It’s like anything, if it works for you then great – it’s just a system which you can use for telling people about your poo or selling your stuff or enlightnening the world or being enlightened in return.

I’m not on there for two reasons.

The first is that everything is so hideously public – we all know someone who’s had some difficult breakup made exponentionally more difficult by the fact that it now has to be broadcast to everyone that they know. For me, Facebook tends to result in too much information being published and collocated.

The second is the frankly staggering scope over and beyond basic social networking that Facebook have (unless you’re very careful) for tracking your activity on the Internet. That’s “on the Internet”, not “on Facebook”. The data harvesting capabilites are eye-opening.

BookMyFace is fine as an interwebs toy until people start thinking it serves a useful function or is in some way important.

It’s the current fad in a long line of fads.

At some point it’ll be superceded by something different but equally pointless.

It’s not pointless.

It has a point for me.

Yeah but they’re people I know in real life

Then you accept them and filter out all their posts 🙂

Google are looking over their shoulder at Facebook – they are creating more and more features and functions every day (Places, Deals, Search, email, Questions). Facebook, I think, will be here to stay. For a time Twitter appeared to be catching it up but they moved on and left it (and especially MySpace) in it’s wake.

if it weren’t for facebook, i’d not be sat in the alps running an adventure travel website (which also has a strong presence on FB)…

works for me (and seemingly half a billion other people).

All facebook does is let you talk to your friends. If they are into self promotion, then that’s what you’ll see. If they are just keeping in touch and sending nice messages every so often, then that’s what you’ll see.

Might as well complain about being in a room with your friends.

I think this about sums it up.

Ultimately, if what’s being posted is puerile drivel, it’s a fault of the posters, not the medium.

Dismissing Twitter by going “who wants to read ‘9:15, went for a poo’?” is easy enough, but does that actually happen, ever? I’ve never seen it. But then, I don’t follow halfwits.

Facebook is annoying with its spammy apps, but I’ve blocked the most prolific apps and dropped the most annoying users, and the signal-to-noise ratio is now surprisingly high.

If you’re a serial follower / friender, one of these people who thinks “he’s following me so I *must* follow them back” or “I can’t un-friend her, she’ll be offended / upset” then, really, you’ve only got yourselves to blame.

It’s not fair to blame the medium for your own shortcomings after you’ve gone out of your way to surround yourself with the intellectually subnormal.

if it weren’t for facebook, i’d not be sat in the alps running an adventure travel website (which also has a strong presence on FB)…

And there you have it! It’s morphing into another marketing tool to increase google ratings and SEO placement.

I’ve not signed up for it either.

Part of the reason is that when i talk shite on the internet i like to do so behind a username rather than my real name, prefer the degree of anonymity it allows. Back when i first started using the net (around about 1997) i contributed to a few websites using my real name…alot of what i said is still around and the top google results if i search my name are book reviews.

The first return is Mein Kampf, the review was originally about how crap the writing was, that nazis are bawbags and how they should follow their leader and shoot themselves. But the text of the review is gone, what that remains is a link “Mein Kampf reviewed by….” so it probably makes me look like a nazi 😐

You don’t have to sign up with your real name… Nor do you have to put a real photo up…

you don’t have to talk shite either….

Love facebook, great for keeping in touch with my family who are dotted around the world. Organising mtb rides, camping trips etc.

Great for really random things like, anyone know what I could use to make a deadmau5 head or anyone know of a barn for rent in Dorset, So & so got dumped, anyone want a beer tonight? – get results every time.

Fully replaced email for 95% of the people I know. I am very strict on my friends list though.

If I didn’t spend all day at work gawping at a computer screen I might be more inclined to take an interest in FB, but the last thing I want to do of an evening is spend even more time in front of any kind of computer…

My wife uses FB almost obsessively, but her family are all back home in Brazil so it keeps her in touch.

if it weren’t for facebook, i’d not be sat in the alps running an adventure travel website (which also has a strong presence on FB)…

And there you have it! It’s morphing into another marketing tool to increase google ratings and SEO placement.

well, not quite. an old classmate saw i was looking for a job, they had a job going. next day i was chatting to the owner, and was offered a job.

without FB (and my inane rambling about being jobless) my classmate wouldn’t have known i was looking for a job, and i’d not have gotten approached.

It’s a really good tool for various reasons. The only downside I get is that some of your less ‘englightened’ friends will see fit to tell the world how drunk they were/ how their not racist but../commentate on current affairs (Cheryl Cole’s love life/Tories doing some tory stuff).
Other than that it’s great. I’m not one of those that’s scared of people seeing my face or what I say (which might a concern for some but you can set privacy accordingly).

My wife uses FB almost obsessively, but her family are all back home in Brazil so it keeps her in touch.

“I’ve got Brazilian friends on Facebook.”

“Wow, that’s amazing, I’ve only got a couple of hundred.”

(Coat please…)

The only downside I get is that….

Yeah, I’ve got two girl cousins who I actually like and all, but they are 15 and 19 ish so it’s wall-to-wall omg wtf lol xfactor and so on.

I know some people (who I actually like) that pretty much treat Facebook as the Internet. They don’t bother checking email anymore so sending a message on Facebook is often a good way of getting in touch.

There’s quite a lot that could be better about it, but for those not so technically inclined it’s a easy way to share photos, vids, links etc.