Facebook, Quit Stealing My Time
Schnitzel-loving Boris, Dave and Robert are all talking about the closed system that is Facebook. A few weeks back I called Facebook ‘an ad hoc engine for folding time’. It turns out that Facebook is also a massive time vacuum, sucking up my time by making me double the places I go to do basic stuff on the web.
As you might expect, I made a diagram (click for larger version):
The solution is obvious, and not particularly new. Facebook needs to, upon request, push all the stuff in the right-hand column back over to the left-hand column. Unfortunately, all we’ve got at the moment are endless, useless messages saying “Bob’s written on your wall. Click this link to see what he wrote.”
June 18th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
I just joined the Spacebook and it’s like an alumni network for every relationship I’ve ever had, no matter the length of time, the closeness or the context. They’re all the same.
June 18th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
or you could stop facebooking;-)
June 18th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
Andre: There’s a lot to like about Facebook, and there are plenty of reasons for me to be in it professionally, too.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
I think it’s those little notes (someone’s written on my wall? how exciting!) that sets up the addiction and forces you to go back. Friendster and MySpace I checked out just to be current, but my profiles languished.
Facebook sucked me in with the chatter.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I think I may have signed up for a facebook acct when they first opened it up to non-schoolers but haven’t been back since. In the meantime I’ve also deleted my MySpace account (guess I should do the same with Friendster though nobody even uses that right?) and very hesitantly joined Virb.
I think until somebody figures out how MY BLOG can be my social network that I’m not interested in the social network phenom anymore.
But I’m getting old and grumpy, so what do I know?
June 20th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
I think it’s an absolute waste of time.. and have no plans to sign up - ever.