The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network(jimlastinger.com)
jimlastinger.com
The Decline of Facebook As A Social Network
http://jimlastinger.com/2011/04/the-decline-of-facebook/
9 comments
The real problem with Facebook is the symmetric friend model. I have 70 FB friends and a couple of those would be removed if it were politically convenient.
Twitter does it so much better.
I wonder if the FB gods ever run statistics of how many people are "friends" and have mutually hidden each other.
Twitter does it so much better.
I wonder if the FB gods ever run statistics of how many people are "friends" and have mutually hidden each other.
> I am quite proud of the fact I only have 100 FB friends, because I know each and every one of them. I lot of people I know from IRC and work refer to be as the Facebook Nazi because I won't add them, but they're not really my friends and I don't want to know what they're doing at 5am in the morning.
Maybe it's a personal shortcoming, but this is the main reason I still don't have a Facebook account. I don't want to have to explain to people I have to see every day why I don't want to be Facebook buddies. It causes awkwardness in real life, and getting status updates form people I actually like (but still might not care where they ate dinner last night) isn't worth the hassle.
Maybe it's a personal shortcoming, but this is the main reason I still don't have a Facebook account. I don't want to have to explain to people I have to see every day why I don't want to be Facebook buddies. It causes awkwardness in real life, and getting status updates form people I actually like (but still might not care where they ate dinner last night) isn't worth the hassle.
You find this? All I've found is it makes people all the more desperate for me to add them, as if I'm hiding some super social parties from them or something.
I don't find it awkward to tell people "Sorry but I only add people that'd let me sleep on their couch at 5am in the morning" - in fact it often makes them feel awkward usually because they don't want to admit they'd not let me in!
I don't find it awkward to tell people "Sorry but I only add people that'd let me sleep on their couch at 5am in the morning" - in fact it often makes them feel awkward usually because they don't want to admit they'd not let me in!
I meant that it might be a personal shortcoming that I'm not able to be that blunt with people I have to see on a regular basis. I respect your system and wish I could carry it out, but for me, it's just something I really don't want to deal with. Whatever serotonin fix I would get from Facebook isn't worth it to me.
It's trivial to remove someone from your update stream, but not remove them as a friend.
Agree. I've always tried to keep social network friends to below 100, and periodically conduct a review to ditch anyone who is no longer of interest. It seems that many people routinely have thousands of "friends", but I can't possibly have any meaningful relationship with such a large population.
Read the comments, the author specifically says that is not the case: I haven't added people that I don't know. I was just stating that I get tons of requests from people I don't know. I do, however, know people that accept just about any friend request.
When I posted my comment above, he hadn't replied to any comments. But yes, I can see now that he states clearly he knows everyone.
If you do not friend people you aren't friends with, you do not have this problem. For real friends who are annoying on facebook, that's what the little 'x' is for on their updates.
I imagine it's harder if you're even just a little bit internet famous, but most people aren't.
I imagine it's harder if you're even just a little bit internet famous, but most people aren't.
I started two podcasts on CNET, Loaded and The 404, so I have some people who friended me on FB because of that. My solution? I hide unmercifully. If I don't care about someone, or they post 1-2 status updates I find irrelevant, they get hidden from my feed. I have 1k+ friends, but I still get the signal : noise ratio that I like.
When 'Status'es on FaceBook became automatic Wall Posts, and therefore persistent, I commented to a few friends that this one simple change altered the nature of Facebook from a social facilitator to a social inhibitor. Before, if you wanted to know what your far-away friends had been up to, you had to call them up or send a letter, forcing some level of social interaction. Now you just have to dig through their wall posts.
It was once nice, simple, succinct. A 'phonebook with pictures.' Now, it's sterile and noisy, and not even useful as a phonebook.
[Edit:] This persistence of data I feel drives and encourages the issue the author describes - friending people you don't know just to see what they're doing (and to gain access to their photos, et cetera). There's a simple and obvious solution to the 'complete strangers' issue, but I don't feel that is the real problem.
It was once nice, simple, succinct. A 'phonebook with pictures.' Now, it's sterile and noisy, and not even useful as a phonebook.
[Edit:] This persistence of data I feel drives and encourages the issue the author describes - friending people you don't know just to see what they're doing (and to gain access to their photos, et cetera). There's a simple and obvious solution to the 'complete strangers' issue, but I don't feel that is the real problem.
In response to all the "Don't add people you don't know" comments, I think it should be pointed out that this isn't always an option.
Drama and politics variously meant that I had to accept requests from people who posted far too many meaningless status updates. Blocking, hiding, muting etc. don't work when you need to respond to 1 out of the 100 posts they send your way.
If it was possible to filter, mute, mark-as-read on a programmatic basis as it is with email (Love gmail filters...), I might not have been forced to delete my account.
People can't take it personally when you delete your account, but not friending, unfriending, hiding, or blocking can all be considered personally offensive actions.
Drama and politics variously meant that I had to accept requests from people who posted far too many meaningless status updates. Blocking, hiding, muting etc. don't work when you need to respond to 1 out of the 100 posts they send your way.
If it was possible to filter, mute, mark-as-read on a programmatic basis as it is with email (Love gmail filters...), I might not have been forced to delete my account.
People can't take it personally when you delete your account, but not friending, unfriending, hiding, or blocking can all be considered personally offensive actions.
Recently I have been seeing an increase in the number of such posts titled 'Decline of facebook', 'collapse of facebook' or some other theory trying to explain why facebook won't stand the test of time. The point here is, why are we bothered? There are people who like it, and there are people who don't. The user base of facebook has reached a point where any categorization becomes too big a demographic hence no matter which feature one would talk about, there are takers and there are haters. It is all about which side is heavier here.
Facebook and twitter, in the initial phases of their global boom (after facebook moved out of it's college/university paradigm) was used as a global social networking tools by geeks, bloggers and web designers. People who have a very different look on how the internet should be. And even though these people 'make' most of the obervable internet (read: web), it is important to know that facebook also caters a whole lot to the social networking junkies who love the loads of like buttons, and a rush of social media. While some of may think it is lame, it is rarely a question of lame or cool, but what keeps the site running.
Either ways, these articles seem to offer quite a narrow demographic when they try to provide any insight or an opinion. And that is because, 'Facebook users' today is a demographic so large that it approximates quite good to the law of averages. Above and beyond, my only point is that, only time will tell.
Facebook and twitter, in the initial phases of their global boom (after facebook moved out of it's college/university paradigm) was used as a global social networking tools by geeks, bloggers and web designers. People who have a very different look on how the internet should be. And even though these people 'make' most of the obervable internet (read: web), it is important to know that facebook also caters a whole lot to the social networking junkies who love the loads of like buttons, and a rush of social media. While some of may think it is lame, it is rarely a question of lame or cool, but what keeps the site running.
Either ways, these articles seem to offer quite a narrow demographic when they try to provide any insight or an opinion. And that is because, 'Facebook users' today is a demographic so large that it approximates quite good to the law of averages. Above and beyond, my only point is that, only time will tell.
You are right, the user-base is far too large to be properly accounted for; and that is the root of the reason why there are so many articles about FB's decline is that some of us wish for it. Think about it: who writes these articles? The same basis of geeks, bloggers and web designers that consider that FB has become overpopular and loaded with a plethora of useless features (game apps, "like" buttons for pointless activities, etc.), and that some users tend to update their statuses too much and too often.
Which is the main reason why smaller, and arguably better communities like this one can thrive.
It is all a matter of who gets to call the shots regarding what the Internet should be like.
I pretty much agree with you, and I don't think FB is going anywhere anytime soon.
But that's part of why I'm bothered (and I think the source of all the wishful-thinking decline of FB stories). Well, that combined with: I don't like FB. I don't like the UI, I don't like the weak/ambiguous/unclear privacy policies, I don't like the narrowness of vision, the constraining of expression, the shallowness of engagement, the walling off of a portion of the internet, and I don't like the corporation.
I don't like FB, so I don't use it. But I do understand that it provides some utility to a lot of people. I want FB to "die" so I can have that utility without all the baggage or constraints.
But that's part of why I'm bothered (and I think the source of all the wishful-thinking decline of FB stories). Well, that combined with: I don't like FB. I don't like the UI, I don't like the weak/ambiguous/unclear privacy policies, I don't like the narrowness of vision, the constraining of expression, the shallowness of engagement, the walling off of a portion of the internet, and I don't like the corporation.
I don't like FB, so I don't use it. But I do understand that it provides some utility to a lot of people. I want FB to "die" so I can have that utility without all the baggage or constraints.
I don't have this problem. None of my friends have this problem. It looks to me more like user error of adding people you don't know and adding spam apps than it is Facebook's problem.
Hi, I wrote the article. Thanks for the thoughts, but I've never added people I don't know or apps I don't use. Spam apps I was referring to are from other people that show up in my stream or wall, those "Billy answered a question about you" posts.
Maybe "people you don't know" is a little strong. But you wrote,
Back when Facebook was new . . . the friends that you had were people that you actually wanted to keep in touch with.
That's still the case with me -- I only make friends with people I want to keep in touch with. The friends you have may have changed in character . . . but I find that hard to parse as Facebook's fault.
It seems to me that regular prunings and a less promiscuous friending policy would solve your problem.
Back when Facebook was new . . . the friends that you had were people that you actually wanted to keep in touch with.
That's still the case with me -- I only make friends with people I want to keep in touch with. The friends you have may have changed in character . . . but I find that hard to parse as Facebook's fault.
It seems to me that regular prunings and a less promiscuous friending policy would solve your problem.
To my experience, Facebook has a rather efficient algorithm that monitors who you show interest in and then populate your feed with what they consider relevant information. In the case that your feed does get junk, there's a reason why it's presented as a stream, a mixture of both meaningful and useless information that's easy to skim and pick what interests you, same as news sites. You really just look at headlines and click on what you want to read. Continuously browsing a friend's profile that spams your wall will only continue to spam your wall. Hope you get a better experience out of it soon.
I signed up for facebook, friended no one that didn't friend me and that I didn't know personally, told no one about my account, and have a folder of facebook spam in my email box that already has 40 messages in about 2 months.
Facebook spams you if someone has your email address in their address book. Facebook spams you if someone wants to be your friend. Facebook spams you if someone has a birthday. Almost half of my Facebook spams are in Spanish, and I don't speak Spanish.
And I have six friends in Facebook. Six. I can't imagine how bad it is if you have 100.
Facebook spams you if someone has your email address in their address book. Facebook spams you if someone wants to be your friend. Facebook spams you if someone has a birthday. Almost half of my Facebook spams are in Spanish, and I don't speak Spanish.
And I have six friends in Facebook. Six. I can't imagine how bad it is if you have 100.
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This resonated with me:
"Personally, it feels like my Facebook stream is becoming an email inbox. I get a lot of messages, a few of them matter to me, and there are lots ... that are just spam."
"Personally, it feels like my Facebook stream is becoming an email inbox. I get a lot of messages, a few of them matter to me, and there are lots ... that are just spam."
I am quite proud of the fact I only have 100 FB friends, because I know each and every one of them. I lot of people I know from IRC and work refer to me as the Facebook Nazi because I won't add them, but they're not really my friends and I don't want to know what they're doing at 5am in the morning.
Toughen up a bit, delete those people you added because you know a tiny bit about them and things'll become that much easier to deal with.
This is exactly like the "Oh I get SO MUCH email" posts and then you find out the person signed themselves up to 50 email lists, 20 "email me when you get a new comment/status" things etc. Don't sign up for crap you don't want, it's that simple!
[Edit was just spelling fixes]