Friday, March 21, 2008

What is Facebook anyway?


The other day I received an email from my brother-in-law inviting me to join his network of friends on Facebook. So I followed the link, which directed me to set up an account and confirm we were "friends." Suddenly I had all kinds of people inviting me to their Facebook pages. Great! An instant network....I guess.

Here's what I know about Facebook: I've heard of it. I've heard of Mark Zuckerberg, the 23 yr. old founder whose net worth is something like $23 billion because of it, but I had never actually logged on to the website.


After exploring the minimalistic site and looking at my "friends" profiles, I don't really get the point. What makes it so great? Other than providing the world with what I consider highly confidential identifying information about oneself and having little one-liner conversations with your friends posted, what am I supposed to do on Facebook? I'm serious. Give me advice, because now I'm a member and I'm not sure why.

8 comments:

Rachel said...

I pretty much feel the same, thanks Jon. Jerk. I have no idea and in my mind its just another MySpace page, yuck. So now that I too am a member I probably will never use it.

Lisa said...

I totally and completely agree! I dislike facebook to the extreme! I can't figure out how to navigate, and when I think I know what I'm doing something else does or does not happen! So I'm with you, boo facebook! yucky.

Heather said...

I too have just joined cause a friend emailed me. I have purposefully avoiding Facebook and mySpace, but thought I'd check the out. So we'll see. I am actually working on a literature review right now of empirical research about Facebook and other social networking/open source websites. I'll let you know if it provides any more insight into it.

TomKat said...

I wondered why you joined...look at the peer pressure...ya'll hate it so much, yet are all members, makes me laugh :)

Gold-E said...

Actually, it's curiosity that killed the cat. Get a link from a pal that says "check me out" and suddenly you've got a username and password.

Elizabeth R said...

I too am on it and never go to it. I can't figure out how to navigate the damn thing. I will admit, however, to being a limited Myspace junkie.

Unknown said...

Now my feelings are hurt (joke). For the record, I signed up because the friend that invited me was writing a applet to attach to facebook. I thought he was sending me to check out his work.

We will try to find some way to compensate you all for your pain and suffering.

Gold-E said...

See, Facebook is onto something by making you have to create an ID to view its pages. We're all suckers!