"Can I say you're my girlfriend on Facebook?"

CJ, sorry, I am not that interested in FB. Just doesn't seem to appeal to me. Another social circle. Nah. I liked Friendster, that was okay,but the rest can go eat dick shit.

Dick shit? STRIKE THROUGH, you moron.

dick shit sounds unbelievably foul

OMG the synchronicity: someone just invited me on FB. I'll probably give in. I'm a total wimp. ;-)

Yes, Sam, I know. I tried to avoid that fuck or suck thread as well but to no avail. :-)

Lex, I don't like the ideas of strangers or near-strangers knowing too many personal details about me. With a real name, a school, etc. it could be too easy to track me down IRL. The world's a strange place these days.

i understand this but you don't have to put your school in, i haven't (though i have joined my school's group), and if you're rigorous with the privacy settings all that strangers can actually see is your name and your picture (and there are lots of profile pictures which don't give any clues as to what the person actually looks like...)

What have I done. I already regret it.

At this point the school association is the only benefit I see! I mean I can associate with ILX0Rs here and on Flickr so it's not like I need another place to link up with you weirdos. ;)

You mean it feels like Friendster did when MySpace exploded?

not really, friendsters design was kind of sober, myspace more like moc etc

I meant more in terms of use. I remember it took MySpace a while to get going but when it did Friendster was abandoned. Obv. that's not happened to MySpace yet but it could be coming.

Myspace does lose what remains of its appeal pretty fast once you've got a few friends on Fcbk.

I'm mostly just glad to not be bombarded with terrible bands and Cool Videos uploaded by mongs.

you can block all requests from bands etc. and you can also disable the automatic music player.

I have done this before but for someone reason this often doesn't stick.

Whatever, I've finally ditched MySpace. It all became too junior high. lame.

I have about twice as many Facebook friends than Myspace friends in a tiny portion of the time, there must be something about it that appeals to people who aren't anywhere else on the Internet. Perhaps its the privacy thing.

I still get a bit weirded out at having so many FB friends on one page on the internet, when previously I was used to having them separated into carefully delineated groups for different periods of my life.

Why did Myspace beat out Friendster? Was there really that much difference between the two? Was Myspace just a copycat that struck it lucky or is there some bigger reason?

MySpace had more features than Friendster. Blogging, etc.

Ya - I've noticed some odd worlds colliding within my friends on FB. may or may not be a good thing.

xpost

Matt has loads of hot girls on his facebook friends list.

the last few times i've logged into myspazz i've got the "sorry! unexpected error!" message - how can you love a site which fundamentally doesn't work, when a functional alternative which does exactly the same thing is available?

all my friends in one place = convenient. though it is apparently weird to want all your friends to be friends with all your other friends.

MySpace didn't really blow up until bands started using it but in the six months before that I think it did attract people BECAUSE it was messier/noisier than Friendster which was somewhat sober as gareth says and this is also true of facebook - the pendulum swings back.

though it is apparently weird to want all your friends to be friends with all your other friends.

idealistic yo

Lots of bosses are now turning up on Facebook, which has me checking out the tightness of that limited profile thing

i always make sure i have a cool boss who wouldn't take umbrage with anything i write on there.

i said this already but im reposting it--we had a lot of these myspace vs. facebook discussions upthread:

i dont like the idea of facebook getting all democratized and ugly like myspace (and having a ton of "entities" like companies/bands have their own profiles instead of just "groups").

keep it clean and efficient and fascist--and well-designed--and there wont be a problem.

yeah all the new companies and applications are a bit much. Tho I like having my last.fm on FB.

xpost democratized -> idiots like me (uni dropouts) being accepted?

CAn bands do pages now?

I hope not. I don't want to be a part of another MySpace.

i hope not

(they can do groups)

xp

it's not so much the democratization/opening of FB to non-students as the corporate presence, for me anyway. I mean, over time FB would be open to more non-students than students anyway, as more and more original 'book members graduate

i marvel at the stupidity of anyone who puts anything on their facebook/myspazz page which they wouldn't want their boss to see!

(or pity them if their boss takes serious umbrage to pictures of their employees drunk in their spare time)

I just took a look around to see if I could find any other people who I knew from my major. Besides feeling pangs everytime I saw someone listing their class as '10 or '11 (mine is '96) I was amazed at how many listed their dorm and ROOM NUMBER as their residence. I could see this without even being their friend. Madness.

Besides feeling pangs everytime I saw someone listing their class as '10 or '11

hi dere

yeah but ms. misery, most schools allow you to find your classmates' room numbers via their own website. facebook isn't really providing any information that isn't already out there and accessible, and it actual has much better privacy controls than most schoolwide student directories.

I have to say I like Facebook for putting me back in touch with a Russian friend now teaching English in China (strange but true).

xxxxpost by democratization i mostly meant the insane "customizability" of myspace pages which allowed 12 year old idiots the ability to make their pages entirely unreadble

the applications don't bother me because at least facebook requires them to be designed within the parameters of the site's general aesthetic.

i dont know why everyone uses ilike instead of last.fm tho

you can block all requests from bands etc. and you can also disable the automatic music player.

Yeah, it just annoyed me that it was so bound up with the idea of shilling shit bands

<i>myspace and facebook seem to have very different motives - fb is more for connecting with people you actually know (or used to know) while the 'spazz is more for meeting new people</i>

'xactly. i've never even considered myspace, and doubt i ever will. iresisted facebook for some time there, despite getting invites from increasingly unlikely mates ... i finally gave in and have already found myself in contact with a dude i was friends with when i was six or seven, and haven't seen in the best part of 20 years. so it's been worth it for that alone. plus various other people from my past who i like, and am pleased to be able to keep in some form of simple contact with.

stet's right about the limited-profile thing, but hey. it's really simple: if you value your privacy that much, don't, umm, post shit about yourself on the internet. at all.

FB is very much the bourgeois ex-student social network of choice, innit? it's totally exploded among my meeja chumz in glasgow and london in the last fortnight. maybe it'll be a passing fad; i dunno. right now i just like the fact that it's a really good way of keeping up with a shitload of old friends.

(fuck: IT dude just came round to tell me the server was back up and stood staring at a collapsed browser window [1] with "can i say you're my girlfriend on facebook?" plastered across it. christ knows what he thinks i'm up to.)

[1] mac OS 9, since you ask :(

xxxxxpost

Our directory doesn't appear to do so. Also you have to know someone's name to look them up in a directory and you don't see a photo. Kids be dumb.

man... it took a lot of time and effort to make my page entirely unreadable. :(

you have to know someone's name to look them up on facebook, too...

I actually stay in touch with people more regularly through MySpace, which unlike most of creation I really have no problem with (though a lot of that has to do with Greasemonkey making things very handy for me). That said others prefer Facebook more, it's whatever works.

xpost

That's what I'm saying . . .I just did a search for my major and hundreds of people came up. I could see their name, photo, networks or whatever and residence. Most people just had something like "Austin, TX" but some had "Blanton Rm 406". Dumb. I didn't know them or their names. Yes I'm part of the same University network but that's not hard to join.

or their friends' name

2xpost

at my college, a "facebook" was like a telephone directory except with PHOTOS of everybody, and the whole point was to find the deets of someone you'd only seen at a party, or somebody cute in your english lit class that you were too shy to approach

i see no indication that Facebook can be used the same way, in fact it seems like it functions in the opposite way: the only people whose details are accessible are people you already know! bo-ring

FB is very much the bourgeois ex-student social network of choice, innit? it's totally exploded among my meeja chumz in glasgow and london in the last fortnight. maybe it'll be a passing fad; i dunno. right now i just like the fact that it's a really good way of keeping up with a shitload of old friends.

it's the way it acts as a social diary which makes it potentially more than just a fad/way to pass time at work - it's really handy for planning anything from meals out with four or five people, to big parties, to even holidays - all the details on one handy page rather than a mass email which gets lost in the inbox. and this is why people are joining up, too! they don't want to be out of the loop.

fb also put me back in touch with someone from The Past, who i'd had no other way of contacting, which is really brilliant and more than myspazz ever did for me.

I am up to four or five 'I've added you as a friend on Facebook...' mails a week now.

i dunno, i think youre mostly being paranoid ms. misery. all this shit is out there for the dedicated stalker even in facebook's absence.

Tho I like having my last.fm on FB.

yes! but that's about the only app I currently like.

I think MySpace put me in touch with too many people from the past. Once all those weirdos find me on FB I'll probably abandon it too.

FWIW when I was in college we kept in touch by carving messages on rocks and leaving them at the creek where everyone washed their tunics.

xxpost, perhaps I am being a bit paranoid but there is something to say about young people being too trusting of the this technology.