
My facebook no longer fits - Richard Hammond - nickb
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/motoring/hammond/2007/09/29/my-facebook-no-longer-fits-89520-19866724/
======
derefr
He was standing on the wrong side of the mirror at this very moment:

> When I first looked at Facebook it was in the bar of a hotel with workmates.
> [...] They showed me - it meant nothing.

People who use Facebook wonder what going to bars is for:

"As far as I can see, it's a building where you put out an image of yourself
[a bunch of make-up and/or cologne] and other people do the same.

Then you all send each other little glances and approach one another and make
pretend 'friends'. And that's sort of it, really."

~~~
ivankirigin
There is no way facebook even remotely approximates live interaction.

Also, going to bars isn't just about singles. Getting a drink at a pub with
friends is lovely.

To a certain extend, I agree with the guy, from the first few paragraphs at
least.

There needs to be richer interaction online for most people to "get it". Two-
way streaming video and audio would be a start. Expressive physical avatars
would be fun too.

~~~
mechanical_fish
The fact that Facebook is not as "rich" as face-to-face interaction is a
feature, not a bug.

Live interaction is great, and we will always enjoy it, but it doesn't scale:
you can't go to the pub with more than a handful of friends at a time. If you
take a group of fifty people out to the pub you will obviously have to break
into a bunch of little sub-groups. If your two best friends end up in
different sub-groups, you will either have to ignore one of them or pursue the
"mingling" strategy: talk to one small group for half an hour or so, then
stroll away on the pretext of getting another beer and wander into another
small group.

The "live interaction" version of your Facebook page is your wedding
reception. Now, I enjoyed my own wedding reception, but I also have to say
that I wouldn't be anxious to hold another one. The good news is that I got to
see many of my relatives, my high school friends, my college friends, my grad
school friends, my music-playing friends, and my wife's relatives and friends.
The bad news is that I talked to each of them for exactly two minutes before
moving on to the next. Since I was the guest of honor, I was socially
obligated to mingle rather than stick with a single small group, so I ended up
exhausted and vaguely unsatisfied.

The "live interaction" version of news.yc is a technical conference with
several hundred attendees. The good news about a conference is that nobody is
obligated to try and talk to every attendee, so you are free to break up into
managable little groups. The bad news is that if you're eating lunch with your
colleagues in one room while DHH, PG, RMS, Woz, Bill Gates, and Al Gore are
engaged in a passionate technical conversation in another room, you may never
realize what you were missing. Even if you spot the PG table, you may find it
rude to simply abandon your colleagues mid-lunch in order to go over and
kibitz. And there are both physical and social limits to how many people can
listen over PG's shoulder.

~~~
asdflkj
It doesn't have to be 100%-same-as-face-to-face or nothing. In fact, it would
be misguided to have imitation of "real life" be your guiding principle when
designing stuff on the internet. Your ultimate goal, then, would be to create
an extra copy of something we already have--the real world--and that's
obviously pointless.

And nobody ever does that with the Web. What people actually do is create
modes of interaction that are deliberately different from and better than real
life. Just because you or I can't think of a mode that's as "rich" as face-to-
face interaction, but is better for whatever purpose, doesn't mean it doesn't
exist.

------
DanielBMarkham
I've got to admit feeling more and more disenchanted with FaceBook and
MySpace.

There's a difference between addictive and useful. FaceBook is addictive, but
are all those people really my friends? (Real friends are people who will help
you move furniture) Isn't it a lot like the devil spawn between a phonebook
and a gossiping game?

LinkedIn to me seems a little more honest. It's there for business purposes.
FaceBook looks just like a huge time sink. A online video game designed around
human's social instincts.

Hey. I'm old and probably don't get it. I like to spend my time doing things
that have impact in the real world, even if it's programming or engaging in
discussions. What does FaceBook do? Exist? Perhaps there is some new kind of
socializing and friendship that's being created with Web 2.0. Fine. That makes
sense. But the individual still has to do the cost-reward work. At the risk of
being branded a heretic, I'm afraid "Do something users want" might be
incomplete, at least from a consumer's standpoint.

Note that I'm talking about FaceBook and MySpace exclusively. The whole "how
many people can you actually physcially relate to at any one time" is a
different question entirely. Discussion boards, especially good ones, seem to
me to be a different animal.

------
axod
I agree... I like facebook for 2 reasons: It lets me find old friends I've
lost touch with, and it shows me what they're up to every now and then.

The rest of the crap (Feeding virtual fishes, 'poking' each other), they can
keep.

The whole 'myspace' mentality of 'requesting friend' then adding ad infinitum
- I think that's the weirdest thing. People who religiously seek out 'friends'
to add etc. When you have hundreds or even thousands of 'friends' they become
meaningless.

------
naivehs
Is facebook really worth 5 billion? If so Mark Zuckerberg should really
consider selling more %. The way I see it facebook serves some basic wants but
it is far from the ultimate website, which should take over within the next
two years when web developers start to fullfill the potential of Internet.

This article is extremely biased but the points made are legit. Facebook needs
to develop its 2.0 or start selling while its stocks are high.

~~~
bct
_The Web_ is the ultimate website. That's what walled gardens forget.

~~~
mariorz
wow you're easily influenced by internet memes, I have trouble seeing how a
site with a reasonably complete api is a walled garden.

~~~
bct
I don't know much about their API so I can't comment on that, but things like
this: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/06/facebook-opening-up-
but...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/06/facebook-opening-up-but-on-its-
own-terms/) don't make them look like good citizens of the Web.

~~~
mariorz
the fact that you can't comment on it's api is a pretty big reason why you
shouldn't be throwing out remarks like "walled garden" just because you see
marketing sites (techcrunch) doing it, they too understand little about the
technology they write about.

btw facebook released an api method to do the status change thing you can get
more info here:
[http://developers.facebook.com/documentation.php?v=1.0&d...](http://developers.facebook.com/documentation.php?v=1.0&doc=extperms)

------
cmars232
I don't get it either... email and blogging does what Facebook does so much
better. I won't check Facebook or Twitter or MySpace for the same reason I
refuse to check my voice mail at work -- checking too many things and having
too many accounts is a waste of time.

Send me an email, or I won't respond. Once people know this, my life and
theirs becomes so easy!

------
henning
Like Scoble says, it's my online rolodex. It's a rolodex where you'll have to
click at least several times to see all of who you're friends with, and by
default you only see people of one particular kind, along with those who have
left you messages.

So uh, it kind of sucks as a shared contact manager the way Highrise is.

------
rms
Facebook: You log in continuously and see up to date information about people
you know, if everyone you know is on Facebook. It was fun before the minifeed
too.

