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Losing Facebook
The web's latest social networking site is watching you

Losing Facebook

Monday, 13 August 2007

To Facebook or not to Facebook; that is the question? Whether it is noble in the PC mind to suffer those friend requests, notifications and group invites or to take arms against the entertaining waste of time that is Facebook and the many other social networking websites about at the moment...

While it may seem strange that a website should even question the need for another website - we have to ask if life on Facebook is all it’s cracked up to be? It may be cute to find your long lost lover from behind those primary school bike sheds lurking in some Facebook holding bay but do we actually need to know they are out there? We can’t help but wonder, on a week when reports on email overload caused workers hours of needless stress and interruptions, whether we actually want to send a Facebook mate we hardly know a fish for their virtual aquarium or a fragrance-free, petal-heavy bunch of cyber flowers.

Never mind the loss of man-hours countless businesses across the globe are no doubt suffering as a result of the current Facebook frenzy, perhaps more worrying is the minute-by-minute tracking of our every movement. Sure, you can turn some of these features off, but in the main most of us are laying open our lives to brutal scrutiny. This is more intrusive than just appearing in a photo as you might do on a Real City site... Facebook is more like a voluntarily activated closed-circuit TV camera following us about our daily lives. Everyone wants to be the star of their own profile, but at what cost?

Is this instant online life what it’s all about in 2007? For many of us work is largely a keyboard tapping existence - and now it seems our social life is following suit. The letters and postcards we once wrote have long been sent and replaced by a world of posted online mutterings. Blogged, snapped and bulletin-ed - our speech patterns have changed. Like the oft quoted line "don't vote for politicians it only encourages them" maybe we should log off and leave it alone to stop the endless email notifications of friends found and food fights had?

But then again no notifications, no life. At least not one to boast, blog and post about anyway. Super Poke anyone?

your comments

Kirstin

said by Kirstin
on Tuesday, 14 August 2007, 1:31pm

Not to mention the "friends" one has never ever met or exchanged more than a couple of words with, if any at all... people seem to be going crazy collecting "friends".

How many of their 200 plus friends can people actually call up at 3am in time of need? Bet you can count them on one hand. So why accept "Friend Requests" from people one hardly knows or worse - in the case of MySpace - count "Madonna" or "Britney" as a friend? The mind boggles...

As for the work hours lost, I'm not too concerned. Most large companies have pretty nifty filtering systems which block most non-work-related internet access and only allow lunch time access.

jimmegee

said by jimmegee
on Tuesday, 14 August 2007, 3:33pm

My boss invited me and a bunch of other colleagues to join Facebook about two months ago (in work time). Last week, he sent an e-mail round to the entire company threatening disciplinary action if we "abused" use of Facebook or similar social networks. To me, that's a very good indication of just how unexpectedly popular and addictive Facebook has become.

My experience of Facebook has been very good: I've got a healthy smattering of Friends, some of whom I've never talked to in real life but others who I've introduced myself to since then "in the flesh". This website itself is encouraging similar social interaction on this very topic... Surely this is an indication of a need a lot of Internet users have to not just sit back and read what websites display but get involved themselves

If it happens to eat into the working day, then that's something I think most people eventually get over. And if they don't, they get sacked! ;-)

Samwell

said by Samwell
on Wednesday, 15 August 2007, 11:07am

Today I logged in to find I had a Zombie invitation, a Vampire invitation, a mood invitation, a Ninja invitation, a Traveler IQ invitation, 3 friend requests, someone would like me to add 'My Questions' to my account, I have two Mardi Gras invitations, 3 group invitations, 1 likeness quiz request, 1 bumper sticker, I've been tagged in two new photos and I have a secret gift.

Do I feel closer to my friends? I'm not so sure.

onemorechris

said by onemorechris
on Tuesday, 21 August 2007, 12:29am

When I first discoverd computers and the internet seven years ago, the first thing I started doing was "blogs" and learning html (what a geek!)

I had a MySpace site when it was still in BETA. I think as people discover the net, the first thing they do it look for other people they know, hence the popularity of MySpace and Facebook.

I don't update MySpace anymore, I spend more time making websites or taking photos for REALBrighton etc! Turns out real life is better!

I imagine (an educated guess) the next thing will be something like Second Life or the wii/Playstation3 version of the same thing. Once you have been yourself, maybe you want to be someone else?

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