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I was an outspoken Facebook-hater for a long time. Perhaps my most quotable moment on HN to date was saying "I have no love for their product or their business

I was an outspoken Facebook-hater for a long time. Perhaps my most quotable moment on HN to date was saying "I have no love for their product or their business model, but their engineering is diesel." My wife recently convinced me to give it another try. I didn't use my complete name, and was judicious about the information I associated with my profile. And yet, I proceeded to connect in a deep and healthy way with some people that I'd fallen out of touch with, and nurtured some newer relationships. It's a tool that has a Tendency to be dangerous, prying, and abusive to its members. But even as a field of vast moral hazard, I've come to view it as "navigable and worth the risks." Perhaps not the most glowing endorsement, but if they can convince me they're more valuable than they are dangerous, they've really done some things right in the last few years.

joering2 15y ago
> connect in a deep and healthy way with some people that I'd fallen out of touch with You must have had fallen out of touch for a reason, hadn't you? I think this is the major reason why I am not using Facebook to find and connect with my old friends. If those connection would have been worth keeping up with, I am sure I wouldn't have lost them at the first place. Now, of course there are stories when some family members got lost at teen age and found each other through social network, I get it, but those are in minor, gems worth a short article on social blog. After you re-connected with them again, after a while, most likely the same thing will happen. You will get out of regular touch and they will fall in the grey zone. Of course its harder to "loose" people nowaday because we living in much smaller world. And on the top of that, if you are a hard worker, if you have family, a bunch of close friends with whom you socialize, go to restaurants, movies, camping, etc, then do you really find time to socialize online? Isn't it enough that we forget about our spouses or parents birthdays sometimes, about anniversaries, other important events, don't always make on time to pick up son or daughter from school? I believe if you at least try to fullfill your daily obligations towards your job, families and friends, then you don't have time for social networking.
- JoeAltmaier 14y ago
  Lots of rationalizations for why you don't keep in touch. Lets admit that geography, convenience, jobs get in the way as often as anything. It takes little time investment to write a thoughtful note to an old friend, facebook or not. It doesn't have to be family vs friends, we can make time for both.
- ben1040 14y ago
  >You must have had fallen out of touch for a reason, hadn't you? This is exactly what made me realize it was OK for me to drop Facebook. I was unreasonably worried that I would again lose touch with these people who were my friends back in college. We fell out of contact after graduation, and then rediscovered on Facebook years later. These were folks with whom I didn't have a whole lot in common at all - maybe I might have lived on the same dorm floor with them, or maybe we were study pals in data structures class, or something else similarly un-meaningful. Then there were the people I actually cared about and made efforts to keep up friendships. I looked through my phone contact list, and realized not only did I have telephone numbers and email addresses for every last one of them, but I had made use of it often. Facebook was not how I communicated with the people that matter anyway.
- tedunangst 14y ago
  Facebook provides a low friction way to stay in contact with people. If I were getting a daily status update email from each of my 100 friends, I'd go crazy. Checking FB while waiting for the subway is easy. Similarly, I can publish updates without worrying too much that I'm secretly infuriating my friends who have more important things to be reading. I can post interesting links without imposing the expectation that you read them (as would happen if I emailed a cool story around). I don't mean to sell something you don't want to buy, but a semi-private microblogging platform is a wholly different connection experience than email.
- feralchimp 14y ago
  This might be one of the rare cases where "you'll understand when you're older" is the most elegant and truthful response available. But I'll understand if that's not very satisfying, so... Interpersonal connections just do not exist in some sort of static and immutable categorical hierarchy, wherein all those that share in the Platonic ideal of WORTH KEEPING are definitely kept above some threshold of positive health and repair, and those that do not are just as destined to fade naturally. If you're "sure that" you would recognize and maintain any connection that is worth keeping, then you're only correct insofar as the connection might not be worth maintaining for the other person. :) The reason for this is that, in short, you can't see as far into the future as you think you can. As you get older, you (hopefully) gain some perspectives that retroactively change the past. You occasionally notice important, even semi-profound things about people you used to know; things you had never really noticed before, that you could not have possibly noticed before because circumstances had not yet unearthed those facets of their character. High school isn't life. College isn't life. The first ten years of your career aren't life. "Life changing" experience can come at any time, and it doesn't just change your life after the experience, but also reaches back into your experience of things that occured before. drops mic
loceng 14y ago
The same convenience can exist on a different platform, that doesn't have the same abuse of its members/participants.

joering2 15y ago

> connect in a deep and healthy way with some people that I'd fallen out of touch with You must have had fallen out of touch for a reason, hadn't you? I think this is the major reason why I am not using Facebook to find and connect with my old friends. If those connection would have been worth keeping up with, I am sure I wouldn't have lost them at the first place. Now, of course there are stories when some family members got lost at teen age and found each other through social network, I get it, but those are in minor, gems worth a short article on social blog. After you re-connected with them again, after a while, most likely the same thing will happen. You will get out of regular touch and they will fall in the grey zone. Of course its harder to "loose" people nowaday because we living in much smaller world. And on the top of that, if you are a hard worker, if you have family, a bunch of close friends with whom you socialize, go to restaurants, movies, camping, etc, then do you really find time to socialize online? Isn't it enough that we forget about our spouses or parents birthdays sometimes, about anniversaries, other important events, don't always make on time to pick up son or daughter from school? I believe if you at least try to fullfill your daily obligations towards your job, families and friends, then you don't have time for social networking.

JoeAltmaier 14y ago
Lots of rationalizations for why you don't keep in touch. Lets admit that geography, convenience, jobs get in the way as often as anything. It takes little time investment to write a thoughtful note to an old friend, facebook or not. It doesn't have to be family vs friends, we can make time for both.
ben1040 14y ago
>You must have had fallen out of touch for a reason, hadn't you? This is exactly what made me realize it was OK for me to drop Facebook. I was unreasonably worried that I would again lose touch with these people who were my friends back in college. We fell out of contact after graduation, and then rediscovered on Facebook years later. These were folks with whom I didn't have a whole lot in common at all - maybe I might have lived on the same dorm floor with them, or maybe we were study pals in data structures class, or something else similarly un-meaningful. Then there were the people I actually cared about and made efforts to keep up friendships. I looked through my phone contact list, and realized not only did I have telephone numbers and email addresses for every last one of them, but I had made use of it often. Facebook was not how I communicated with the people that matter anyway.
tedunangst 14y ago
Facebook provides a low friction way to stay in contact with people. If I were getting a daily status update email from each of my 100 friends, I'd go crazy. Checking FB while waiting for the subway is easy. Similarly, I can publish updates without worrying too much that I'm secretly infuriating my friends who have more important things to be reading. I can post interesting links without imposing the expectation that you read them (as would happen if I emailed a cool story around). I don't mean to sell something you don't want to buy, but a semi-private microblogging platform is a wholly different connection experience than email.
feralchimp 14y ago
This might be one of the rare cases where "you'll understand when you're older" is the most elegant and truthful response available. But I'll understand if that's not very satisfying, so... Interpersonal connections just do not exist in some sort of static and immutable categorical hierarchy, wherein all those that share in the Platonic ideal of WORTH KEEPING are definitely kept above some threshold of positive health and repair, and those that do not are just as destined to fade naturally. If you're "sure that" you would recognize and maintain any connection that is worth keeping, then you're only correct insofar as the connection might not be worth maintaining for the other person. :) The reason for this is that, in short, you can't see as far into the future as you think you can. As you get older, you (hopefully) gain some perspectives that retroactively change the past. You occasionally notice important, even semi-profound things about people you used to know; things you had never really noticed before, that you could not have possibly noticed before because circumstances had not yet unearthed those facets of their character. High school isn't life. College isn't life. The first ten years of your career aren't life. "Life changing" experience can come at any time, and it doesn't just change your life after the experience, but also reaches back into your experience of things that occured before. drops mic

loceng 14y ago

The same convenience can exist on a different platform, that doesn't have the same abuse of its members/participants.