Facebook: calm down
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Excerpt from an email to a friend: You know this is interesting. I’ve been on twitter for what, a year and a half? I have over 400 posts yet only 36 followers and only very occasional actual interaction. Facebook on the other hand, I completely ignore because it’s too ghey. But anyhow I do one FB status update after months and months of inactivity and I get all these nice responses. All from people I know, of course. Interesting. Thus is the power of actual human contact. And also partly my failure to create an significantly interesting online persona. Whatev.[/column][column]
What I do hate about FB though is the lack of control. So example: I finally fill in info for my job. And the update that gets broadcast is “Patrick has a new job!” What. The. Fuck. But too late. Blam. It’s out there for everybody. I’ve had the same job for two years, but no, there’s no option when you’re editing your profile for :“actually I’m just filling-in info that I haven’t bothered to provide so far, so please do not fucking broadcast this to everybody.” You have no choice. It’s going out there, like it or not. And that’s what makes me not want to use the platform. There’s no “chill” setting.
It’s like allowing your best buddy’s hyper-excitable girlfriend who never bothers to check with you first handle your PR. [/column][/col-sect]
By Patrick O'Sullivan, March 12th, 2009.
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