Disabled by Facebook

I feel as if there’s a force field that’s sucking me deeper and deeper into Facebook. (Although there was a temporary setback when my account was disabled for excessive evangelism, if-you-know-what-I-mean.)

The whole Facebook apps thing was the crowning touch. Facebook as a “platform” is the most interesting development platform since Macintosh. To wit, I want to learn how many “friends” my readers have at Facebook, so please complete this poll.

Comments

[Gen X On Facebook]

Kay: There is a group on Facebook which is made up of people who know that definitely is not spelt with an A. I am not making this up!

I think there should be one that stands for acquaintance being spelt with a 'c' before 'q', and one which tells people that 'its' is a possessive pronoun and it is not the same as 'it is', which when shortened is 'it's' (see positioning of apostrophe?). So get on board 'with' not 'about' with grammar and who knows you may make some really smart friends?

[Kay]

I initially thought some of my PRESENT friends were insane with 20 minute drunken rambles about how wonderful facebook was. I then signed up and for us Gen X or Gen Y people (whatever you want to call the 20-something generation). It is a wonderful way to get in touch with long lost friends/aquaintances. And while some argue that the people you facebook with are not your "real" friends. Some of them most definately are real friends just seperated by distance and time. Through facebook I was coerced (convinced/nagged etc ;) ) to attend my 10 year high school reunion and I am so incredibly glad that I did. It was a coming home. Likewise meeting up with my college friends that unbeknownced to me happen to moved to a city that I travel through regularily. It hasn't changed my daily life that much but for anyone who values nostalgia, and or likes to have trippy coffee/dinner/movie/hiking dates with old friends and relive memories and catch up... that is what it plays on, and is its worth.

Is it rather a glorified addressbook and e-mail listing? I feel that way sometimes but I'm just glad to have some of those addresses I wouldn't have had otherwise.

Although I am on board about too many facebook applications, I refuse for example to load the "top friends", "zombies", or "mood" application no matter how many times I am invited.

I value the get-in-touch it has given me for the time being. I have even started old-fashioned e-mailing with afew people who are willing. That way if they get bored of facebook we will still be able to keep in touch. I'm not banking on it being an everlasting trend but for now. Its rocking my socks off!

[Jeff Scurry]

This post continually crashed a friend's machine. I think it just goes along with what we were thinking - LinkedIn = serious business minded networking site; Facebook = computer crasher.

[Chris Wilson]

Did everyone hear the news that Facebook acquired Parakey, which is a start-up from the founders of Firefox? They are developing an internet based operating system. Hmm... does that put the recent platform developments at Facebook in a different light? It does for me.

I recently posted about this press release. http://freshpeel.com/2007/07/facebook-adds-the-firefox-boys-to-the-team/

[Richard Hong]

I don't know what you mean neither!

I'm surprised the result from the poll. I just graduated from uni and about 90% (I guess) ppl in my uni are using facebook. I prefer the old version which don't have much fancy stuff but only messages and walls. Now it's getting more and more complicated and kind of moving towards Myspace (I will never use that in my life).

[Dale Flannery]

No-I-don't-know-what-you-mean.

Perhaps a gratuitous explanation for GK newbies might me me feel less excluded by my ignorance of the unspoken.

tanks

[Dan Buell]

I have played with Facebook a couple of times and although I appreciate the various applications but I still struggle to understand the value. The pages look sloppy and it's difficult to really organize anything...

[Queen of Suburbia T-Shirts]

In my own limited experience facebook is more about connecting old friends than making new ones. It's a walled garden in the most personal sense.

[Amusis]

If they are on Facebook, they are not your friends. they are strangers like you, living artificial lives, hiding their reality behind aliases and avatars. Real friends speak to you from across the room or over the phone.

[Charles Martineau]

I subscribed early at facebook when it was first launched... but never really used until the past few months. For me it's only good to keep in touch with old buddies that normally I would not care much..hehe..

[Alex]

Oops! The URL is not completely visible. Here it is again Facebook Poll

[Alex]

With so many polls about facebook, why not run one inside facebook itself:

http://apps.facebook.com/pollection/poll.php?guid=139774d46c17a9bb6b1a403c1bd99960

[Judson]

Hmm, thats odd. This post exclusively is crashing NewsFire whenever I try to bring it into safari.
Yes, facebook is very addictive.

[Andrew Wooldridge]

you might want to bump up the numbers on the poll. it doesn't seem to take the average college student into account. facebook was started for college kids, and while it is expanding to other demographics most of the users are still in college.

based on my circle of friends i'd estimate that at least 80% of college students in the US have facebook. and the majority of these students will have 200+ friends, minimum. i have 386 friends, and that's on the low side of average.

to get a better idea of how many friends people really have i'd change the numbers to:

<50
50-100
100-150
150-500
500-1000
1000+

it'd give a better overview of college students, at least.

[Abhishek]

Guy,

I really hope you are building the Truemors app for FaceBook.

I seriously believe that there could be strong potential for your service in that space. Especially in the news feeds section.

Abhishek

[Soso Sazesh]

It seems like a lot of your readers do not use Facebook.

[greg]

Terry > Facebook is a nice tool but I don't believe it will replace blogging

[william]

I was building a site that is invitation only. It was launched on 4th or July and only my friends and family are using it right now, but it gets 1000 hits per day after 4 days (I have about 20 people there. Most of these people never heard of MySpace or FaceBook, not to mention having created an account. Please don't try to hit site right now since it can barely handle the limited few members, plus it is invitation only for now. You can leave your email and I will see if I can move the site to better handle the traffic. Well, the idea is simple:

1. No one need to sign up an account.
2. Most communication are based on good old email system.
3. You can create different circles of friends that you interact with. Just like the real world, you have many circles of friends and they might or might not know each others and you would keep it that way.
4. You interact with your friends by exchanging any kinds of digital media. (Photos, videos, mp3, text, embedded html snippets like YouTube or anything that you can describe using HTML).

I feel kinda excited that all my non-websavvy friends and family are enjoying interacting with each other without even knowing MySpace or FaceBook. And they don't even need to create account and remembering password.

[Tyler]

As a college student working on campus, my daily schedule when I arrive at my office is:

1) Say hi to desk people
2) Check Facebook
3) Check work email
4) Actually work

I wonder if facebook somehow programs your computer to spray LSD on you everything you login in... I really need my fix now...

[Megan]

Being a college student, I have seen that majority of people (at my university) are FB friends with people they have meet in class, parties, etc. I've found that it is a site where students can connect, communicate and build/maintain relationships. It isn't about the number of friends you have, but rather keeping in contact with the friends you have and the friends you make.

The whole original push for FB was that it was for college students. Myspace seemed immature at the time because anyone could have a site, and your friends were mostly people you didn't even know. I'm worried that FB is turning into a second myspace with all the new applications. It has gotten creepy!

[liquid06]

@ Marilyn - I use Live Journal and I really like it. I stayed away from MySpace after trying it for awhile then becoming frustrated with the bad design, people's annoying profiles and threatening comments from my ex.

I would personally rather put my hours into a writing-style site than a profile-meet-people type site because I tend to be a not-so-social person in real life. Therefore I've been on Virb - with no friends that I actually know - blogger, wordpress, livejournal, flickr and deviantart.

In the case of Virb and LiveJournal, friends almost don't become so much "friends" as they are "content providers." YouTube lets you "subscribe" and they call it subscribing to video channels - adding friends on a social network seems like the same thing to me. Not adding them because you like them or because you are friends in real life but because they provide and create content that's interesting to you.

I think that online, we're not making friends, we're making extensions of ourselves (what whe think and what we like) in a selfish network of content syndication.

My 2 cents.

[Tiffany]

I am sure you'll find your college and newly graduated crowd are those with the most Facebook friends. We're who they started out marketing to. Advertising genius.

I agree that what they've been doing lately is pretty revolutionary, but I wonder if all the bells and whistles will tire with people. I'm already a little Facebooked out. In my observation, I saw many people add and then delete applications in the first few weeks they were offered. Time will tell.

[Brian]

I've been sucked in as well. Kind of took the wind out of my LinkedIn interest, though that is still a useful app. My 300 friends are all legit, and have generated their share of biz leads as well. I almost got busted for pirating friends from business related sites... I thought it was all fair game, since they were obviously using FB to phish for business leads.

[roy]

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www.solicko.com/TheMillionDollarProject

[James]

Facebook is addictive! I have around 200 friends!