real Names and thus a way to connect with people you've been looking for for years. I've reconnected with so many wonderful people I'd lost forever - and that's something that's statistically far more unlikely on LJ.
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the Borg collectiveFacebook, but it just doesn't appeal to me, for pretty much the reason you're giving here.I may look like an extrovert, but really I'm an introvert. I don't want to have surface interaction with a million people--that's exhausting! I much prefer deeper interaction with a smaller population.
Also, I have not the slightest desire to be "findable" by people from my past. If they want to find me, my lj comes up on google.
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B
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Requests to join applications and games I routinely ignore.
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Re: On a soapbox
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But in general, yes, I agree.
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I suspect (without any data) that most LJ'ers would find some interest in FB, but that the reverse would generally not be true. I've noticed that many of my LJ friends list has been showing up on FB even in the month and a half since I've been there, but that no one I know who was only a FB friend has come over to LJ...
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There are scammers everywhere, of course.
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However, my #1 complaint about FB is that there is no one place where I can see everything that is going on. The news feed page doesn't show everything and it's also very difficult to keep track of a thread of interaction. Whereas in LJ, everything shows up on my Friends page and all conversations remain intact within a post. That is why I put all posts other than random remarks in LJ and not in FB.
I also find all the application stuff incredibly annoying and intrusive.
I would probably not bother with FB at all except that most of my LJ friends seem to also be there now. So I check it occasionally.
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I found that myspace and facebook basically bring me attention from folks from my past I do not really want to reconnect with. So rather than ignore them and feel bad while friending people I do care about, i usually just dont friend anyone. I also find it strange that folks that try to friend me on these sites never just go to my site and email me. You'd think if they really wanted to contact me they would do that. I guess i am not good at social networking, with one exception, my good friend Twitter.
Now twitter i can get behind. Its quick, painless, informative and fun. with apps for computer, iPhone, IM, phone, you can update quickly and easily from anywhere. I find it so much easier and useful. for example i recently tweeted "video game night at my house Feb. 21" within minutes I had responses from just about all my friends weather or not they could be there. In fact I often find twitter doing everything id usually do with IM and email and blogging and networking all in one spot.
come on steve join the twitter revolt!
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And I like playing lexulous/scrabble I always thought I was no good at this but turns out you give me a spell checker and I'm not bad at all.
i don't like to things one gets sent that then require me to enter information or try to sell me things or whatever annoying things they do and I can never figure them out so I just ignore them.
Think of it as an interactive address book.
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I think you're correct in your evaluation that FB is shallow & LJ deep. My metaphor would have been that FB plays in the musical stylings of Poison (let's have some drinks, hang with some peeps & shoot the shit) & LJ rocks like Tool (let's chill for the evening, put on their 3rd, 4th & 5th albums & pay attention to the performance details, emotional expression & the way their style has evolved over time).
My CD collection contains both bands, but their musicks serve much different purposes.
FB does have its Notes application where you can opine or rant to your heart's content, but the comments section is similar to a lot of generic online magazines - it's not tiered to collect conversations the way LJ is.
I do like the new cross-site feature - if you're signed into FB, an LJ post made from LJ's 'Post an Entry' page appears on your FB wall, if anyone there cares to check it out.
I think FB higher tolerance for 'friend collectors' - on LJ, people who add but never interact seem to be deleted after, say, a month (my experience), where FB seems rife with people from high school that not only did you never expect to see again but don't care to either, & somehow unfriending someone you grew up with (though you barely knew) somehow feels like an unfair dis.
Particularly surreal to me is how I could very easily man-up & delete people from FB who aren't in my life right now, but as an emerging writer/artist it seems prudent to accept the FB friends who request it simply as a public relations move, which I feel is pointedly disingenuous on my part. Am I channeling my inner bastard?