Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy but up until now I really haven't got onboard with the whole Facebook/My Space/Social Networking phenomenon. I do have a Facebook account but I really only signed up due to a bit (lot) of pressure, and overwhelming enthusiasm from some friends. Up until now I haven't really got the point of it. Do I really have time to throw a sheep at you? Or do I even want to? It seemed to me to be something that people who had jobs signed up for. Something that provided some much-needed distraction until the clock hit 5. Now I'm thinking maybe there is more to it than that.
Last night my studio pal Mark signed up for his Facebook account. He added me as a friend, as you do, and it came just at a time when I really welcomed a distraction. I was writing (trying to) a boring grant application (not sure why I put myself through these things - I don't know about you but working out budgets is just not my idea of fun!). Anyway, I took the opportunity to leave that for a while and look at my Facebook account and it suddenly dawned on me that there were people I would like to keep in contact with, and that this was perhaps a good way of doing just that. Maybe it wasn't all about filling in time.
I can be a bit haphazard when it comes to the whole email/phone calls/ keeping in touch thing. So maybe sending a couple of people a cupcake, or whatever, every now and again, says 'hey I'm thinking of you', and is a whole lot better than no contact at all! I had a great time In Adelaide recently, for example, and would like to keep in contact with many of the people I met and caught up with. Perhaps this is the way to do just that.
Anyway, what do you think? Any opinions on this topic? Is it a waste of time or not? I'm not 100% convinced of its worth but I think I'll give it a bit of a go, for a while anyway.
5 comments:
I'm very much in two minds as well ... I signed up cos a friend had too, and she invited me. And I did find quite a few friends, and that part was fine. But when it started to be a flurry of people inviting me to this, and doing that, and things requiring me to create new accounts to do more things, and me with a million things to do, and then people I knew but didn't *really* want to be friends with adding me as friends, and - bah! At that point I disabled my account, and life is that little bit less stressful. I still do blogging and groups on Ravelry (yet another distraction!), and that's just fine.
I think you're right about it being something that people who aren't self-employed do - or at least who have somewhat boring jobs and need something to spice up the days. I can see it is a good way to stay in touch, or reconnect with old friends. But it's not for me right now.
My thoughts on this topic is not to go there. I had an account (for 2 weeks) until I read that those applications that you load onto your profie are known for loading spyware onto your computer which is then onsold to marketers (and who knows whom else)..
I suggest you google the words "privacy" and "facebook" and read some of the articles there.
And in any case, I found the people who were my friends on facebook, I was already in contact with so it didn't add anything new for me.
Hey Lady, I went on for about a month and fed fish, threw cocktails and generally wasted too much time. Then I was contacted by primary school friends and thought that was way too scary so I left for about 6 months. I'm back now but I ignore all requests for super-fun-gift-quiz-aquarium-zombie walls and just use it as a network. I discovered the "limited profile" option for friends which I like as it means I can be friends with people I'm not really "friends" with but they don't get to see all my profile details. I agree with jejune - it's mainly for people who sit in front of a computer all day, so I try to limit my time on it.
cheers,
i'm on there, but i don't have the time to figure out what to do with it.
you have the longest word verification jumble. ( i turned mine off a year ago + have only got a couple spam comments out of thousands of regular comments)
happy valentine's day!
you're on my valentine's blogroll.
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It is ridiculous... but fun! I prefer it to myspace which is tedious.
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