Question of the Day — Do you use Facebook? Is it possible to spend too much time on Facebook? Have you made any Facebook faux-pas? (I accidentally friended someone who I thought was someone else. She friended me. And now I'm too embarrassed to unfriend her. The dilemmas of modern life.) Have you formed new connections with old friends? (I have.)
16 thoughts on “Question of the Day — Facebook”
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Apt. 11d 
I use Facebook *a lot*, plus I taught a class on “Facebook culture” two semesters in a row, plus I have made connections with old friends– just last night, I had dinner with a friend I hadn’t talked to in five years, all because of Facebook!
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I am not on Facebook. All of my acquaintances my age or younger are (early 30s), including my husband, but it just doesn’t appeal to me. I’d prefer to get research done.
The downside is that college friends no longer want to trade updates about mutual friends when we talk — “If you were on Facebook, you’d know it all” they say impatiently.
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I think I’m old. I don’t get facebook at all. The few times I’ve tried to drop by at someone’s request everything about the visuals screamed at me, and I had to go away again.
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I don’t do facebook; at some point I decided it’s inappropriate for someone in their 40s (like me) and too much of a time suck.
That said, when my girlfriend recently had her baby, I was the only one who hadn’t heard. She posted the news on facebook and left it at that. When I sent around the “has anyone heard from Susan?” e-mail I got what Siobhan has been getting — “If you were on facebook you’d already know.”
I say give it 6 months and it will go the way of friendster and classmates. The very fact that so many people my age are doing it makes me think facebook has already jumped the shark!
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I mostly ignore it, like jen (but I am on it). And, as I said somewhere else, I am such a late adopter that I assumed my joining (awhile ago) signalled its impending doom. But I think its here to stay.
What I most like is that two of my cousins have found me on it, and the daughter of another cousin — I never see them, but have always thought I’d like them if I did. Also, several high school friends, and the mother of one of my high school friends. I like seeing what they are doing, but that’s mainly because it turns out that my friends in high school were the kind of people I would still like as an adult, which is not true for lots of people.
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I am on it. I like it. I have enjoying seeing what friends have been doing.
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I think Facebook is social and a nice way to keep in touch. I “see” my aunts (ages 47 and 52) much more often, as well as a few cousins and faux-cousins (kids of my mom’s best friend), and it’s a nice way to keep up with some old fandom friends. I’d like to see it used a little more among the PTA moms/community I live in.
I’m not seeing the business networking aspects of it. Twitter and blogs seem to be much more effective ways of doing that.
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I should also say I use Friendbar, which is a Firefox addon, I think, and it is a streaming update of my Twitter and Facebook feeds at the top of my browser. This way I don’t really spend time checking and chatting. Here it is. I have to keep the sound on my computer off or else it beeps a lot.
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I live 800+ miles away from my family, so I love FB. It’s a nice way to get day-to-day details about the ones I love.
I have unfriended people. When I first joined, I would accept any friend invitation of anyone I knew. Later, I realized, “I really didn’t know this person in high school….why would I care what they do now?” and quietly unfriended quite a few people. I’m not sure anyone even noticed.
I’m 40 and lots of my friends are on it. I enjoy it. I don’t find it any more of a time waster than email or blogs or TV. I have a very limited amount of time each day to waste, so the manner in which I waste it doesn’t seem relevant.
My drug of choice this week? Bejeweled. On FB.
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I was quietly unfriended by a student who friended me in a spurt of enthusiasm and then, I think, thought better of it (18 months ago). Of the current students who have friended me she is the one I see most often, and correspond with most often.
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I got an account several years ago to help me put a face to student names from time to time. At first, I got so much more than a face that it was often embarassing. Now most of my students seem to realize that privacy protections matter. So I rarely go there.
And no, I have not gotten into that whole friend thing. I guess it’s generational. And I’m in my fifties. But I like Good Reads — social networking around books without all the drinking pictures.
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Initially, I (age 32, if that is an issue) set up a Facebook account (back when it was university-only) to see a fan page someone set up for a professor in the department. After then, some students found me, and I had to set up a friending rule (not when I’m your TA, but if you want me for your stats afterwards, I’ll automatically accept). After that, I set other friending rules, had a few “why the hell does this exboyfriend want me as a friend?” moments, and make sure to do limited memes and applications. Even if I do use the status updates.
I personally think that “if you were on Facebook, you’d know” is a bit hostile. It is also a bit presumptuous, as if you have a long friends-list it’s not as if all of the news is given the CNN Breaking News treatment: everything, including someone’s laundry issues, is presented exactly the same.
I use Facebook a lot as a means of one-on-one communication–some people handle messages better than emails, for some reason–although not everyone responds to those. But that’s like letter writing: if you have a poor correspondent (of which I am congenitally one: I actually schedule in emailing/letter-writing/facebooking time, because otherwise I’d never get it done), you can either keep sending letters when times call for it, or you can just ignore them. Except for their latest beer-bash party pictures from NoCal.
At that level, I think it’s a useful thing, I hope it endures past the current hype so as to continue to be useful, but it’s not as awesome as vaccination. Which is an awesome thing. (I’ve been researching plagues again this week.)
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I use facebook but I work in software so the adage of “if you feel comfortable with your email content on the cover of the WSJ” then I limit my chatter. Work is never discussed on FB, blog, or on the internet ever.
I also have max privacy settings and multiple tiers of friend settings so that certain friends are more equal than others.
With that said, tons of pals and from college and work that I have added to FB. Some fun stuff to see. Coworkers are truly the most fun and the most plugged in. It’s a great conversation starter and there is some fun stuff that is PC and funny that can be posted. For instance, I never knew how many BSG fans there were. Fun stuff 🙂
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Like Harry and Jen, I am on it, but mostly ignore it. I joined mainly because I have a leadership position amongst young people at my church, and they’re all on it, and kept harrassing me about joining so I would be up to speed with everything they have going on in their lives and schedules. Since joining, however, I have found that even checking it regularly leaves me pretty much as clueless as I was before. So mostly I don’t bother.
My wife, I should say, loves Facebook, and has in particular loved being able to make contact with old high school friends. But as I don’t really have any old high school friends that I care to remember (or that I suspect would care to remember me), I’m good without it.
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I just signed-up last night and sent messages to two relatives and 1/3 of my high school class. It was a very small school.
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I’m on Facebook, but mostly to play two games, Dragon Wars and Parking Wars, because I need something that serves as a quick thirty-second study break. I do use it to keep up with a a couple of old friends from high school. More interestingly, I recently started talking with someone I don’t know in real life because I recognized his character’s name in the Dragon Wars game as a character’s name from a series of books I love and wrote him to say it was a good series. Ten or twelve conversations about authors we like later, I went ahead and friended him. I have received friending spam, mostly from various bands that play near me. In general, I think it’s working pretty well as a social website for me.
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