[sneak]

I tried it for over five years. Many people use facebook messaging as their primary form of text communication these days.

Texting is expensive and regional, and nobody uses email, wants to remember email addresses or IM handles, or deal with spam. WhatsApp totally fucked themselves by not running on tablets.

For lots of people, the most effective way to reach them quickly is facebook messaging. That's fact, not opinion, and how intrusive or shitty facebook is totally irrelevant to that point.

Not having a facebook account means that you are sabotaging your own communications effectiveness.

[grey-area]

Nobody uses email

This is an absurd statement - over 1 billion people use email, far more than actively use FB messages.

Many people use facebook messaging as their primary form of text communication these days.

Many people don't. I've never had an account and never had a problem in my professional or social life as a result. It's just never come up. If your friends all use Facebook, tell them it's a bad idea (for many, many reasons, including the one pointed out here) and to contact you with email/phone/text/twitter whatever other method they prefer. If they can't be bothered, they are not your friends.

[eksith]

I'll make a slight addendum: Most people have an email address if they frolic online, however I rarely meet people who prefer to conduct communications over it. Of course, they need one for FB or Twitter either way, but...

Either they go to FB or DM over Twitter or some other "social thing", but they view email as far more cumbersome. This is especially true with family these days as the first question I get is, "are you on Facebook". It's an inescapable part of society nowadays in that they view the site as something-other-than-internet and more user-friendly, more quick and more "connected", if that's the operative word, than email.

Sending/receiving text is over FB chat is still viewed as preferable to the not so straightforward method of email. Even the venerable IRC is viewed as less acceptable; "wait, don't I need a client or something for that? Won't I get viruses and stuff?" Never mind the fact that they still need a mobile client to chat over FB or Twitter, but they view it as "it came with the phone".

Bottom line: FB and Twitter have taken over communication where email once ruled for the vast majority of people I interact with. They can't be bothered with email, but they still are my friends and family.

[halviti]

I've never used Twitter or Facebook, and I have zero problem communicating with friends and family, nor have I noticed any difference in my communication with anyone regardless of wherever they spend their free time on the internet.

If someone can't be bothered to send you an e-mail or call, you might want to reconsider how close those people are to you.

[sneak]

> If someone can't be bothered to send you an e-mail or call, you might want to reconsider how close those people are to you.

Indeed, it would be very neat if the world worked that way. Unfortunately, I have, and they are, and they don't use email.

I was on facebook for ~2 years, was off for five, and have been back on for about a month. The frequency and quality of communication with almost everyone I care about and don't see often (I moved continents from where I grew up) has increased dramatically.

[tripzilch]

> I was on facebook for ~2 years, was off for five, and have been back on for about a month. The frequency and quality of communication with almost everyone I care about and don't see often (I moved continents from where I grew up) has increased dramatically.

I'm in a similar boat, almost.

A few years ago I finally succumbed to getting on FB. But after a few months I got spooked again, because of this seemingly never-ending barrage of FB-related privacy scandals at the time (and due to my interests I got a lot of such news). So I deleted the whole thing--wait no I merely shut down the account, they'd never let me delete the whole thing hahahaha :)

But currently I'm really on the fence of going back again. Because so many people around me use it as their primary mode of communication. Privacy-wise not much has changed, and "thanks" to the NSA scandals, I now know it's a lost cause whether I'm on FB or not. Use has gone way up. My meditation group plans all their things on FB and I have to use email or text to get in the loop :) They don't mind, fortunately, but it is cumbersome.

I dunno why I'm telling you this, but your last line, tell me more :) I need some convincing I guess, before I bite the bullet and go there. How many accounts should I need, you think? :)

[eksith]

  >If someone can't be bothered to send you an e-mail or call, you might want 
  to reconsider how close those people are to you.

My relationship with my family is completely orthogonal to their choice of platform.

[rahoulb]

My daughter has an email address.

If I send anything to it I need to tell her (in person, text, twitter, facebook messenger, skype - pretty much anything but email) to check it.

She has switched off notifications on her phone because all she gets are marketing messages, spam and stuff from old people (ie me and her mum).

[gngeal]

Either they go to FB or DM over Twitter or some other "social thing", but they view email as far more cumbersome.

E-mail clients need to be reinvented. There's no real reason for e-mail operation to be cumbersome. I mean, we have such a wonderful, decentralized, asynchronous messaging protocol based on pure text; why do most (if not virtually all) client applications suck so badly?

[eksith]

No argument here. It's really a shame and, if you think about it, email is the least evolved method of electronic communication for the masses in every day use (with the exception of possibly IRC).

BBM would have been the ideal email replacement (it's also still extremely popular in Asia), but too bad it's proprietary and centralized.

[alextingle]

Two reasons people prefer FB messaging to e-mail:

- Spam is basically non-existent in FB messaging.

- Mobile e-mail clients are hard to set up and use (for average folk).

[sneak]

> If they can't be bothered, they are not your friends.

This is demonstrably false, and suggests that you don't like people very much.

[grey-area]

This is demonstrably false

And yet you have neglected to demonstrate it. No misanthropy here thanks, you should adjust your assumptions. Perhaps we just disagree on the meaning of the word friend - I'd take it to mean someone who you know outside of FB and via other means of communication, someone who is willing to put in the minimal effort of emailing/texting/calling to contact you individually? Someone who doesn't I would consider an acquaintance at best.

If you make a decision to remain on FB and find it valuable, that's totally fine, but don't try to extend your judgement of its utility and experience of communication to everyone.

[schrodinger]

It's not binary. That someone might still be a good friend, and be willing to communicate by different means for one on one conversations. But it's easy to forget when you're setting up an event and inviting a large group, that one of your friends won't see it and you'll have to contact them individually.

[gngeal]

"Texting is expensive and regional, and nobody uses email, wants to remember email addresses or IM handles, or deal with spam. WhatsApp totally fucked themselves by not running on tablets. For lots of people, the most effective way to reach them quickly is facebook messaging. That's fact, not opinion, and how intrusive or shitty facebook is totally irrelevant to that point. Not having a facebook account means that you are sabotaging your own communications effectiveness."

The people who'd do this are exactly those people I don't feel any need to communicate with. Is it work-related? E-mail and sometimes phone are given. Is it not work-related, but urgent? I still have a phone. Is that costly? Perhaps, but if you have six urgent things to communicate every day, perhaps you have a much worse problem than having to pay a lot of money. Is it anything else? Well, what could it be? I have no idea.

Frankly, this whole "you have to live a hectic social life, everyone's doing it!" movement puzzles me.

[sneak]

> The people who'd do this are exactly those people I don't feel any need to communicate with.

Okay, so you're a snob. Doesn't change the fact that you're shooting yourself in the foot.

There's nothing about wanting to be able to effectively communicate with people who use facebook messaging as their primary form of textual comms that dictates or necessitates a hectic social life.

[gngeal]

Okay, so you're a snob.

No, I'm just an introvert. I have a few people to who I feel deeply connected to, and our exchanges are rare yet substantial. But these don't require IM or anything like that. I don't know anything about "shooting myself in the foot". I just don't have the impulses that some other people do (frankly, for me as a schizoid, people are very puzzling entities).

Also, "effectively communicate" is such wonderfully non-specific expression that I don't know what that even means.

[duaneb]

> Not having a facebook account means that you are sabotaging your own communications effectiveness

Maybe if your social group consists of teenage girls, but who uses Facebook for serious communication these days? What I see from my newsfeed is a mixture of a photo repository, a phone book, and a "I'm passing through town are you available" bit. I don't recall having ever been hindered seriously by having a deactivated account.

EDIT: I should also note that this wasn't true 4-6 years ago, but I was also still in school.

[anoncow]

Whatsapp runs on tablets without a SIM card. After sms verification fails, whatsapp calls your number and provides a verification code. There is sometimes an issue with play store not allowing you to install whatsapp, but that is easily fixed by downloading the apk fron the official website.

[sneak]

The fact that it isn't in the Play store is the problem, not the fact that it's not on my individual tablet.

Sideloading never "easily fix[es]" anything that needs to happen on hundreds of millions of mobile devices owned largely by nontechnical users.

Network effect, remember?

[anoncow]

That is true. I think whatsapp is trying to avoid confusing SIM-less users , but in the bargain is missing out on potential users, who might want to use whatsapp on their tablet rather than their cellphone.