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The social value they're creating is that people like me are able to have a common medium through which I can maintain at least some semblance of socialization
by RandomInteger4 9y ago
The social value they're creating is that people like me are able to have a common medium through which I can maintain at least some semblance of socialization with a multitude of people who don't all share common interest other than being people I've communicated with at some point.
- asquabventured 9y agoI guess Email or text messages are no longer cool?
- olewhalehunter 9y agoNo but giving away massive amounts of monetizable information capital to private corporations for free sure is.
- arjie 9y agoYou're here on HN and not on some mailing list or phpBB forum. Clearly you derive value from this rather different medium. Well, Instagram users derive value from that other medium. Email and text message have a different feel and offer different features.
- thisacctforreal 9y agoI agree with this post: features like realtime chats, comments, posts, etc are various ways of interacting people on different platforms. Facebook has done a good job at becoming a nearly ubiquitous hub for people to reach out and connect on, without having to feel shy. (of course we were perhaps less shy to ask for numbers when they were given out more often) I totally disagree with the things parts of Facebook is doing, and I wish they gave half a damn about where they are driving us.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- thedickensian 9y agoWell, not exactly. While email and text messages are great at helping you keep in contact with people you know, I find Facebook is best at keeping me in contact with people I once knew or don't know very well. For example, just last week I had an acquaintance who was potentially taking an internship in the city I moved to after I graduated college. This is an acquaintance that I haven't seen in over five years, and was never close with. The kind of person you'd be 100% never seeing again, since we had basically lost touch, minus the whole "we're Facebook friends" aspect. Granted, I know one of the major gripes about Facebook on HN is that having a lot of friends on Facebook facilitates a lot of useless spam about people you don't quite care about. I totally understand this view. But on the other hand, I learned that this acquaintance of mine might be stopping in the city I'm in, so far away from our hometown, and being the adult that I am and getting older and older by the minute, knowing just how hard it is to make and maintain friendships as you get older, I decided to give this acquaintance a call (on Facebook of course!) to see if they were free to meetup.
- threeseed 9y agoIt has nothing to do with what is cool or not. It's about enabling a different type of relationship where you are sharing your life with people you don't necessarily want to have a constant conversation with.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- criddell 9y agoEmail and text messages? Are you too good for faxes and telegrams? Email and text messages both suffer from the problem that they are controlled by the sender. Facebook flips this. The wall reflects what I want to see.
- CuriouslyC 9y agoActually, it reflects what Facebook wants you to see. They might take your interests into account in order to maximize the potential for ad exposure, but you're definitely not in charge.
- criddell 9y agoI have enough control. If Facebook doesn't do a good job, I don't return.
- scholia 9y agoFacebook wants you to see whatever keeps you coming back to Facebook to see more of, ie what you want to see. That's exactly how it maximizes its ad potential. It might have a hypocrisy problem. People will typically claim to like certain things (high-status cultural artifacts) while mostly consuming other things (trash TV, fast food etc). However, it doesn't benefit from driving people away.
- CuriouslyC 9y agoI don't think it is a hypocrisy problem, so much as an issue of conflicting desires. A junkie who is trying to quit heroin wants to get clean, but he also really wants a fix. Of course it is more profitable for the dealer to continue selling heroin.
- criddell 9y agoI don't get your analogy. If I check Facebook Monday to see photos of a nephew's piano recital this weekend, am I the junkie or the dealer?