Along with the rest of the world and his dog, I am on Facebook. I first joined Facebook because a family member asked me to. At first it seemed okay. Another way to keep in touch with family and friends. Some of my family began asking me to join them in using certain applications on there. The first time I accepted I was puzzled as to why the application needed not only all of my details in order to work, but also requested that I include a certain amount of my family/friends details as well. Why? Why does an application, whether it be a game or anything else on Facebook NEED all of your details and those of your friends before it will work?
If I download a game to my computer to play, it doesn’t need to know my life history before it allows me to download and play it? And more importantly, what do these applications do with all of the supplied data that they insist that they need?
You could of course argue that they need all that data in order to spread themselves around Facebook (sounds like a virus doesn’t it?) thereby ending up being used by more people. I would argue that if your application or game is good enough, then your users would tell their family and friends about it anyway. What’s wrong with simply relying on ‘word of mouth’ to increase your usage?
Then following the build up on Facebook of these applications such as games and the like, we are all now inundated with the downright annoying ‘nags’ about them in our feeds. Despite posting to my feed countless times that I am NOT interested in joining ‘Farmhouse Families’ or ‘Mafia shoot up’ or anything else for that matter, I still get pestered to join this or that. So I block that particular application. Problem solved? NO! Because no sooner do you block one application than along comes another one in its wake! Grrr! There must be one new application born every few minutes on Facebook, or that’s how it seems to me! I can’t keep up with the blocking and hiding!
There are other niggles I have with Facebook. How come you can’t use your nickname for example or the fact that it doesn’t use RSS feeds so that I can check any updates in my desktop email program?
I would close my account on there in a jiffy but most of my family also use Facebook regularly and I also have some long term friends from Live Journal on there as well. Hmm. Think I might have to do some serious culling of contacts on there especially those who are always nagging me to join this or join that.
TG
I think I'm the only person on the planet that doesn't belong to Facebook or Twitter.
ReplyDeleteAs you, I've got friends pleading me to join Facebook, but the more I look into it the more I feel an unease gut feeling, they want too much information in my opinion.
I think they need to do their homework and fix the many security problems that haunt them.
Services like Facebook and Google, especially Google, have way too much information on the population in general it's so damn scary when looking at the big picture.
I agree Jerry and I succumbed and joined Facebook but to be honest I am there in sufferance. Twitter is a different kettle of fish. It doesn't pry, it doesn't share your data or details with other apps, okay at first glance I didn't get it, but then, once I twigged how you could use it as a marketing ploy for your blogs etc, or to announce sites you wanted to 'blast around' and share, I love it. Its not a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace, its an 'announcer' medium and marketing tool.
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