

How Facebook Ruins Friendships - tokenadult
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204660604574370450465849142.html

======
kragen
It seems like this author has several unrelated points:

* some people post boring updates;

* it's easy to miscommunicate emotional content;

* some people overshare;

* SNSes collapse our multiple public masks (heavy metal and kittens) into one;

* dumping people is more painful.

They also include a single sentence about the advantages of SNS web sites.

So what's the article _about_? Why did they feel the need to write a 1300-word
editorial about every negative aspect of social networking sites? It seems
weird to devote 1300 words to the negatives and one sentence to the positives.

The author's experience is fairly different from mine. My Facebook signal-to-
noise ratio is somewhere around -5 to -10 dB. Here are the most recent
interesting bits from my Facebook stream (just the front page):

* A friend's youngest daughter is about to go off to college. Major life transition for him.

* Another friend, who's mostly famous for his anti-spam efforts, is DJing at a community radio station I hadn't heard of before. Add to my mental list of friends involved in community radio.

* A new online video site called Magma has launched and been recommended by someone trustworthy.

* Some details on my ex-stepson's microbrewing experiments. Sounds like he's getting pretty serious about microbrewing, and would be a good person to ask if I have questions.

* Another friend, who I thought was going to be at Foo Camp this week, is still in Montreal. Maybe Foo Camp hasn't started yet? I can't find information on the web about it.

* Another friend has decided to get a Singer 6510 sewing machine because the less expensive machines weren't worthwhile. Useful data point for the next time I buy a sewing machine.

* My sister's cousin just visited San Francisco to visit family — but apparently my sister wasn't included in the outing. Maybe she was busy?

* Another friend is having a hard time recovering from surgery a few weeks ago, and can't type. He's not finding Dragon Naturally Speaking useful for coding.

* Another friend is starting her first day of work as a full-fledged lawyer. In Puerto Rico.

* Another friend has just joined a chorus. I didn't know she sang.

 _None_ of these are so urgent as to justify a phone call to tell me about
them. But they are all very interesting to me, and it's highly beneficial (I
think) for me to know things like that about what's going on in my friends'
lives.

And then there's the opportunity to respond to people — just to remind them
that I'm thinking about them sometimes, but also sometimes to offer my advice
or thoughts, or to let them know I appreciated what they had to say.

~~~
potatolicious
_"I'm tired of loved ones—you know who you are—who claim they are too busy to
pick up the phone, or even write a decent email, yet spend hours on social-
media sites"_

Yes, because getting on the phone with you for hours on end telling you all
about my vacation is the same thing as spending 3 minutes uploading my photos
to Facebook. Has it occurred to the author that maybe said friends aren't
close enough to be spending time on the phone like this?

I call shenanigans on this entire article. It seems to suggest that Facebook
as _weakened_ friendships. No, I still talk to my closest friends just as
often - on the phone, online, in person, wherever. The difference is now you
can keep track of your "outer circle" much more easily than before. This is
not a bad thing.

~~~
kragen
Also, you can arrange to meet them more easily.

------
calcnerd256
This is why microblogging needs layers. The inanity of a post should be
machine-readable so users can filter those they follow based on how much they
want to know. At the bottommost level would be stream-of-bioinformatics auto-
logged by attached devices. At the top level would be something like
"[username] was born [timestamp]. [username] died [timestamp]." Anything in-
between should be categorized somehow (by the user themself? by a trust
network? by NLP?) I like to use the ZUI and LOD metaphor here.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Nah, at the bottom should be "GUESS WHICH TARANTINO MOVIE CHARACTER YOU ARE!?"

~~~
calcnerd256
I suspect there would be millions of data points on the bioinformatics
corresponding with the taking of that quiz.

------
hkuo
Here's a novel idea. Stop checking people's facebook status updates if you
don't care!! Wow, that was really hard.

------
awt
Disclaimer: WSJ's parent company owns Facebook's biggest competitor, Myspace.

------
callmeed
I'm actually considering only using Facebook for business relationships.
Probably 75% of my _friends_ are customers or industry peers. In that regard,
I find it a useful tool for connecting and getting instant feedback on things.

For personal connections I find it annoying for many of the reasons he states.

------
hkuo
On another note, it is this kind of mindset that is both unadaptive and
uncreative. Rather than tout the benefits of the new social world, it focuses
on the negatives. And then, rather than focusing on how the negatives can be
fixed, it focuses on just complaining about them.

------
paul9290
I wonder how many here prefer txt based communication over talking on a phone,
except while driving.

With Facebook you can state something and a conversation may or may not
happen. With txt, email or IM you can communicate one to one what's going on
now, where & what time to meet up and other conversational subjects.

Due to bootstrapping I got rid of my cellphone and really have not missed it;
only once when I had a flat-tire I wish I had one. Now & since then I just
carry my iTouch as there is WiFi all around. I'm probably anomaly?

~~~
warfangle
I prefer face to face to texting, texting to phone, and phone to email/im. At
least, for keeping up with local friends. For friends who live several states
away, I prefer facebook > im > skype. I hardly get any personal e-mail.

------
dasil003
The eye roll button is truly a good idea.

