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I've recently given up Facebook due to realising it was almost a complete waste of my time, and I have the same feeling towards Google+. With Facebook it was b

I've recently given up Facebook due to realising it was almost a complete waste of my time, and I have the same feeling towards Google+. With Facebook it was becoming that I'd log on each day and see a bunch of irrelevant content from people I hadn't spoken to for years (and in some cases, met only once or twice). Occasionally I'd end up having a meaningful conversation but the signal-to-noise ratio was just ridiculously high. And then there was the advertising and lack of concern for privacy etc. I could go on. It may be just me, but sitting down together for lunch or (if the person lives elsewhere) chatting on phone or Skype seem much more pleasant and fruitful modes of social interaction. And of course HN for reading interesting discussions about topics of interest :)

meric 13y ago
You can hide people from the timeline.
henrikschroder 13y ago
Facebook, Google+, and any other social network or electronic communication is what you make it. But you have to actively use the tools provided to curate your experience. I don't friend people on Facebook that I haven't met in real life. I de-friend people if I'm no longer interested in what they post or what they do. I hide or throttle down posts from people who have a high noise ratio. In return, my Facebook feed is pretty enjoyable, and keeps me up to date on what a bunch of people I care about are doing in their lives. But it takes a little bit of work on my side, it doesn't appear automatically, and if you're indiscriminate about adding people as friends, your feed will be not be enjoyable. Simply walking away from it instead of curating it is a lazy solution.
- lkozma 13y ago
  What you say is obviously true, but there must be some curve between the effort needed to make it useful and the utility derived from it, based on which some people can rationally decide that it is not worth it for them, while others can decide the opposite. That doesn't make one of them lazy and the other one stupid (although some people might be better or worse in estimating the effort or the utility of the process) - notice that otherwise the same generic argument could be made for anything: "X is what you make of it ... walking away from it is a lazy solution." where X could be nuclear weapons, hard drugs, etc. etc.
- baby 13y ago
  In my case it was the ONLY solution. I've became extremly addicted to it and couldn't spend a day without checking facebook, heck an hour without doing so. And I know it just started as a way to meet people, join events, "advertise" myself. But I got caught into the game and played it way too much that it became pathetic. Some people say that men think about sex every 7 seconds. Which might be true in my case but that's not the point. I had thoughts about facebook so many times during the day it became... weird. Maybe I'm a good field for addiction (I got heavily addicted in IRC back then that I had to give up all my channels to friends (which were pretty big on Quakenet at the time) so I could be able to focus on real life things). I have no idea why I wrote so much but when you don't use facebook in a clever way sometimes you just HAVE TO let it go. Not by lazyness but by lack of willpower. At least for a while. I personnaly gave my password to a friend and he changed it. I'm not touching my facebook for at least a month, maybe more. Until I can learn to cleverly use it again. Networking is important but efficience of my time is even more.
natrius 13y ago
You can add friends to an Acquaintances group that hides them from your feed without unfriending them. Facebook has a tool that suggests people who you probably don't want to see in your feed: https://www.facebook.com/friends/organize https://www.facebook.com/friends/organize
snaky 13y ago
meaningful conversation It's 2013. Who cares about meaningful conversation?
taude 13y ago
I find G+ way less of a waste of time than FB. WIth circles, I've been able to curate some good tech people/products/open source projects/communities to follow. And since G+ is built around the concept of Circles (Groups), and not an afterthought like FB, it works really well. And unlike Twitter, the conversations that happen make more sense because people have enough room to be coherent. A lot like Hacker News.
wfunction 13y ago
> the signal-to-noise ratio was just ridiculously high I wish I had the same problem. ;)
- peterkelly 13y ago
  Well.... I guess I could say I was describing it from Facebook's perspective, where ads & privacy violations are the signal ;)

meric 13y ago

You can hide people from the timeline.

henrikschroder 13y ago

Facebook, Google+, and any other social network or electronic communication is what you make it. But you have to actively use the tools provided to curate your experience. I don't friend people on Facebook that I haven't met in real life. I de-friend people if I'm no longer interested in what they post or what they do. I hide or throttle down posts from people who have a high noise ratio. In return, my Facebook feed is pretty enjoyable, and keeps me up to date on what a bunch of people I care about are doing in their lives. But it takes a little bit of work on my side, it doesn't appear automatically, and if you're indiscriminate about adding people as friends, your feed will be not be enjoyable. Simply walking away from it instead of curating it is a lazy solution.

lkozma 13y ago
What you say is obviously true, but there must be some curve between the effort needed to make it useful and the utility derived from it, based on which some people can rationally decide that it is not worth it for them, while others can decide the opposite. That doesn't make one of them lazy and the other one stupid (although some people might be better or worse in estimating the effort or the utility of the process) - notice that otherwise the same generic argument could be made for anything: "X is what you make of it ... walking away from it is a lazy solution." where X could be nuclear weapons, hard drugs, etc. etc.
baby 13y ago
In my case it was the ONLY solution. I've became extremly addicted to it and couldn't spend a day without checking facebook, heck an hour without doing so. And I know it just started as a way to meet people, join events, "advertise" myself. But I got caught into the game and played it way too much that it became pathetic. Some people say that men think about sex every 7 seconds. Which might be true in my case but that's not the point. I had thoughts about facebook so many times during the day it became... weird. Maybe I'm a good field for addiction (I got heavily addicted in IRC back then that I had to give up all my channels to friends (which were pretty big on Quakenet at the time) so I could be able to focus on real life things). I have no idea why I wrote so much but when you don't use facebook in a clever way sometimes you just HAVE TO let it go. Not by lazyness but by lack of willpower. At least for a while. I personnaly gave my password to a friend and he changed it. I'm not touching my facebook for at least a month, maybe more. Until I can learn to cleverly use it again. Networking is important but efficience of my time is even more.

natrius 13y ago

You can add friends to an Acquaintances group that hides them from your feed without unfriending them. Facebook has a tool that suggests people who you probably don't want to see in your feed: https://www.facebook.com/friends/organize https://www.facebook.com/friends/organize

snaky 13y ago

meaningful conversation It's 2013. Who cares about meaningful conversation?

taude 13y ago

I find G+ way less of a waste of time than FB. WIth circles, I've been able to curate some good tech people/products/open source projects/communities to follow. And since G+ is built around the concept of Circles (Groups), and not an afterthought like FB, it works really well. And unlike Twitter, the conversations that happen make more sense because people have enough room to be coherent. A lot like Hacker News.

wfunction 13y ago

> the signal-to-noise ratio was just ridiculously high I wish I had the same problem. ;)

peterkelly 13y ago
Well.... I guess I could say I was describing it from Facebook's perspective, where ads & privacy violations are the signal ;)