

Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick - surlyadopter
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/01/19/and-now-for-no-particular-reason-a-rant-about-facebook/

======
Lewisham
_A mail system that doesn’t have a Bcc function doesn’t belong in the 21st
Century._

This reminds me of a comment that we almost always get on HN when Facebook
comes up, and its almost always right: it's not for you. If you want Bcc, it's
not for you. The millions of people who are younger than you don't think to
CC, let alone BCC. They want to communicate, and they want to do it now, and
email is just that formal thing Dad uses. That's their terms, and Facebook
gives it to them.

The author also discounts Facebook as being some sort of Neo-AOL. It is that,
but where AOL faltered was being a completely walled garden. Facebook as a
development platform, and, perhaps more importantly, an online identity to all
sorts of other sites, makes Facebook use even more in-grained. I would love to
see some stats from sites that allow Facebook Connect on how much their user
registration went up. Facebook offers a portal, but also a wider identity, and
they do it well.

If Facebook isn't for you, then that's that. But it doesn't mean what they're
doing is wrong.

~~~
yason
I haven't used Bcc many times but generally Facebook messages seem all phony
to me. It doesn't seem to be a real conversation; I don't "own" the messages
the same way I do when I use a real email program. Even gmail offers me tools
to work with the messages themselves: on Facebook there's very little I can do
with the messages. Basically I can just reply or delete the thread: exactly
the same options that I have with a status with comments.

~~~
al_james
Er, what else would you want to do to the message? Or, to put it another way,
what else do you think _normal_ people do with the messages? 99.9% reply or
delete. Perfect.

~~~
gaius
Forward? Add someone else to the thread?

~~~
nano81
You can do both with the new FB messages.

~~~
gaius
Hmm, guess they've not rolled that out to me yet.

------
Vivtek
I honestly hadn't expected this outpouring of vitriol here against John
Scalzi, of all people. The things I'm reading here - that he's "just jealous"
or what have you - are frankly blowing my mind.

I thought his point was pretty clear: FB is rolling in cash and is the target
of the latest 15-minute hype and 50 billion dollars of Goldman-Sachs paper
valuation, but isn't really breaking new ground in providing the best possible
platform for the Web, and he predicts that this will cause it to fail, like
other non-ideal repackaging efforts in the past, because it is limited. And he
has some experience in this, because he was an employee of AOL in the day.

And weirdly, here at HNN, of all places, I am witnessing a deluge of rabid
Facebook fanboys, many of whom apparently think he's just an old fogie who
doesn't understand the new generation. The world never ceases to amaze me.

EDIT: more words are always good, right?

~~~
phlux
Umm, in case you haven't noticed, HN is full of FB echo-chamber fanbois who
have a combined age still in the 2 digits.

~~~
alexgartrell
I don't really think your snarky attitude is adding to the discussion, but,
more than that, it's not even correct. The vast majority of replies here are
decidedly anti facebook, and the ones that arent tend to be luke warm at best.
Additionally, if you look at the front page over the last couple days, he
popular facebook related articles have been very anti facebook.

I'm not trying to make any claims about face book's virtue (as a future
facebook engineer, I doubt I would have much credibility anyway), but it is
unfair to be so dismissive about people who might argue that it isn't
completely awful, when they certainly aren't just part of hn groupthink (as
you seem to have suggested.)

~~~
phlux
Fine, ill add some detail to my snarky comment. There is so much going on in
the valley and in tech right now that frankly has all happened before. Given
the market conditions now are far more ripe for all these services, which
allows them to be made and more successful now.

The problem I see, and the point of my comment is that we truly aren't seeing
too much that is new - but when a company comes along that is hyper successful
and full of young talented engineers - people forget history.

That is fine - but I think people need to take a step back sometimes.

Point taken, however. (I'll take my own advice about taking a step back :) )

------
MJR
_I wish I could sign on to the damn thing and not have the first thing I feel
be exasperation at the aggressive dimness of it UI and its functionality._

People use Facebook because they see past the "website" and read the content.
They communicate with their friends and family. How many non-technical people
have you ever heard complain about email apps? They don't because they use
email to communicate, not to use an email app.

If the first thing you feel is "exasperation at the aggressive dimness of it
UI and its functionality" then you need to find some new people to connect
with so that you're actually interested in reading what they have to say.

~~~
mbreese
> How many non-technical people have you ever heard complain about email apps

You should pick a better analogy. Every single non-technical person I know has
complained about their email app. Usually it's some stupid Outlook/Exchange
quirk...

~~~
MJR
You're right - my intention was to get simpler than that, and I wasn't
thinking about Outlook or Exchange which are filled with problems because I
don't use them. I was thinking along the lines of reply, compose, forward,
signatures, etc. Simple concepts that people learn and apply with ease.

------
nicpottier
Just for the record, I was uploading my own website back in '93 too, and I use
Facebook and quite enjoy it, for the same reason the author does, because not
all my friends were in the same boat.

Calling other people stupid for not building and maintaining their own website
strikes as bit elitist, just as saying that people that don't design and build
their own houses are lazy. We specialize.

To him it is easy / fun / rewarding to build his own blog, photo sharing,
thingamabob. Sure, it has been for me too in the past. But it isn't anymore,
especially because Facebook wins on the front of notifying my friends of
things of mine they might find interesting.

In short, he is really missing the point, that Facebook has allowed millions
upon millions of people to participate on the web in a way they couldn't
before. Were they the first to try? No, but they are the first to do so so
successfully across such a wide strata of users.

I also find it super ironic that he seems to think highly of Twitter (talk
about lack of features!!) while gives Facebook a hard time for missing
functionality. At least I can comment on 'status' messages on Facebook without
changing my own status. :)

------
paul
Clearly someone who "once handrolled his own html code and then uploaded it
using UNIX commands" is simply too Awesome for Facebook.

~~~
patricklynch
Yes, that line came off as egotistical posturing. We got it.

But I don't like that your snarky quip--which distorts the fact that the
author continues to use facebook out of a sense of social obligation, and
which I don't think adds much to the discussion--is the most upvoted comment
here.

Sure, you can be cynical and mock the guy, but I'd rather see you address his
arguments. I'm not so much annoyed that you took the obvious potshot, just
disappointed that the rest of HN is currently voting this the most important
takeaway from the essay.

~~~
ramanujan
The reason this is the most important takeaway is that Scalzi is calling the
people at Facebook "stupid", despite the fact that they are much smarter than
him.

    
    
      "there’s very little Facebook does, either as   
      a technological platform or as a company, that doesn’t 
      remind me that “banal mediocrity” is apparently the 
      highest accolade  one can aspire to at that particular organization."
    

Scalzi has never heard of Hiphop, Thrift, or Haystack. He hasn't heard about
them because he is not really capable of understanding the technical problems
involved with doing something as hard as Facebook.

It is really hard to make something look this easy.

~~~
mbreese
First, he wasn't calling the _people_ who work at Facebook stupid. Second, I
have no idea how smart John Scalzi is... and you probably don't either.

He was criticizing the idea of Facebook. Facebook is a very well implemented
system. But that doesn't mean that you can't question the validity of the
system. Just because it's hard to build doesn't mean that it is worthwhile to
use.

------
japherwocky
He's smarter than "normal" people, and jealous that they're making Facebook
lots of money.

------
marknutter
Facebook is top dog right now, so I get that every highly intelligent hacker
out there is going to take their potshots at it. I think everyone needs to
take a step back and seriously thank Facebook, Myspace, AOL, etc. Why? Because
they got normal people to use the internet. Grandma is now a customer for us
hackers thanks to Mark Zuckerberg. We can all remember a time when the
internet was our personal nerd playground, and yes it was awesome; but it
wasn't very profitable. Now, everyone and their mother is on the internet, and
their chosen platform of choice right now is Facebook. Yes, things have been
dumbed down, yes privacy isn't what it used to be, but us geeks are now
pulling down 6 figure salaries for doing the same stuff we'd be doing for fun
in our free time anyways. We can't have our cake and eat it too..

------
davidmathers
_Zuckerberg is in fact not a genius; he’s an ambitious nerd who was in the
right place at the right time_

So the guy who created Orkut must have been in the wrong place at the wrong
time. Too bad for him. His Google stock probably only made him a millionaire.
Totally uncool.

~~~
Lewisham
The author thinks that it was just "PR and faffery", while discounting the
actual value of PR and faffery. Never discount these things. MySpace was
practically built on it.

~~~
al_james
Exactly. "PR and faffery" are the secret sauce that will make or break your
business. You can have the best product in the world, but without "PR and
faffery" you will never get beyond a handful of early adopters. More than
that, any site that looks like it has become successful without "PR and
faffery" has just done the "PR and faffery" in a subtle way so that it looks
like it has not happened!

~~~
Psyonic
Tautology? You've just defined a successful site as one that used PR and
faffery to succeed (even if we can't see it), making it impossible to argue
otherwise.

~~~
al_james
You can argue all you want! I have just expressed my honest belief that all
successful sites use "PR and faffery" in some way or the other, even if its
not obvious.

------
bitskits
As time passes, and the users of the internet get more sophisticated, this
wont seem so much like a rant, it'll seem like an opportunity for the next
social networking phenomenon. The thing that replaces Facebook wont look much
like Facebook. It will need to cater to what today seems like the power user.

Just my .02

~~~
hugh3
You think the users of the internet are getting more sophisticated? I'd say
the users of the internet are getting _less_ sophisticated. In the 1970s
nobody without a PhD used the internet. In the early 90s you still needed a
helluva lot of technical skill. In the late 90s the internet was still a bit
geeky. Nowadays _everybody_ and _everything_ is on the internet and we've gone
from Eternal September to.... some more extreme version of Eternal September
(I'm tempted to say Eternal April, but that would entirely destroy the point
of the metaphor).

~~~
juiceandjuice
There should be some study on this relationship... the more the web gets
sophisticated, the more unsophisticated people use it.

~~~
tsotha
But that's true of every maturing technology. People who owned cars in the
early 1900s had to be able to fix them - they broke down constantly. A hundred
years later how many people can do repair work on their own car? I've owned a
car for ten years and it's never broken down.

------
gildur
Everything is getting more and more simple, isnt that good?

Lots of ranting towards Facebook here of late, I must say. Facebook is a great
way of telling your friends that HTML5 has got a logo, for example. Also, this
way your friends that arent on sites like linkedin will get an idea of what
you're up to.

I'm sure people who are interested in programming and building webpages will
go their own way in the end anyway.

Maybe I misunderstood this article and the previous about Facebook rants, in
that case I apologize.

------
pilif
I don't get this Facebook rage every year. Last year it was about the open
social graph API and the third-party like buttons. Everyone was mad at
Facebook. Calls for boycotts, mainstream press picking it up, Diaspora, etc.

Then it dies down and everybody seems happy about Facebook.

Until a year later, HN is full of hate-posts again. So, if history is to
repeat itself, I'd say that the hate will have died down by June and I'll get
my hate-blogpost ready for next year, having missed this years Facebook-
hating-season

~~~
bhavin
I don't think its all in vain. Each hate-cycle creates some residual hostility
towards facebook. When eventually it crosses threshold (and some better option
is available), so many people might jump the ship in a short time.

------
erik_landerholm
More and more I find that for people I see in real life facebook has become
fairly redundant. And facebook has just clarified the reason that I don't see
most of my other 'friends' in real life; I'm not really friends with them
anymore.

------
thingie
Some time ago, a friend of mine told me that he had a great idea, something
like Facebook, but, you know, for the "geeks" and all ze teknischen peepers,
blogging, photo sharing, video, everything. At that point, it had simply
occurred to me a very simple (and obvious) question: "Well, isn't that exactly
the world wide web?"

------
evanreyn
Facebook is not made for smart people. It's not made for the readers of Hacker
News, this guy's blog, or even the throngs on Reddit. It's made for everyone
else. I work in a place with some people who will work/have worked minimum
wage jobs their whole life (not that there's anything wrong with that). But
these same people are on the internet all the time, and you know what they do?
Check facebook. Facebook chat. Look through facebook pictures. Maybe browse
craigslist for a few minutes looking for a used car or a new job. But 95% of
the time? Facebook. I'm not saying this type of person represents the majority
of facebook users, but it is this type of internet "familiarity", for lack of
a better word, that makes up the majority of facebook users, and the world's
population.

~~~
brown9-2
_is not made for smart people_

I strongly disagree with this. I might read HN and reddit for programming
stories all day long but I still find Facebook immensely useful for keeping in
contact with friends and contacts. I don't see at all how these things are
mutually exclusive.

It's made for people who want to connect to other people. Intelligence has
nothing to do with it.

------
michael_dorfman
_Facebook shouldn’t be telling me how many “friends” I should have, especially
when there’s clearly no technological impetus for it._

Does Facebook do that? I get recommendations of people I might know, but I
don't recall ever being told how many friends I should have.

~~~
inklesspen
There's a maximum limit.

------
transition
I don't use Facebook because I think it's social circle-jerking occupied by a
majority of people who are only interested in inflating their own perceived
image.

------
bhavin
We had a stream of google-sucks/googles-dead kinda articles everyday just
before while now. And now, suddenly all the bad attention turns to facebook
since about a week.

I mean facebook had the same UI/policies/uglyness since quite some time, why
sudden surge of facebook-bashing articles (followed by google)? I wonder how
much of the content from above articles was written genuinely and not with
alterior motives.

------
jaysonelliot
About a year and a half ago, I was thinking the same thing - Facebook = AOL.

I did make a cute graphic out of it, if you want it:
[http://jaysonelliot.com/blog/2009/06/13/what-does-
facebook-r...](http://jaysonelliot.com/blog/2009/06/13/what-does-facebook-
remind-me-of%E2%80%A6/)

------
dcdan
_But the idea that it’s doing something better, new or innovative is largely
PR and faffery._

Facebook is incredibly innovative at growing its user base. No other social
network has concentrated on and succeeded at this like Facebook.

------
yason
Sounds like he uses Facebook mainly to stay in contact with his friends but
hates that Facebook doesn't do everything he needs. Facebook doesn't have to
do that and the rest of the internet is still there.

~~~
tsotha
I think it's more that he feels like he _has_ to maintain a presence on
facebook because everyone else does. And it galls him because he can't stand
facebook.

------
bartl
My favorite quote:

> Its grasping attempts to get its hooks into every single thing I do feels
> like being groped by an overly obnoxious salesman.

------
sigzero
No, Facebook is what happens when you make something easy for Joe Public to
grok.

------
samic
I just delete all my information (which wasn't lot!) last night! and I wrote
my email on first page so if anyone really wants to contact me there is a way!

