OK, so to be fair I have unearthed an old uni friend who I've lost touch with, which is the main reason I signed up

BUT

I look at it and still don't quite get it. I learnt recently that a friend thinks he might be addicted to cheese cake. Eh??!!

I thought it was a lazy way of people broadcasting what they're up to but no one really posts anything of worth. Does it make more sense if you're "out and about" with your fancy iPhone?

Is it me?

{EDIT – yes I'm sure this topic has been covered before}

you just have boring 'friends' 🙁

Had it occurred to you that you might not be old enough ? I'm 57 and use it all the time 🙂

I dont get people's obsession with having to "get" something.

How old is old? I am 30 and don't even have a facebook account. The fact that others enjoy it is just fine and dandy whether i understand it or not.

No, just remember there was a reason you did not keep in contact with the majority of folk you have met in your life.

Almost everyone I know is far too self-aware to broadcast anything genuinely interesting, so it's mostly a mixture of wierd observations about not a lot, or self-promotion for people with careers in telly and PR.

"Mostly harmless" covers it well I think. 🙂

Its a bit of a mixed bag. Great for sharing pictures in a casual way. Good for planning group events. Generally keeping up with people without much effort. There is a lot of pointless posts but as above 'mostly harmless' covers it. It works well if your 'friends' are actual friends

Some of my "friends", who are married seem use it to communicate to each other, whilst they are clearly in the same house. Commenting on eachothers status and the like, but also having arguments with each other (or one bitching about the other).

No, just remember there was a reason you did not keep in contact with the majority of folk you have met in your life.

The loss of contact with (good) Uni mates was originally down to moving house and post not being forwarded on some years back.

I'm not "obsessed" with getting Facebook at all. I didn't get it before I signed up and I still don't get it now. I think BigDummy hits the nail on the head. My boy is in hospital at the moment and I thought facebook would be a good tool to let friends know how he is getting on, but I am too self-conscious to do that since it is not trivial enough. Maybe I'll go back to phone and email.

BD sums it up well for me. Also, I have relatives who live in other parts of the globe so it's handy to keep up to date with baby photos etc.

I "get" facebook, but I don;t "get" twitter

My great aunt uses it, she's 85. My girlfriends grandad uses it, he's 94.

It depends in who you have as friends. I have good friends and family listed and occasionally purge people who just post crap about cheese cake.

Great way to communicate with people who you wouldn't necessarily phone up regularly.

but I don't "get" twitter

me either, it seems to be unnecessarily restricted 🙁

I'm not at all comfortable with the "self promotion" aspect – and don't have an account.

My Brother in Law seems to use it to show of his materialistic lifestyle, with photos of any new acquisitions / projects etc… photos of a fancy new dining room table anyone??

From comments made by friends in the Police, both they and the crims use it as an excellent piece of open source intelligence

Yeah, if facebook bothers you, stay away from twitter. For the most part you're actually just reading people's random thoughts. Clearly the next step is an iphone mind reading tool that does away with the typing but sod that! I've got enough random thoughts of my own thanks without having to read anyone elses's.

Mixed bag for me, lots of people from school that I don't really care about (plus some that I do), mostly genuine friends, people off here I've ridden with and like and a few people off here that I don't really know but always put up good pictures of weekend rides that I find interesting.

Nothing really much to get, just another distraction much like Flickr and STW.

I "get" Twitter if you're following celebs. I use it sometimes to see how Peaty is preparing for a race. Sadly none of my friends are celebs 😆

My Brother in Law seems to use it to show of his materialistic lifestyle, with photos of any new acquisitions / projects etc… photos of a fancy new dining room table anyone??

UNFRIEND!

Facebook = keeping up with family and friends
Twitter = random waffle

Twitter reminds me of this forum from 8 or 9 years ago.

If you don't get them, you're friends with the wrong people (or the right people don't want to be friends with you).

i generally work in the principle that i've kept in touch with the people in my life that matter.

i get the feeling that facebook is a tool that makes people feel good about themselves having loads of 'friends' (although this seems to include people they met once at a conference etc). Hence its popularity I guess.

It allows me to keep up with what's going on with family and friends, for next to no effort. And I also learn more about them than if I composed an email periodically. I'd never email my cousins for instance, but FB has brought us all closer together in that you just post whatever's going on and you can ignore it if you choose, or respond.

I have a couple of young cousins who are mostly 'OMG WTF LOL' types, and a few other relatives who are utterly uninteresting; but conversely I have some other relatives who post thoughtful interesting stuff about themselves or their families and I have got to know them quite well this way. My wife's cousin for instance who I've seen twice (and don't remember the one time) is really interesting.

It's a bit like this forum tbh. People ask questions, discuss stuff, joke and josh, and arrange meets. Even if we can't go to most of them we still know what they all got up to.

In any case, it's a tool. People can be self absorbed tw*ts easily enough on any medium. FB just makes it easier. It doesn't encourage or prescribe any kind of behaviour.. it's like complaing about email or the web.

Pains me to say it but: I like Facebook.

Most of my mates have young sprogs and have moved to different cities/countries. So for me it's a great way to keep up with them a bit without phoning each of them every day for gossip.

Put it this way: if one of my mates called me up and said "Just thought I'd call to let you know that little Samantha just said her first word" then I'd probably think he'd gone a bit soft.

But if he posted the same trivis on Facebook I'd think that pretty normal and go "Aaaawh" appropriately.

Plus it's an easy way to share photos (even if the low quality and presentation really annoys me).

i get the feeling that facebook is a tool that makes people feel good about themselves having loads of 'friends'

on the contrary, I don't think it's about numbers at all, but the quality of the connections…

There's a whole new social networking site idea right there Simon. You link to people the same way you do on facebook and the like but you get to rate the quality of those connectionbs so you get presented with a hierarchical front page in which your best people are right at the top and the LOL types are at the bottom. That way people will improve the quality of their inputs.

you could call it twoface book!

You link to people the same way you do on facebook and the like but you get to rate the quality

I see what you mean, but I'm uneasy about people being made explicitly aware of how I rate them, and the possible pressure (not applying to me, obviously) to rate people higher than is true. I prefer to do that in my head 🙂 I often have people complain about other Facebook friends's posts, but they don't like to unfriend them as they think it's rude… thankfully FB doesn't inform you if you've been dropped 🙂

Well I'm 35 and neither FB or Twitter figure on my radar. I barely even know what they do. Something about social networking? I'm antisocial at the best of times and networking is something I abhor.

I'm a proper sociopath Jon. The beauty of facebook and the like is that it gives you the opportunity to laugh at how pathetic everyone else is and how you'd like to KILL THEM ALL.[1]

[1] with a couple of exceptions.[2]
[2] Like my dog.

that's funny because I'm very antisocial too, so Facebook and mountain bike riding are both ideal. On a bike, if the conversation flags you just swerve to avoid an obstacle and it's over without giving offence 🙂 Facebook also allows you to pick and choose, and the chat is so flaky no one is surprised if you don't answer :o)

Load of old cobblers as is all the other lets tell the world what boring shit iv'e done today
Not much interested in what others have been doing either and certainly don't want to see their ugly mugs

Hard to believe we could have existed before all this crap came along

And because you have a mobile, i don't want to listen to your conversation and ffs keep still when using it.Because its called a mobile, doesn't mean you have to walk round like a drunken spider bumping into me when using it (or break the law and nearly run me over whilst sending a text saying you on your way home or what's for tea)

60mg of steroids a day always fire me up, not as much as all this can't live without my mobile nonsense though
Going to be tough luck when BT engineers strike and you possibly lose the intertwat.
Will life continue,of course it will

networking is something I abhor

It's not networking in the business sense. It's just called that because you link to your friends.

I don't get why celebs want to keep their followers updated with so many snippets of info about their lives – or maybe it helps keep fans which they need to do well?

Anyway, FB is OK and you can make of it what you want; I'm a 'fan' of a few including the Sky team so like to see what they post. Interesting to hear that a friend is off somewhere or had a baby or excited by a cheesecake…. There's also a lot of games but I have no interest in those ones that go on and on – hide the posts about those. Some of the arcade type games are OK though – quite like the Tower Defence ones when working from home….

i generally work in the principle that i've kept in touch with the people in my life that matter.

Me too. Using Facebook.

It's a tool, like email, the telephone and letters. It happens to work better than any of those tools, for me.

I don't get why celebs want to keep their followers updated with so many snippets of info about their lives – or maybe it helps keep fans which they need to do well?

Only time I ever use twitter is during sporting events. Was dead interesting following Murray at Wimbledon or Wiggo on the TdF.

Its a bit of a mixed bag. Great for sharing pictures in a casual way. Good for planning group events. Generally keeping up with people without much effort. There is a lot of pointless posts but as above 'mostly harmless' covers it. It works well if your 'friends' are actual friends

+1

I'm
antisocial at the best of times and networking
is something I abhor.

Hard to believe we could have existed before
all this crap came along

I'm not sure why talking to your friends is worthy of such scorn.

Or is it only the medium used that is the issue?

If communication via Facebook is out then is emailing them okay?

If email is out, then is the phone also too impersonal?

Or should I only communicate with them face-to-face in person without "all this crap"?

(I'm pretty sure someone made these same objections when the telegram was invented)

I like Facebook purely for the ease of contacting people all over the world that you have previously lost contact with or don't know well enough to have their phone numbers or e-mail.

I can live without the tedious apps and games and pointless drivel posted in status updates, but it's great for arranging and promoting events and passing information to like-minded individuals with the same interests.

and passing information to like-minded individuals

I've never found one :o) [thank goodness]