
William Shatner reviews Facebook Mentions - cityzen
http://williamshatner.tumblr.com/post/92551992485/facebook-mentions-versus-facebook-pages-apps
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skizm
William Shatner is 83. That is amazing to me. I hope I'm that with it and well
put together if I make it to 83. I suppose being worth $100 million doesn't
hurt, but it still gives me some hope.

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chmars
Do we know that William Shatnet wrote the text himself? It seems unlikely …

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easytiger
Saw him on stage about a year ago and he was the most lucid and sensible
person there (of the 5 other captains). Avery Brooks certainly was not with it
at all.

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runn1ng
Hm. I would guess Patrick Stewart would be more lucid and sensible, since he
is still an active actor.

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toyg
Because actors are famous for being "lucid and sensible"...?

(This is not a dig at Sir Stewart, I'm just pointing out that the two concepts
"working actor" and "lucid/sensible person" are not necessarily linked -- as
demonstrated by Brando, Depardieu etc.)

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scrumper
It's Sir Patrick. (Should he ever be elevated to the peerage, he would be
addressed as Lord Stewart.)

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coldtea
That's in the UK. And only for those who care about that antiquated royalty
system.

For us, fans of the french revolution and the beheading of kings, it's just
"Patrick".

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to3m
I think the point is simply that if using the title (which is purely optional)
then it is standard to use the first name. So Sir Stewart would be somebody
else.

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coldtea
A, ok! Missed that nuance!

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easytiger
Full Nuance Here:

[http://www.debretts.com/forms-
address/titles/knight](http://www.debretts.com/forms-address/titles/knight)

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freakyterrorist
I can't believe Facebook would force celebrities to follow other celebrities,
It seems like their contempt for users is universal regardless of how
important you may be.

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alttab
Another way to put it is Facebook knows getting you to click a couple of
buttons to "get started" is something a very very high percentage of people
will do to interact with facebook, especially if they've already gone through
the friction of downloading the app.

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Alupis
Except in this case, it prompted Shatner to leave a soso-to-negative review of
the app and service.

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MasterScrat
Exactly.

If there's _one_ app where they shouldn't uselessly annoy users just to boost
their statistics, it's in the app targeted at influencers.

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coldtea
Is that really Shatner writing that?

The level of technical understanding, including jargon (even trivial and
casual to us, like "header image"), and familiarity with posting (custom
screenshots, etc), is phenomenal for a celebrity, and at that age!

That's Denny Crane level cool!

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elmuchoprez
I saw his one-man show when it came to town about a year ago. After watching
him alone on stage for 90 minutes, I have no doubt that he is still "with it"
enough to not only comprehend modern tech (if that's what we're calling
Facebook), but to provide this level of insight and understanding.

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nsxwolf
There's an Internet for celebrities and an Internet for the rest of us.

Facebook has this.

Wikipedia has notability requirements.

Twitter has verified accounts, which only celebrities can have because no one
gives a shit if your account is real or not.

The Hacker's Manifesto is a bit turned on its head.

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edmccard
>Twitter has verified accounts...

Which is something else that William Shatner has strong opinions about:

[http://mashable.com/2014/06/24/william-shatner-twitter-
verif...](http://mashable.com/2014/06/24/william-shatner-twitter-verified/)

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JacobAldridge
I wonder if the George Takei suggestion was intelligent situational awareness
... or if everyone has him as the first suggestion because he's basically the
platonic form of a Facebook celebrity?

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ck2
If you are not aware, Shatner doesn't like Takei.

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Udo
I didn't know that, so I dug around for the cause. From a recent NYP article:

    
    
      Takei married his husband in 2008 and Shatner became enraged when 
      he claimed he wasn’t invited. He ranted against Takei in an 
      online interview. [...]
    
      Shatner called Takei’s wedding a publicity stunt and hypothesized 
      that their feud stemmed from Takei’s unwillingness to playing 
      second fiddle to Shatner on “Star Trek.”
    

It seems to be mostly based on petty, even comical stuff like this. This may
sound paradoxical, but as someone who always had a lot of respect for both of
them, this is disappointing and a bit of a relief at the same time.

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_delirium
From what I can tell he's had a bad relationship with a number of the other
cast members since the original series's filming, since they thought he was
too self-centered and kept trying to minimize screentime given to the
supporting cast. The feud became kind of well known among fans, because four
of the actors (Walter Koenig, James Doohan, Nichelle Nicols, and Takei) often
aired their dislike of Shatner at Star Trek conventions. Though for his part
Shatner claims it was a one-sided feud he didn't even know about until 1993:
he says he discovered the issue when he tried to interview a bunch of the old
cast for his memoir, and several wouldn't talk to him, or did but had negative
things to say.

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pessimizer
>Though for his part Shatner claims it was a one-sided feud he didn't even
know about until 1993

Which, of course, humorously confirms all of the casts' characterizations of
him as a selfish egomaniac in a wig and a girdle. I think that Shatner is
aware of this (within the past 20 years, not at the time) and plays into it
for the humor value and a media bump if he's currently selling something. He's
always selling something.

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bignaj
I remember back in 2005-6 when I thought that News Feed, Events and other
stuff introduced to Facebook was a bunch of cluttered junk. If I could have
seen into the future then... the horror, the horror!

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batiudrami
Events is pretty much the only thing Facebook has going for it now.

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retroencabulato
Even Facebook events now seem tacky for anything other than massive events in
my social circles.

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moron4hire
Are new users joining Facebook? I hear from more and more people that either
they have left or "wish [they] could", if it weren't for "everyone" with which
they wish to stay in contact[1].

I myself deactivated my account 6 months ago. The only time I regret it is
after I've been drinking and want to troll someone. So actually all around a
good thing.

Are new people actually, really, honestly joining Facebook? I know the "delta
new accounts" number is positive, but do they represent real people, rather
than just spam bots?

I just have this feeling that, given a certain plateauing of new users, there
comes an associated stagnation of follow-actions. No, I certainly don't have
data to this issue, but I know that I personally only spend effort following
people when A) I first join a site, or B) I think there is a good chance the
person will follow me back[2]. So, for your everyday Joe-blow user who has is
more than a month old, it seems like they are either already following William
Shatner or never will.

My own observations in blogging have been that engagement with users is highly
dependent on novelty. You either grind out finding new followers who haven't
experienced your content yet, or you post radically new things all of the time
--which could backfire and alienate your established followership, though
honestly by that point they are probably ignoring your posts. Either way, you
write off anyone who has been following you for more than 6 months. 90% of the
time, that person is unretrievable.

I guess I just see followers as a limited, unsustainable resource, sort of
akin to oil, except much easier to deplete. But it seems like Facebook, et.
al., are banking on it being more like solar. IDK, I've seen reports saying FB
has 1.3 billion users. There are only 7 billion people in the world. Do I
really believe FB has almost 20% of the entire world's population? Do I really
believe they could get more?

[1] Apparently "everyone" doesn't know how to use email or a telephone or text
messaging.

[2] Incidentally, a policy that works for about 50% of cases. And for 90% of
people, they will be unfollowed within a week, regardless of whether or not
they follow me back. I don't need their crappy animated GIFs of Sherlock or
Dr. Who clogging up my dashboard.

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morgante
> Are new users joining Facebook?

Yes.

> I guess I just see followers as a limited, unsustainable resource, sort of
> akin to oil, except much easier to deplete

New people are born every minute. Facebook has reached a massive scale, at
which scale nearly everyone in the world has heard about it and will join at
some point.

Also, FB really isn't built around following the way Twitter is. If all you
did with Facebook was interact with your friends, that'd be just fine (since
they can always inject business ads into that stream).

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progx
>> Are new users joining Facebook? > Yes.

I think more eastern people join, while more and more western quit. (some
month ago it was in the news that their are less US users).

Last time i use facebook is.... i think 4 or 5 weeks ago.

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personjerry
Facebook Mentions seems like an ill-conceived way of making a move against
Twitter.

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higherpurpose
Facebook has probably had a less than 10 percent success rate with product
launches in the past few years.

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joshmlewis
> I’m already following those who I want to follow - why insist I follow that
> short list of others?

Money.

Edit: If you think about it, it's a poorly implemented solution to some
problem. What was the problem?

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HBSisBS
Things against Facebook rarely fail to rise to the top of HN. Anything not
favoring Facebook gets up here quickly. Why am I surprised.

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kyrra
There are a lot of Facebook employees on HN, just like there are a lot of
Google employees here. Those employees will do some level of astroturfing.
Unless HN prevents us from voting on topics where there is a conflict of
interest, it's hard to keep the bias out.

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Kiro
Why would employees vote up negative articles? I think you misread what
HBSisBS said.

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bitJericho
Employees vote up anything related to their employer.

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pimlottc
I thought this was going to be a tumblr where William Shatner critiques the
actual FB posts that mention him.

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darrenf15e
fb paid him

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beartime
Not many other users of this app feel this way

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adamnemecek
Right, which is why it's titled "William Shatner reviews Facebook Mentions".

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oh_sigh
It would be titled the same even if a lot of other users felt that way.

