6 ms·

"I just can't figure out how to do it without losing contact with my friends." easy . . . call them, visit them, email them, write letters to them. you don't n

by anon808 14y ago

"I just can't figure out how to do it without losing contact with my friends." easy . . . call them, visit them, email them, write letters to them. you don't need an application to managed personal relationships.

bmj 14y ago
I agree with you, but there's another issue here: some of your friends may not actually respond to email messages. Personally, I'm a fan of email and letter writing (and not a fan of the phone), but I've fallen out of touch with several friends because if you don't contact them via Facebook or Twitter (I do neither), you won't hear back from them.
- freehunter 14y ago
  Another thing email doesn't do well: the idea of "I have something to say, but passively". Maybe you want to announce a change in your life, or a party, or some thought that you had. It's far less annoying to put it on Facebook where your friends can digest it (or not) at their leisure, rather than in an email demanding to be read. "Hey, what's your new address?" "I emailed it to you, go search through your messages" vs "Check my Facebook profile"
  - pinkbucket 14y ago
    I get what you are saying. The one good thing about Facebook is that it took a lot of that fluff out of my inbox. But could I not have learnt to manage/gloss over it? The thing that Facebook does well - is tracking down contacts - to add to your 'address book.' It's not so easy in the world of email. That's because we aren't publishing our address books publicly (probably for good reason.)
  - fallenhitokiri 14y ago
    The only problem I see with your email sentence is that some clients lack a decent search functionality. Some improvements and it would IMHO be as easy, if not easier, as opening Facebook, trying to find a contact and fight against the timeline to find the information you are looking for. I think the party part is a bit of personal choice. If I run a party I want to notify $foo people. And $foo is always a smaller number than my Facebook "friends". I just prefer the ability to select people and only tell them what I want to say without creating tons of groups for everything.
    - freehunter 14y ago
      This might be locale-specific, but there's a lot of times I'm notified of a party/get-together via a Facebook post saying "I'll be down at $taphouse tonight at 9, feel free to stop by!" That's a very passive invite, and Facebook (or Twitter or G+ et al) is perfect for that.
- Spooky23 14y ago
  You're missing the point -- those people aren't your friends anyway. The fact that you can "like" a picture of someone's kid or say happy birthday on their Wall doesn't change that fact. Facebook can be a great tool for sharing photos and other things with your friends. But most of what is actually happening on Facebook is voyeurism -- you get to stalk people whom you sort of know.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - greedo 14y ago
    I know hating FB is all the rage (and sometimes well deserved) but you're attributing your feelings about FB to all the users. Failbook.com isn't indicative of all the FB users.
RegEx 14y ago
Facebook has monetized the hardship of letting friendships go. People change, shit happens, and you have to move on. Facebook, however, makes us believe we can keep these relationships going forever. I'm sure there are many successful reconnection stories, but I bet there are magnitudes more 'talked for a few days after not seeing each other for a few years, and that was that' stories.
- pinkbucket 14y ago
  That's not to say there isn't value in that. I've been really happy to connect with old acquaintances over just a message or two. I don't really want much more contact than that.
k-mcgrady 14y ago
>> "you don't need an application to managed personal relationships" You do when you're keeping in touch with friends you've made throughout your life and not just your current ones. That's the thing Facebook makes easy. Also email and writing letters don't really work. If I sent a letter to a friend I seriously doubt they would bother responding, and most people I know personally don't use email. They use Facebook. That's the big problem - Facebook has replaced email for a lot of people making it one of the only ways (besides visiting/calling) to contact them.
- gnaritas 14y ago
  > You do when you're keeping in touch with friends you've made throughout your life and not just your current ones. Your friends are the current ones. Those other people aren't friends anymore, they're acquaintances, people you used to know but don't see anymore. Friend isn't a permanent status, it's the people you hang out with and see on a regular basis. If your only contact with a person is through facebook, they aren't your friends.
  - k-mcgrady 14y ago
    That's highly subjective. For example, if I moved abroad the people I hung out with regularly before would still be 'friends' to me. I would still care about what's happening in their lives and Facebook is a great way to continue that relationship. To me a friend is someone, not related, that I care about. Not someone that I hang out with regularly.
  - brownbat 14y ago
    I'm not sure how these semantic distinctions affect the argument. Replace the "friends" in his original post with "acquaintances," and his point stands. Facebook is useful as a long term rolodex.
    - gnaritas 14y ago
      > Replace the "friends" in his original post with "acquaintances," and his point stands. That's changing the argument, those words mean totally different things. My point is, Facebook makes keeping in touch with acquaintances easy, but isn't necessary to keep in touch with actual friends. Friends are people you see outside of Facebook.
vibrunazo 14y ago
How do I find their email address, tho? :P
- pinkbucket 14y ago
  You join!
betterth 14y ago
If it was this simple than Facebook would never have caught on in the first place. The answer isn't "rollback" because clearly there is some value here. The answer is finding out how to maximize that value to our lives, not maximize the payout for investors.
- malandrew 14y ago
  The main thing Facebook provides that isn't addressable with the systems we'd be left with in a "rollback" is a universal way to stay linked to other people that provides both people with control over whether that link exists or not. Everything else is just features glommed on top of that basic feature. AFAICT there are only two ways to provide that basic feature: (!) A centralized service like Facebook that manages the identity network. Any centralized organization is most likely ultimately going to exploit the fact that they own the network for their own gain, financial or otherwise. or (2) A decentralized service based on the similar cryptographic math as bitcoin, where every user gets one token representing their identity, and some sort of way to propagate changes to their identity signed by that token to everyone they are connected to and this needs to be accomplished in such a way that you can always re-establish the links to your friends in the network to be able to sync data. I can't even begin to imagine how you'd develop the latter into a form that would be usable and therefore adoptable by the average person.
  - wodemaye__ 14y ago
    Hi, I'm actually in the process of designing such a system, with the goal of maximizing privacy, sovereignty, decentralization, and overall empowerment (not to mention destroying the facebook spying machine). If you'd like to help out with ideas and brainstorming, please do email me at bash.vcs [squigllydoo [SHIFT+TWO]] <google's mail service> . com. I already have some ideas for unique features that will set this apart from other similarly oriented efforts in a significant way. I'm getting close to starting up a mailing list and code repository, so please be in touch if you're at all interested. I'll keep you filled in. But yeah, you've hit the nail right on the head. Obviously, my will fall into your (2) category, so we've got some major usability and cryptographic hurdles to tackle. But please rest assured that the solutions exist and that I've got most of them hammered out in my mind - the rest just require a little brainstorming and puzzle solving. PS it will be completely F/OSS, most likely GPL depending on contributor consensus.
baddox 14y ago
Do you need phones to manage personal relationships? What about a postal service? What about automobiles? Of course not. I could choose to only maintain relationships with people within walking distance of my home, but I prefer using technology to facilitate communication over longer distances.

by anon808 14y ago

bmj 14y ago

I agree with you, but there's another issue here: some of your friends may not actually respond to email messages. Personally, I'm a fan of email and letter writing (and not a fan of the phone), but I've fallen out of touch with several friends because if you don't contact them via Facebook or Twitter (I do neither), you won't hear back from them.

freehunter 14y ago
Another thing email doesn't do well: the idea of "I have something to say, but passively". Maybe you want to announce a change in your life, or a party, or some thought that you had. It's far less annoying to put it on Facebook where your friends can digest it (or not) at their leisure, rather than in an email demanding to be read. "Hey, what's your new address?" "I emailed it to you, go search through your messages" vs "Check my Facebook profile"
- pinkbucket 14y ago
  I get what you are saying. The one good thing about Facebook is that it took a lot of that fluff out of my inbox. But could I not have learnt to manage/gloss over it? The thing that Facebook does well - is tracking down contacts - to add to your 'address book.' It's not so easy in the world of email. That's because we aren't publishing our address books publicly (probably for good reason.)
- fallenhitokiri 14y ago
  The only problem I see with your email sentence is that some clients lack a decent search functionality. Some improvements and it would IMHO be as easy, if not easier, as opening Facebook, trying to find a contact and fight against the timeline to find the information you are looking for. I think the party part is a bit of personal choice. If I run a party I want to notify $foo people. And $foo is always a smaller number than my Facebook "friends". I just prefer the ability to select people and only tell them what I want to say without creating tons of groups for everything.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    This might be locale-specific, but there's a lot of times I'm notified of a party/get-together via a Facebook post saying "I'll be down at $taphouse tonight at 9, feel free to stop by!" That's a very passive invite, and Facebook (or Twitter or G+ et al) is perfect for that.
Spooky23 14y ago
You're missing the point -- those people aren't your friends anyway. The fact that you can "like" a picture of someone's kid or say happy birthday on their Wall doesn't change that fact. Facebook can be a great tool for sharing photos and other things with your friends. But most of what is actually happening on Facebook is voyeurism -- you get to stalk people whom you sort of know.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- greedo 14y ago
  I know hating FB is all the rage (and sometimes well deserved) but you're attributing your feelings about FB to all the users. Failbook.com isn't indicative of all the FB users.

RegEx 14y ago

Facebook has monetized the hardship of letting friendships go. People change, shit happens, and you have to move on. Facebook, however, makes us believe we can keep these relationships going forever. I'm sure there are many successful reconnection stories, but I bet there are magnitudes more 'talked for a few days after not seeing each other for a few years, and that was that' stories.

pinkbucket 14y ago
That's not to say there isn't value in that. I've been really happy to connect with old acquaintances over just a message or two. I don't really want much more contact than that.

k-mcgrady 14y ago

>> "you don't need an application to managed personal relationships" You do when you're keeping in touch with friends you've made throughout your life and not just your current ones. That's the thing Facebook makes easy. Also email and writing letters don't really work. If I sent a letter to a friend I seriously doubt they would bother responding, and most people I know personally don't use email. They use Facebook. That's the big problem - Facebook has replaced email for a lot of people making it one of the only ways (besides visiting/calling) to contact them.

gnaritas 14y ago
> You do when you're keeping in touch with friends you've made throughout your life and not just your current ones. Your friends are the current ones. Those other people aren't friends anymore, they're acquaintances, people you used to know but don't see anymore. Friend isn't a permanent status, it's the people you hang out with and see on a regular basis. If your only contact with a person is through facebook, they aren't your friends.
- k-mcgrady 14y ago
  That's highly subjective. For example, if I moved abroad the people I hung out with regularly before would still be 'friends' to me. I would still care about what's happening in their lives and Facebook is a great way to continue that relationship. To me a friend is someone, not related, that I care about. Not someone that I hang out with regularly.
- brownbat 14y ago
  I'm not sure how these semantic distinctions affect the argument. Replace the "friends" in his original post with "acquaintances," and his point stands. Facebook is useful as a long term rolodex.
  - gnaritas 14y ago
    > Replace the "friends" in his original post with "acquaintances," and his point stands. That's changing the argument, those words mean totally different things. My point is, Facebook makes keeping in touch with acquaintances easy, but isn't necessary to keep in touch with actual friends. Friends are people you see outside of Facebook.

vibrunazo 14y ago

How do I find their email address, tho? :P

pinkbucket 14y ago
You join!

betterth 14y ago

If it was this simple than Facebook would never have caught on in the first place. The answer isn't "rollback" because clearly there is some value here. The answer is finding out how to maximize that value to our lives, not maximize the payout for investors.

malandrew 14y ago
The main thing Facebook provides that isn't addressable with the systems we'd be left with in a "rollback" is a universal way to stay linked to other people that provides both people with control over whether that link exists or not. Everything else is just features glommed on top of that basic feature. AFAICT there are only two ways to provide that basic feature: (!) A centralized service like Facebook that manages the identity network. Any centralized organization is most likely ultimately going to exploit the fact that they own the network for their own gain, financial or otherwise. or (2) A decentralized service based on the similar cryptographic math as bitcoin, where every user gets one token representing their identity, and some sort of way to propagate changes to their identity signed by that token to everyone they are connected to and this needs to be accomplished in such a way that you can always re-establish the links to your friends in the network to be able to sync data. I can't even begin to imagine how you'd develop the latter into a form that would be usable and therefore adoptable by the average person.
- wodemaye__ 14y ago
  Hi, I'm actually in the process of designing such a system, with the goal of maximizing privacy, sovereignty, decentralization, and overall empowerment (not to mention destroying the facebook spying machine). If you'd like to help out with ideas and brainstorming, please do email me at bash.vcs [squigllydoo [SHIFT+TWO]] <google's mail service> . com. I already have some ideas for unique features that will set this apart from other similarly oriented efforts in a significant way. I'm getting close to starting up a mailing list and code repository, so please be in touch if you're at all interested. I'll keep you filled in. But yeah, you've hit the nail right on the head. Obviously, my will fall into your (2) category, so we've got some major usability and cryptographic hurdles to tackle. But please rest assured that the solutions exist and that I've got most of them hammered out in my mind - the rest just require a little brainstorming and puzzle solving. PS it will be completely F/OSS, most likely GPL depending on contributor consensus.

baddox 14y ago

Do you need phones to manage personal relationships? What about a postal service? What about automobiles? Of course not. I could choose to only maintain relationships with people within walking distance of my home, but I prefer using technology to facilitate communication over longer distances.