Social networking

zing

Facebook asks users to reconnect with the dead | Media | guardian.co.uk

Since more and more people spend their time in front of computers, the digital trace we find when they leave us is getting bigger. What's to be done with these traces? Should we take them down? Or freeze them like they were left behind? Facebook decided differently. It allows friends and family to "memorialise" a profile page of those who have died with an obituary or news article.

"When someone leaves us, they don't leave our memories or our social network. To reflect that reality, we created the idea of 'memorialised' profiles as a place where people can save and share their memories of those who've passed," explained Max Kelly, Facebook head of security, on the company's blog.

But what does it mean, that an account gets "memorialised"? The contact information and status updates are removed, and the profile is set private. No one can log into it any more. Only Facebook friends can locate the profile via search and leave posts on the wall for remembrance.


Classic case of someone taking the internet too seriously. How do you people feel about social networking? I find it mostly pointless but it's caught on and has become a significant part of the internet. I have accounts on two social networks, but don't actually use them -- but what I've noticed is, people's time in the real world seems to be actually influenced by facebook, myspace, etc. When people go out, it's like they spend more time taking photos to upload on facebook than doing what they went out to do.

x42bn6

I think it's a good thing as long as it doesn't go the way of MySpace. People have found various useful ways of social networking such as the old Facebook and LinkedIn.

Eyepopper

Facebook is rapidly going down the myspace road.....

Love it or hate it I'm not sure how you can call it 'pointless'.

ThatOldRedMagic

OK, so what went wrong with Myspace? and why is Facebook going the same way?

zing

I can see the point of it if you use it to keep in touch with people you've lost touch with in real life, but even for that purpose, you can simply use messengers and e-mail. The reason I say it's pointless is I'm 20 and people of my age group basically add everyone they've smiled at on the street just as a point scoring exercise when it comes to number of friends. I have only 10 people on my list, but one guy on it has 1001 friends added.

x42bn6

MySpace stopped being cool after everyone started ober - I mean over - overpersonalising their profiles. It basically turned into a bunch of teenagers adding anyone and everyone including paedophiles and creepy people, putting stupid music embeds on their profiles (sometimes more than one), stupid quizzes and random messages - "organised chaos", if you like. It eventually turned from "cool" to chaotic and the older crowd left, leaving the teenagers to wade in its mess (and they still do). Security threats and web exploits don't help things at all, of course.

Facebook is going the same way with its applications, attempts to charge people for everything and a general "I didn't hear that" attitude.

The biggest problem with social networks is that people will immediately move to the next big thing and you can't do anything about it. MySpace didn't become crap suddenly but Facebook suddenly became "cool" so everyone jumped ship. When the next fad comes around (and it's not going to be Twitter), Facebook will fall by the wayside, just as Friendster and Bebo have done.

However, I think Facebook will continue to last a long time even if it is overtaken by the next fad - a lot better than Bebo and Friendster did.

zing

I've never used myspace but that's exactly how I'd describe facebook. Emphasis on 'stupid quizzes'.

Eyepopper

Ah but if a good tool isn't utilised correctly does that make it a bad tool?

Eyepopper

Thats pretty much bang on,

VidaRed

its good for stalking and nothing else.

x42bn6

Firefox web browser | Faster, more secure, & customizable + https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/748 + Facebook Purity for Greasemonkey

Applications are interesting but I bet Facebook wishes they'd gone the way of the iPhone's applications (plenty of awesome applications, plenty of rubbish ones but the important thing is that there are plenty of awesome applications) rather than another set of generic quizzes. Most applications disappoint as they do not have any sort of "interaction" between your Facebook friends. I think Applications were a good idea but people are too happy with doing stupid quizzes.

There are applications which somewhat do this well (i.e. Mafia Wars) - gaming is an "interaction" - but the lack of any sort of "emotive interaction" which furthers Facebook interactions is sorely lacking.

All this leads to a general "nuisance factor" when it comes to Applications.

So yes, they're usually stupid things but Facebook doubtless was hoping for an impact similar to the iPhone's applications - and didn't get it.

It is rather similar to Geocities, Angelfire and teenager MySpace layouts with no HTML sense - yeah, a bunch of amateurs will do the most popular and stupid things, but in a couple of years adults will eventually start doing things properly.

adexkola

Social networking is very good for looking for jobs, I have heard.

x42bn6

LinkedIn?

adexkola

Yeah, that one in particular.

Cali Red

So is this site any good for career networking? I don't really want to register for some crap site and then get spammed with crap. I really only know of a couple people that even use it.

Cold_Boy

Its a very good site.

Its purely business and I have found it extremely useful.

mjs020294

LinkedIn is pretty good for networking and finding work contacts. I know a couple of people that got jobs as a direct result of their LinkedIn profiles.

Cali Red

Thanks. Probably give it a look.