[mechanical_fish]

you can't quit your friends

My friend, for your sake I hope you never have to fully understand what I am about to say...

But there are times when you not only will quit your friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife, but you will have to.

You can quit your family too.

When I was twenty I had no comprehension of this, but having almost reached forty I can reel off examples. Most of which are not mine, fortunately, but some of which are so painful that they hurt even by proxy. Mental illness. Divorce. Physical abuse. Emotional abuse.

Facebook, by the way, with its ridiculously naive conception of identity and privacy, is actually a lousy platform for conducting real-world relationships. It's like trying to compose a story out of the messages written on greeting cards.

[vegashacker]

I really wanted to downvote you cause I thought your response was an intentional misunderstanding of the comment you were replying to, but then you go and write this gem:

[Conducting relationships on Facebook is] like trying to compose a story out of the messages written on greeting cards.

Insightful. Hilarious. Wow.

[mechanical_fish]

I thought your response was an intentional misunderstanding

It might have been. Deliberate, experimental misinterpretation is an important essay-writing technique.

Part of the goal of essays is to arrive at new thoughts. To get to someplace new you have to try some wrong turns.

If you can't think of anything novel, write down the obvious. Then try deliberately misinterpreting what you just wrote. It's usually painfully easy to do.

[mbesto]

"real-world relationships" - Quite the opposite actually. In my opinion, today real world relationships are now global. Maybe I'm just a small (and growing) portion of people who has friends and family all over the world, in different time-zones and cultures, but I find Facebook the perfect "base" platform for conducting such relationships.

"Conducting relationships" is a multi-faceted concept in my opinion. It involves several layers of communication and Facebook is just one of those, not THE only one.

Let me give you a concrete example of how Facebook has helped me conduct a relationship that I find rather meaningful in my life. I have an American friend living in Switzerland of who I've met some good friends of his. One is a British guy who just recently moved to Dubai from Switzerland for a short term project. Had it not been for Facebook I probably wouldn't have known he moved there and thus provoked me to book a trip to see him several weeks ago. (another form communication - physical presence) He's only there for a few more months and I'm afraid any other form of communication would have been too slow.

Sorry to de-rail your original point but I always find the "Facebook haters" to be rather interesting. And to you're original point about quitting friends. I don't think he/she meant literally that you can't quit all of your friends. The point is that you will always have a social network of people in your life, whether you continually add or delete people. If you don't (and I would feel exceptionally bad for you) then you represent an extremely small percentage of the world's population.

[mechanical_fish]

you will always have a social network of people in your life

Sure, but that doesn't mean that Facebook will stay in business, let alone stay fashionable or popular. People have a choice between eating and death, but that doesn't mean that McDonalds will stay in business until humanity is extinct. Though they obviously have quite a headstart in fast food and are doing very well.

The other interesting word in this excerpt is "a". People have "a" social network in Facebook, but they have way, way more than "a" social network in real life. We each have hundreds of overlapping social networks, some with precisely defined membership, temporal, and physical boundaries (I'm not polygamous, so my marriage social network is strictly limited to two) and some with extremely fuzzy boundaries (HN).

Facebook has gotten ahead because, though it offers one particular style of social network, it makes it so very, very easy to use that network -- and it has such a great viral loop and name recognition --- that for the moment it is tempting to pretend that all of your hundreds of real-world social nets can be collapsed into one. But the web is a big place, the future is a long time, and UX innovation can and will be copied.

[mbesto]

> Sure, but that doesn't mean that Facebook will stay in business, let alone stay fashionable or popular.

Absolutely agreed. I was raising questions about the point for the absolute existence of a social network. I think what the originator of this discussion was saying is that any social network is a necessity to living (much like food and shelter). In other words there will always be a market for such a platform (as opposed to say something like selling iPods)

Also I'm interested in understanding why you think Facebook's concept of identity and privacy is naive? My identity is composed of the things I like and my privacy consists of the things that I like that I wish to share with people. Facebook gives me every opportunity to do exactly both in an extremely controlled manner.

[extension]

Yes, this is how it will eventually happen for Facebook if they don't reinvent themselves (and they never do).

It doesn't even have to be that dramatic. People change and drift apart. The older you get, the more extreme the examples become. I often forget the names of people I once considered friends for life.

The more they pile up, the more Facebook changes from keeping in touch to unwilling voyeurism. The FB killer will be something that deftly handles change.