Maybe the oversharing bubble will burst, but there will always be a market for maintaining vague contact with people you āknowā.
Off topic, are you guys getting paid by the dash today? From three of the next 4 stories:
traffic-factory life-support for ad-supported media ā and as
Facebookā¦their own followers ā theā¦
/
a seven-month-old baby
/
never-before-seen images
heavy-psych-improv-folk-blues-rock bands EVERā¦mind-melting recordings, including a limited-editionā¦
Themās some compound ideas.
Information wants to be free, which means it doesnāt want to be copyedited and proofread.
Those arenāt dashes; theyāre hyphens 
They help keep the writerās meaning from being misconstrued.
Yes, it wouldnāt do to have another story about whales that crash while watching boats.
The Fortune article identifies two causes for this: First, thereās the rise of professional content on Facebook. Second, thereās the shift from content published in private to content published in public.
What about the timeline algorithm? I saw people complaining about how their posts were not being shown to others because of the algorithms. If those posts are not being shown, it could lead to people not writing posts in the first placeā¦
That pretty much summarises it. Professional content aside, if Average Jane and Joe user donāt know where their content is going to wind up, and donāt know if their friends will even get a chance to see what they posted ā why bother?
I quit FB in 2010, but recently, reluctantly, rejoined because I wanted to participate in a group forum hosted on it. I canāt say I saw anything that made me want to go back. Iām still spending more time sifting through the UI than actually engaging in content, and I get more notifications accusing me of knowing this or that user (only right about 30% of the time) than notifications telling me thereās a new forum post. The forum has ~40 members and there are at least two posts a day, so the ājoin more of the network!ā notices got old very quickly.
Ah well. The groupās disbanding in a few weeks (not related to FB ā it was a planned end date). Then I can delete my account again.
I just want an āoriginal content onlyā switch for facebook. Ugly baby pictures, yes. Misattributed quotes over unrelated pictures, no.
Facebook is an interesting platform. I use it entirely for social purposes, keeping in touch with old friends who moved away and organizing/publicizing upcoming free events that my posse puts on around town.
I have read about the fact that it shows advertising, but I donāt see any ads on it, thanks to AdBlock Plus on my desktops and a 3-year-old app on my phone. So as far as Iām concerned, itās not a viable economic entity.
The timeline thing where most people donā see stuff is a bit of a problem.
Perhaps we need a thing thatās just like Facebook but without the need to make money. Hmmm. Amazon ought to run it! They know how to not make money.
Wasnāt Facebook alwaysā¦ Oh, wait, thatās a c and an l. Never mind.
But are they en rules or em rules? The Internet is the bane of typography.
I really miss the .edu facebook days. It was nice communicating in an echo chamber of people who valued higher education.
Now itās used to dismiss Bernie supporters as people who want āfree stuffā.
Facebook is an overclocked tilt-a-whirl from which I am desperately trying to escape.
Love this idea. Maybe a custom browser extension?
I made a pretty clean break when Facebookās app crashed my phone and deleted all my contacts. Now I check in every four months or so, when someone asks me why I havenāt responded to something they sent me on Facebook.
Punctuation; take it : or leave it!
As much as i dislike FBās efforts and business practices i really donāt think theyāre in danger of losing significant business. Thereās plenty of people that would go elsewhere given the chance but the alternatives right now are pretty damn lousy, especially if youāre not into Tumblr, Twitter, and other social sites.
Give me an actual alternative to FB that isnāt as scummy with privacy and marketing and iād gladly take it.
I was totally primed to read that article on The Information. Iāve hit their paywall a couple of times recently, and Iām a fan of just plain paying for stuff, so I thought Iād give a subscription a try for a mereā¦ $1 a day GOD DAMMIT ARE YOU KIDDING ME
Anyway.
While Facebook is more than welcome to go suck a fuck in my view, Iām not convinced that the bulk of their users will have any problem with it becoming āBuzzfeed with messagesā. They might well be a Wal-Mart instead of a Nieman Marcus, but Wal-Mart still gets a lot of people in the door.
I have an FB account to let me stay in contact with friends/family overseas, or at least, a way to contact them if I need to.
I havenāt posted any update to my wall in months, just canāt be bothered. As soon as they got rid of the chronological timeline and started hiding updates I started to lose interest, and it just got worse.
I donāt want to get sucked into their walled garden communications, so Iāve never installed Messenger and never will, which means that I donāt send messages any more, itās too much effort to log in to their website to do it.
Most of the time if I do look at FB, all I do is block all the viral/meme stuff, tell FB I donāt want to see anything that was merely ālikedā by someone I know - which really means Iām blocking all friends of friends stuff from my wall. Iām also blocking all the Republican political stuff that comes from my in-laws and a few colleagues. I refuse to like anything or follow any brands/websites, I block those when they show up on my timeline too.
I have no interest in using FB as a news source, Iād have to go back and curate all the same stuff I follow on twitter, and Iād want to keep that separate from my friends/family stuff anyway.
So itās really just another address book now.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about Facebook, gang. I feel like weāve really achieved something here.
I disagree with this, it is a address book nearly every random person I ever met during travel or projects is included in, all I have to do is type in their name, add them and I will have a way to connect to them for years to come.
Itās not ājustā a address book, it is, for the moment, the most complete address book in the world (that I know of).
For something like that, youād have to pay for it, which would kill any mass appeal for it.
