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ISBS Review: Facebook

By Brian | June 1, 2009 | Share on Facebook

As some of my readers are aware, I have been resisting joining the two newest social networking trends – Facebook and Twitter – for quite some time now. Twitter has been easier to avoid (only a couple of my friends use it, and given that SEC regulations prohibit me from using it in the office, I wouldn’t be much of a “tweeter” for most of the day anyway). Facebook, on the other hand, has been hounding me. It started with the “Hey – you’ve got to join” e-mails, and then moved on to the “click <Facebook link> to see this great picture of my kids” and the “that reminds me of that awesome story I read on Joe’s Facebook page” messages.

Topics: Tech Talk | 4 Comments »

4 Responses to “ISBS Review: Facebook”

  1. Ilya says at June 3rd, 2009 at 7:15 am :
    I’m blocked from Facebook at the office, interestingly.

    I joined a long time ago, but I view it solely as having another channel to be reachable. I don’t login unless I have an email notification, do not initiate any “friending” and pretty much ignore the ticker tape of happenings from people I friended. I suppose I’m as close to a “non-user” as a user can be.

  2. Brian says at June 3rd, 2009 at 9:51 am :
    Ilya – I understand completely. For now, I’m findng the “ticker tape” (excellent term for it, by the way) mildly entertaining, but I can easily see a time coming when I only go to the site when beckoned, as you do.

    That said, I’ll drop you a “friend” request tonight, since you’ve just told me that putting you on my list won’t be increasing my ticker tape at all…

    (As if I need yet another way to get in touch with you, right?)

  3. Jeff Porten says at June 6th, 2009 at 1:46 am :
    I think I said this to you offline, but the main value of Facebook and Twitter is that it’s an extremely low-cost, low-attention way of keeping a large number of people on your mental radar. The trick to both, as you’ve found, is to think of it as a stream of data that you dip into from time to time, rather than something that you “track” and “catch up on”. It’s a serendipitous data flow, so you get out of it based on how much attention you choose to give it.

    That said, I think anyone who gets into the applications and quizzes there is batshit insane. Aside from the massive time sink, some of those apps are used to data-mine you and your friends. Came out last month that the “Which city are you?” quizzes are used to sell you insurance and other stuff. Not good if not advertised as such.

    Don’t bother going through my friend list — I already recommended everyone I think you know. (And usually, I don’t bother doing that, but in your case I thought you’d appreciate the bootstrap.)

  4. FamilyGreenberg.Com - Linking WordPress to Facebook – My non-ideal solution says at June 21st, 2009 at 3:01 am :
    […] first step was Facebook’s built-in RSS reader. Unlike a lot of things in Facebook, this works as advertised. Trouble is, it doesn’t provide a link to the blog post. Rather, it […]