My Love/Hate Relationship with Facebook
First and foremost, I'd like to thank Nicholas Trim for making me sign up to Facebook. :p
I must admit I have a love/hate relationship with this social networking site. I must also admit that I prefer it to Friendster, Hi5, and MySpace. Most probably because Friendster just sucks, none of my connection on Hi5 ever update their profiles, and I only have 2 connections on MySpace simply because I don't know anyone else using it.
I logged into Facebook everyday. I check out the mini feed, writing messages on my friends' walls, superpoking them, just doing random stuff. Sometimes it's a little weird that you can follow a conversation of two of your friends, which do on their walls, just by looking at the daily news feeds.
The thing I love about Facebook is that you can still in the loop of your friends' life simply by checking out their profiles, seeing their updates, looking out the moods applications they have... And news feeds? News feeds is fantastic! You can get this flow of information of your friends without having to open their profile one by one, or in other words, spending a lot of time on the site.
It did create controversy. Facebook has now opened their news feeds, allowing users to access them without visiting Facebook. Read here. But is this equivalent to stalking? I don't think so. But getting your friends' updates 24/7 without even visiting Facebook is a bit too much.
What I don't like about Facebook, however, is the whole idea of "being in the loop without necessarily interacting" itself. You're receiving your friends' updates without actually talking to them. I don't know...that just seems wrong. Would one day we stop talking to our friends, and "interact" with them through a virtual platform instead? Would we send virtual gifts on our friends birthday or buying them virtual beer when celebrating something?
This actually kinda worries me. Only 2 out of my 70 friends on Facebook are actually in Indonesia (one of them recently returned from Iceland, another is leaving for Malaysia). The rest are in Australia, Tunisia, and some other parts of the world. The only affordable way for me to interact with them is, well, through virtual platforms like Facebook.
In the world we live today, we want everything to be instant we just don't want to wait. When email finally took over snail mail (and for AIESECers: when Insight finally took over the green and pink forms), all of the romantic side of waiting for the post man to arrive at our door to deliver the mail are gone. When digital camera arrived and we can see photos instantly, all the excitement of waiting to get the film developed are demolished.
Food for thought: Will Facebook finally replace our daily interaction and reform our social etiquette? Will it replace real conversation? Will it redefines friendship? Will we refer to our friends as "Facebook friends" instead of "friends"?
Siz
I must admit I have a love/hate relationship with this social networking site. I must also admit that I prefer it to Friendster, Hi5, and MySpace. Most probably because Friendster just sucks, none of my connection on Hi5 ever update their profiles, and I only have 2 connections on MySpace simply because I don't know anyone else using it.
I logged into Facebook everyday. I check out the mini feed, writing messages on my friends' walls, superpoking them, just doing random stuff. Sometimes it's a little weird that you can follow a conversation of two of your friends, which do on their walls, just by looking at the daily news feeds.
The thing I love about Facebook is that you can still in the loop of your friends' life simply by checking out their profiles, seeing their updates, looking out the moods applications they have... And news feeds? News feeds is fantastic! You can get this flow of information of your friends without having to open their profile one by one, or in other words, spending a lot of time on the site.
It did create controversy. Facebook has now opened their news feeds, allowing users to access them without visiting Facebook. Read here. But is this equivalent to stalking? I don't think so. But getting your friends' updates 24/7 without even visiting Facebook is a bit too much.
What I don't like about Facebook, however, is the whole idea of "being in the loop without necessarily interacting" itself. You're receiving your friends' updates without actually talking to them. I don't know...that just seems wrong. Would one day we stop talking to our friends, and "interact" with them through a virtual platform instead? Would we send virtual gifts on our friends birthday or buying them virtual beer when celebrating something?
This actually kinda worries me. Only 2 out of my 70 friends on Facebook are actually in Indonesia (one of them recently returned from Iceland, another is leaving for Malaysia). The rest are in Australia, Tunisia, and some other parts of the world. The only affordable way for me to interact with them is, well, through virtual platforms like Facebook.
In the world we live today, we want everything to be instant we just don't want to wait. When email finally took over snail mail (and for AIESECers: when Insight finally took over the green and pink forms), all of the romantic side of waiting for the post man to arrive at our door to deliver the mail are gone. When digital camera arrived and we can see photos instantly, all the excitement of waiting to get the film developed are demolished.
Food for thought: Will Facebook finally replace our daily interaction and reform our social etiquette? Will it replace real conversation? Will it redefines friendship? Will we refer to our friends as "Facebook friends" instead of "friends"?
Siz
Labels: media
posted by siz at
9:45 PM
1 Comments:
Well I simply think that Facebook is just a great tool to keep in touch with our friends, especially those whom we can't really meet and or see very often anymore :p
with smile,
ali
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