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by scott_s 5446 days ago
The internet-cynical, tech-savvy thing to say is how much of a waste of time Facebook is, but I think it changes communication in the same way that every house having a telephone did. Yes, email and IM existed before Facebook, but Facebook is a different model of communication.
1 comments
discreteevent 5446 days ago
Facebook Vs (email + IM) = Telephone Vs (post + telegraph). Really? You think that these two jumps in technology are equivalent in the difference they have made to peoples lives? I don't use facebook but I would not be able to work without telephone and the internet.
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temphn 5446 days ago
Yes, probably so. Facebook means that you can keep up with people (who's getting married, who moved, who had children) without emailing them.

If you have 500 friends, each with a feed with 50 posts, you are talking about 25000 possible emails. Those emails would never be sent, because they are usually individually way below the importance threshold for an email.

So, by this calculation at least, it's at least a 1-2 order of magnitude reduction in the work required to maintain contact with old friends. That's valuable.

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ericd 5445 days ago
That's assuming that knowing the minutiae of the lives of people who you don't talk to frequently is important. I'd say that that's actually a huge waste of time, and distracts from actual socializing by making you feel like you're keeping up with people without actually doing so.
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jamesteow 5445 days ago
Hear hear.

When G+ came out I dropped my Facebook account.

Due to the low activity on G+, I resorted to... doing stuff with other people in real life, such as volunteering and going to meetups.com meetups. And my real friends not near me kept in touch via e-mail and IM.

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scott_s 5446 days ago
I many people that just didn't use email or IM much, but have integrated Facebook into their lives. It's their main way of maintaining communication with many people.
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clobber 5445 days ago
Facebook is a glorified vBulletin and IM client. It's a time waster that most people use to e-stalk or share meaningless information. I think the sooner we drop the mantra that it's "engrained in our lives," the sooner we move on to real innovation. Here's a typical day on Facebook: http://i.imgur.com/ub51D.jpg
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