Facebook….I Still Don’t Get It
Jun 23rd, 2008 by alyoung
I have been on Facebook for awhile but not as an active participant. Only recently have I logged onto Facebook more often since Stan got me more involved with Facebook. After spending some time on Facebook, I think its a fun and sometimes useful networking tool. Its different from My Space which is for kids and Linkedin which is for business networking. My Space is popular with the under 18 crowd and pedophiles. Linkedin is like a rolodex online. It is great for making business contacts and networking but not as much fun as Facebok. So Facebook is the appropriate social networking tool for my age group. After spending some time on Facebook I found some cool things it can do and things I still don’t understand.
What Is Cool About Facebook:
- Connecting with old friends: I have reconnected with old friends from college and high school which I likely would not have been able to do without Facebook. That is the best thing about Facebook.
- Photos: I enjoy seeing photos of friends and their families particularly those I have lost contact with
What I Still Don’t Get About Facebook:
- Virtual Gifts: Every few days someone gives me a gift on Facebook. Not a real gift but a virtual gift. Something like so and so sent you a flower and its a picture of a flower. Okay. I got “poked” by someone once. Another time someone threw a virtual snowball at me. What???
- Status: There are people who are always on Facebook and updating us with their status. That means telling everyone what they are now doing. Like I just took a nap or I’m watching TV. Maybe other people care what you are doing, but I don’t really need to know.
- Friend Request: The whole idea with Facebook is to connect or to reconnect with your friends and that is fine. I get friend requests and I am glad to accept, but sometimes I get requests from people I barely know. I may have met them once or twice through a mutual friend and now they are asking me to be their Facebook friend. I always accept to be polite but I would not really consider them friends. It is kind of like high school when you try to get everyone in school to sign your yearbook despite the fact you only have about 10 close friends and the rest are just acquaintances. All these friend request seem just like filling up your yearbook. I would rather have a smaller group of friends than hundreds of Facebook friends that I barely know.
Facebook is a fun entertaining social networking tool. I can see how it can be useful and fun to some people. It seems the people who enjoy Facebook the most are the most social and outgoing. I guess I ‘m just not that sociable in person or even online, so I don’t fully “get” Facebook.
