Also, birthdays? Aren't those the sorts of things you find out about once per friend and then add to your own contacts? I've never had a Facebook account, but that's not a problem I've ever experienced.
Granted, I don't automatically know the birthday of every single person I meet or even get a number/email from. But I would go so far as to call that a feature, and because of that, the birthday notifications I do get are worth getting.
My flatmate's boyfriend is fond of throwing large house parties with hundreds of invitees, then hiring a doorman to check names off against the FB RSVP list. If you're not on it, you're not admitted.
My closest friends remember me and send me invites via email, but I can't fault them for forgetting now and then.
I'm very close to my wife and can't imagine getting a divorce, but I think it's healthy that we manage our own social calendars.
In short: pointing to the line between friends and "friends" and (likely my personality coloring the value judgment) thus questioning whether you're actually missing out by not being so closely connected to those "friends".
(Frankly the very concept of a house party with so many attendees that don't actually know one another, that a door man and a guest list is required, sounds like a caricature of a straw man I might have cooked up to have a laugh at "things you might need FB to get invited to". But maybe that's just saying more about me and why I don't grok or value things like FB.)
It's definitely naive to think "oh, if you're really friends with them you'll remember their name without the help of a computer." This is especially the case with larger more inclusive weddings where now-disconnected friends are invited.
That said, I find it challenging to remember my immediate families birthdays (not to mention, anniversaries etc) and while my crutch has always been a calendar, FB can provide that crutch for folks who don't have a calendar habit.
Bottom line is that the core premise of FB is actually quite sound, its just not easily monetizable. Its possible that after a while folks would pay to subscribe to a FB like service but long before that Google or someone else who isn't being held against the wall with a share certificate pointed at their head may find a more workable solution.
And of course FB could, their are a lot of smart folks over there.
1) No one can post on my wall
2) No one can tag me in pictures, post or places.
3) My profile picture excludes my face.
4) I post little to nothing.
5) I only friend a narrow group of people. Being an offline friend of mine for years is not enough.
6) People who make weird comments are unfriended quickly.
7) The list goes on, but it can be summarized as do as little on FB as possible.
My best friends, most of my girlfriends, my family -- I am not friends with on FB!
You can have a FB account and maintain some basic degree of privacy. It probably is not the way Mark Zuckerberg intends it. The more he does to interfere with my usage patterns, the less I use FB (and I hold him ultimately responsible for the UX.) I expect to continue to lose control over my account in the future. The more this occurs, the less I'll use it.
Strangely, over the past year I have begun to really enjoy and understand using Twitter.
If there are more people like me, then I truly fear for Facebook's long term success. (Disclaimer: I still own Facebook stock).
You just have to learn to ignore some posts - gloss over them.
If you swapped Facebook out for say a private email list - would you be more inclined to participate? And if that is the case - why don't people just use mailing lists?
Trusting facebook to prevent Eve from accessing to your data is not the same thing as controlling Eve's access to your data.
The usual counter-argument to this is that it isn't worth it to care about such relationships anyway, and that you should only be concerned about close friends. It is true that close friends are important, but it might not be true that the optimal strategy is to care only about them. It may be useful to keeping distant connections with old friends in case you ever run into them again, or to have a large distant social circle with diverse backgrounds and physical locations to get more diverse recommendations, opinions, help, etc. More dramatically, say you arrive in a new city where you don't know anyone and no one knows you, but most people use Facebook: if you insist that people that don't initially know you should use your favorite communication medium rather than Facebook to interact with you online, it might be harder to get things started.
This isn't to say that you should use Facebook: I never used it and discourage people from using it. This is to argue that you should be conscious that not using Facebook may come at a personal disadvantage. I personally still think that it is more important to stick to my principles and make an insignificant effort to improve things by not being on Facebook, but I can understand that other people might think differently (though I disapprove their choice).
I have deleted by FB account twice and then I was spending lots of time explaining why, getting weird looks from people and being left out of comments (e.g. people would post something to FB and be laughing about it later but never explain about what.. really impolite of them but what can I do? engage in more arguments).
So yeah, be honest to your beliefs, just don't expect that will translate to happiness (unless you really work on telling yourself none of that unpleasant situations are really bad). We are human beings, how we interact with others matter (even if I didn't want any of that).
No matter how strange your beliefs are, you will always find people that think similar. The world is very diverse.
It seems that FB even changes the fundamental meaning of a friend. Which is a shame and a lack of social culture.
On the Saprano's they said something like 'nostalgia is every mans weakness'. In my eyes facebook breads nostalgia, thus I keep away.
It is really hard to go off the grid. Does anyone know if I job change, city change plus a name change would help? :)
Try to focus on getting a core group of friends that you maintain regular contact with. Call them, email them, sms them. Use communication forms other than FB to get at them and eventually you'll train them to include you. If not then get some new friends.
Join a table top gaming club. There seems to be a resurgence of table op gaming going on that's really exciting. And it's a great way to meet people.
Yes, its against FB user agreement but fuck that.
I'm the same, I do it too and think it's very neccessary, but it can interfere with FB procedures in funny ways.
But then again, all this isn't new information. I have never really trusted a webpage with relevant stuff. ECHELON is old news, and servers can be hacked. The level of trust some people put into the net amazes me.
Probably. Using a fake/altered name is incredibly common on Facebook, especially among younger people. I think any 3rd party assigned with that task would realize that and avoid it.
Luckily there's no online record of relationship history or it'd be an open and close case.
As a 20-something living in SF, it's a daily thing now: I don't get invited to parties, I don't know about birthdays, I don't see my friends' photos, I don't have any contact with anyone from high school or college anymore.
There is a real social cost for someone in my situation to not be on FB. I struggle to quantify the harm, but it's there. I struggle too to explain to my friends why I'm not on FB. And yet I still think I'm better off without it.
The whole situation contributes to the isolation I already experience as an introvert and someone who doesn't much care for bars, clubs, or alcohol -- though I suppose I don't need to remind this audience that being alone != loneliness.
I guess it doesn't matter much anyway, since FB is still collecting information on me (and other 'shadow profiles' of users not on FB).