Facebook mimics Google's 'poor man's email' Facebook has launched a shameless attempt to make itself more like Twitter, the web-darling-of-the-moment among Silicon Valley's digital elite (Eric Schmidt excepted). Yesterday, Facebook tweaked its social networking extravaganza with the addition of so-called public profiles, a way for the world's "most popular influencers" …
"...They're all going to become intermixed in various ways. People will use email. They will want to use Twitter, Facebook."
No. I will not. I will not, ever, want to use Twitter and / or FaceBook, or anything of that ilk.
Some people do not have a pathological need to stay informed 24 hours a day to every burp and fart of a thousand other people, nor do we have a similar need to inform all about our every bowel movement. Some of us have, believe it or not, and I know this might be hard to comprehend, even, on occasion, turned our mobile phones off. Shocking, I know. Just Luddites, I guess.
Granted, maybe we never really expected that the 21st Century would bring us silver suits, hover boots and slave robots (though I still live in naive hope), but it was never unreasonable to believe in the democratic power of the Internet, in the greatest information revolution since (forgive the cliché) the Gutenberg Press.
In Facebook, like it or not, we have a phenomenon: a single application that attracts millions of, ahem, contributors, providing them with a means of managing contacts and keeping them knee-deep in pokes, prods, hugs and mindless drivel as well as providing the means to compare subjective views on such diverse subjects as "what makes a good kisser" and "what do you prefer, chocolate or holidays in the sun?".
So how can it be, that with millions and millions of people now able to communicate on a level that obviates the need for a hierarchical broadcasting network, that allows people to talk cheaply and share views, to research and investigate what's going on with our ailing planet and stress-filled society... Britney fucking Spears and the god-awful, bile-inducing Sarah Palin are down as "most popular influencers".
Is it me, or is this really fucking depressing?
Like Mike Crawshaw said above, "some people do not have a pathological need to stay informed 24 hours a day to every burp and fart of a thousand other people" and like him, I sometimes have my mobile phone switched off. I also never answer it while walking along the street, in a restaurant or on a bus and can't understand people who do. I have a Facebook profile and it's handy for keeping in regular touch with real friends especially those who live overseas, but I only add real friends and not countless strangers. I tried Twitter and, at the end of the day, came to the conclusion that it is a total waste of time. I cannot see the need to inform all my "followers" what I am doing every five minutes and I don't have the time to update it on a meaningful basis so I have stopped using it, as have most of my friends. However, I have noticed that IT teachers in schools seem to "Tweet" on a regular basis as well as update Facebook and other profiles which makes me wonder if they ever do any teaching...
As with pretty much everything else, it's a tool. If you find it useful / entertaining / functional then use it. If not, don't.
I find Twitter's detractors as irritating as its evangelists; it's not "the future of communication" but neither does it deserve the enraged hand-wringing it seems to get in these threads. As with all communication tools stretching back to the invention of writing, the balance of profundity and banality depends on the user, not the tool itself. I have found as much useful information on Twitter as I have "going to make a cup of tea" dross. I'm highly amused by the thought of us all sitting around in animal skins, bemoaning the latest cave painting: "some people do not have a pathological need to stay informed 24 hours a day about how you've speared yet another bloody buffalo."
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