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.
The author is well aware that Facebook isn't for him.
> The fact is Facebook isn’t made for someone like me, who once handrolled his own html code and then uploaded it using UNIX commands because he was excited to have his own Web site, and back in 1993 that’s how you did it.
[snip]
> But again, also: Not really for me. I look at Facebook and what I mostly see are a bunch of seemingly arbitrary and annoying functionality choices.
I can see what FB does right - identity and other apis are good, but the site itself has very poor usability, unfortunately. Author's point - that you usually have no idea where your message goes and who can see it - is one thing that makes me limit it's usage to a minimum.
And the very valid observation that FB wall is usually cluttered with senseless status updates and stupid game events from an otherwise intelligent people does not add any points, too.
But surely, seeing how well FB is doing for other people who don't want to learn all that complicated things to post pictures online, I give them credit. Just not 50B of it :)
FB will never become the new Internet, and probably will never even become Internet's identity DB. See interviews with Mark where he tries to reply to a direct question whether or not he understands what kind of responsibility he gets with owning 500mil user records. He has no idea. I foresee a horrendous crash of trust. Hope I'm wrong.
What, are you serious? Since 90% of my non-techie friends can figure out who's going to see what you write in walls, messages and photo comments, I'm pretty devastated to hear that 5 HN users find it a challenge.
I think your non-techie friends are just assuming that the folks that they want to see what they write, will, and those they don't want to see what they write, won't. And, mostly, they're right.
The biggest problem, for me, is that who can see these things is not up to only those involved in the conversation. It hardly even matters what the exact effect is of the rules currently in place, since they could change at any time. The rules on who can see my email inbox don't change. (I think this was what really upset people about Google Buzz: suddenly the rules around who could see what changed, making everyone on gmail who cares about that sort of thing insecure about their own email.)
Thanks but I'm really not that old :)
As to your point, I guess it depends on what your friends use facebook for. As a place for some smalltalk and humor - sure, they probably would never worry if the whole world reads it. But not suitable for discussing anything at all, since you have no control over the audience. And most people don't realize that their inner-circle private discussions are most probably world-readable - I'll save some space and won't list endless possible consequences.
I know a lot of people. I don't have an account on FB. Absolutely zero % of the people I know have stopped talking to me even though 95% of them all have an account.
I trust FB far less than any site online.
Fun Fact: pretty much every other social network, HI5, Tagged, MySpace etc. were all started by spammers. Friendster and FB were just started by douchebags.
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.
Yes: you don't own the messages. It is a private internet that FB owns. That's why I don't like it.
The internet is meant to be decentralized. I use Mail Service X, you use Y, maybe one of us runs our own mail server. Doesn't matter. A common protocol makes it work. If my mail server dies or your service goes offline, any emails we've sent still live on the remaining server.
If we want private communications, we can encrypt our messages. If we want to use email as an API, we can. We can receive and parse and archive to our hearts' content.
When FB owns both ends, owns the servers, controls the features, and keeps the data, we communicate at their pleasure. If they want to scrape for political keywords or decline to deliver messages about banana bread, they can. If they want to delete your messages, they can. If they want to forward your messages to advertisers, they can.
"So what?" people say. "Gmail scans your messages and shows ads." True. But if I'm ever uncomfortable, I can switch to any email provider I want, or set up my own server.
If John and I both use Gmail, I can leave Gmail and still stay in touch with him. But if John and I both use Facebook, I can't leave Facebook without losing the ability to message him. If everyone I know is like John, leaving Facebook is voluntary exile, and nobody wants to do it first.
The internet is meant to be decentralized. For many people, FB is taking over the internet.
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.
Well, it is a problem with FB mail that once you mail a list of people, you can't add someone to the list unless you start a new thread. Normal people do want to do that.
Actually, that would be great for facebook. Sending millions of emails per day to the outside world with a link 'XXX is already on facebook, why dont you join today' at the bottom would be priceless.
Well, yes and no. A major advantage of FB is that, once they suppressed the crazy app invites, it's spam-free. The only people who can send me messages are people I've already "whitelisted" by adding them/accepting their add. Once they start allowing inbound email, it all goes a bit hatstand.
Look, in VERSION 2 we added NEW features to our messaging platform that you all have known and loved for YEARS! In fact! since the freaking invention of email!
Also, given that the creator of gmail has joined FB, wouldn't he have said "uh, guys - I think we forgot something. guys??"
It would have to be a heavily optimised webmail UI. Current webmail implementations are too heavy on legacy features that normal people don't use (BCC/CC), have issues with spam ("why do good emails end up in my spam bin where as this viagra ad does not?") and light on social link and media sharing features that facebook users would expect.
A messaging system isn't for you unless it has bcc? No.
The lack of bcc leads to different usage patterns and can be thought of as a feature itself. It leads to more explicit communication. It means the recipients are exactly the ones who are clearly listed.
More generally, Facebook is bigger than the sum of its parts because of the social behavior that emerges there. Enabling this is what makes Facebook special.
I agree entirely. What Facebook provides is certainly not the only way to accomplish (or access) messaging/photo sharing/whatever. However, despite the limitations of such Facebook services, a large percentage of the population still choose them over other available options with more functionality. Perhaps the extra functionality isn't really that important to the average internet user. Or perhaps the average internet user even prefers the lack of extraneous, seldom used functionality that confuses and distracts them from their core purpose in using such services.
Aye, that comment stuck for me as being absolutely absurd. I'm a coder, nerd, etc, but I use Facebook to organise people/events, and as a simple way of reaching lots of people at once (for events), peruse comical photos etc. I've never used Bcc in my life and just because I like going out and having fun with friends it doesn't make me "stupid".
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.