No – this is not about money, or stock options or marketing and online advertising budgets. This is actually about friends and networks of friends and how I find Facebook to be a huge challenge at the best of times.
I reserve Facebook for personal contacts – in direct opposition to say LinkedIn where I have all my professional contacts. I shudder at the thought of having someone who I talk government policy with actually seeing me dancing at my birthday party. So on Facebook I tend to be connected with family (yes, my mother also), friends, ex classmates and university friends, some ex work colleagues with whom I’ve become friendly and some online friends (after actually talking to them for quite some time). I still find it amazing how people I went to school with when I was 12 have tracked me down on Facebook.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I used to LOVE Facebook and I didn’t even mind all the annoying applications – I just declined all invitations and that was that. However some very negative thoughts on Facebook have popped into my head these last few days.
Facebook ensures I never clean up my social life
Normally, cleaning up your social life is a natural process. People move on, change jobs, change countries and interests and loose touch with each other. I’m not saying this is a good thing I’m just saying that it happens. Face it – we never become best friends with all the people we meet, and as we get older this gets worse. We retain some as really good friends and after a few years chance acquaintances just never got transferred from one phonebook to the next. With Facebook – not to mention Plaxo, e-mail address lists etc. they just stay there for ever and ever, a terrible reminder of all the people you ‘know’ yet you have nothing in common with anymore. All you can talk to them about is the past. Isn’t that kinda sad?
Facebook gives me a false sense of contact
Don’t get me wrong. The vast majority on my Facebook friends I really want to hear from. I love seeing their pics and their updates and learning what they are getting on with in life. It’s just that I don’t really talk to them. Especially with being in a different country – I don’t even see these people when I visit Greece. I only have time for a very limited number apart from my family. But my mind is at rest. At least I see their Facebook update. Isn’t that (also) kinda sad?
Facebook ensures I say nothing at all- while spamming people
OK I refrain from this but I see it in some of my Facebook friends. I guess they want to say “hi I’m still here” when they send out hundreds of ‘funny’ pictures and videos (in e-mail circulation since at least 1995), when they invite me to any group under the sun and when they ask you to add any number of applications. Let me just say this: It’s not real contact. If you can’t think of saying something why do you need to spam everyone? Isn’t that (yet again) kinda sad?
But I still would not change Facebook
I had this thought (immediately followed by ‘there’s clearly something wrong with me’) when I realised that I don’t like Facebook at all. I just like what it enables me to do. I know it’s all kinda sad, I know that I have some sort of psychopathic anxiety about missing out on changes and news, I know that some of the people I still talk to I’d have lot touch with ages ago (actually I had. Yesterday I was talking to someone I haven’t spoken to in 10 years). I even know I should have time to go out and enjoy some coffee with my friends. The reality is I can’t. I live in London – hectic at the best of times – so I see my friends here about once a week. Yet I still want to talk to friends in Greece, the States, Dubai, Singapore etc. etc.
Until I can say ‘Beam me up, Scotty!’ Facebook will have to do.
One of my pet peeves is when people from work ask me to be their friends on facebook when we don't even talk at work. People who give me the fake, uncomfortable, smile when I say 'good morning' to them. If they request and I deny, and request again I ban them. Facebook is really for friends and classmates who I've become friendly with (and a few select people from work).
LinkedIn follows the same logic. I am not an open networker. I need to know someone to linkup to them, or have interests in their work. The same person who smiles awkwardly when I say hello and ignores me will get the "I don't know"
As far as spam goes, I like facebook, it's an easy way to reconnect with people, even the people I've lost contact with, but I really dislike all the stupid little apps. I don't mind finding something that I like and adding it to my profile, but I dislike all the stupid little apps that I get from otherwise sensible people
I see facebook, and linkedin, as my version of Jack Welch's rolodex. All my acquaintances are my acquaintances for a reason. At some point or another we were/are friends and there is inherent trust in that relationship. If they need something they can ask me, and vice versa. Plus, it gives me a peek into their lives, more so than the old-school write-a-letter-mail-it-wait type of method of 10-15 years ago
this "inherent trust in that relationship" I think is the whole point of friendships including those you maintain using social media. This trust is a sort of capital I think – dare I say it, social capital. You maintain relationships with people you have trusted in the past because you believe that they will not betray that trust in the present or the future… an interesting take there.
Fantastic website I will defo bookmark this!