Carl Tyler's Blog

1 - Great question Carl. Let me know if you figure it out.

2 - Agreed. O' course, I don't get Gravatar either....

3 - I guess the email notification feature is kind of "bolted on" to accommodate "oldies like us"
The idea behind facebook: it serves as your "inbox". If your community (and it came from college after all) has the same usage pattern, then you have the combination of inbox and dynamic newspaper front-page in face book. So it it the college portal cum inbox. Now they are growing out of their roots and a lot of people get interested in what it is (it's kind "talk of the town" -- you go and have a look). In that process of growth they encounter very different communication/work styles. Once your work style doesn't match the facebook model the value is greatly reduced. It is still a nice social site like Xing or Linked in. What is IMHO better than there is the application features. So Networking cum Portal - kind of.
Makes sense?
stw

4 - Well, you know I love it, so I guess I should not go on too much about it here.

5 - Yeah Carl, I know you'll always be way younger than me, but you're still, sadly, too old for Facebook. I think the target demo is college-aged kids...

6 - Hey Al, Actually I would really like to hear why you like it.

7 - I don't get it either - joined and stayed for about a month and then deactivated my account. Like Lisa says, I guess I'm too old as well...

8 - Hi Carl, do you want to know why I like "social networking", or specifics about Facebook itself. Btw, while I say I like it (Facebook), there are also a lot of things about it that I don't, so I am not just a fanboy. Also, for me it is all about the "network", and Toronto has over 900,000 people on Facebook, so almost all of my friends from junior high, high school, university, sports, and even work are on.

9 - I think it has less to do with age, than it does with the style you choose to work in. Not everyone likes Facebook, but many do, ranging from 15 to 50, so I don't think age is the factor.

10 - @9 Specifics about Facebook would be great.

11 - Here is a quick list of things of the top of my head. I can put some more thought into this later.

Things I like about Facebook:

- Being able to connect with so many of my friends and family in Toronto. (and elsewhere)
- The News Feed. I really like seeing what connections my Contacts are making. I'd say 1/4 of my Contacts came from me seeing another person add them. Same for being able to see the updates to others profiles, their pictures, videos they've posted, etc. This type of "push" in one single place is much better than having to read dozens of blogs, look at dozens of flick'r accounts, etc. Same goes for applications, most of the new things I've added are because I see others using them, I don't have to find them on my own.
- The News Feed preferences. I really like the UI of the slider bars to control the content, as well as the "More about these friends/Less about these friends" fields.
- The picture upload tool is excellent.
- Tagging of people in pictures is very well done.
- Profiles. I like the "Friends In Common" idea.
- Birthday reminders.
- The post item tool is incredible. I wish I had that in every other software I used. Enter a URL, and if it is something like Flickr or Youtube, it automatically adds a thumbnail, information about the file, etc. You don't have to do anything manually.
- The ease of development and installation for applications. I think they have done a great job with the app dev platform. (however, see below, I don't like the misuse)

Things i don't like Facebook

- Friend management. I'd like to be able to subdivide/sort/filter my Friends in more meaningful/personal ways. (I know there are several add on apps, but they are just that... add ons, they don't integrate into the basic contact functions)
- Warewolves, Zombies, Vampires, etc, etc ,etc
- When people install applications, having them spam me.
- Having to log in to see my email.
- So many different types of walls. Wall, Superwall, Funwall, uggggh.
- I don't 100% understand walls... who can see which part of the conversation, and to follow a conversation having to look on multiple walls back and forth.

12 - @11

I'm with you on much of that.

A lot of the 'applications' on Facebook show rather more technical ingenuity than imagination , but that's a phase that's already beginning to pass I think. Even some of the 'fun' ones are a lot better than they were: Scrabulous is very polished, and for the BBC Radio 4 listener 'Mornington Crescent' is amusingly diverting for about 10 seconds a day. But, yes, many of them (e.g. Vampires) are just daft, annoying and pointless.

My understanding is that segmentation of 'friends' is one of the imminently forthcoming features. It will be interesting to see the press reaction to that: the ability to present wildly different personalities to different groups of people could justifiably be seen as a very bad thing (because nobody would do that in real life, right? )

For me, the interesting part is that Facebook has the potential (I feel) to become the de facto online personal identity. Already I receive more personal communications via facebook messaging than I do via my old-fashioned email address, and 'are you on Facebook' sits alongside 'what's your email address' as a question one asks in the real world. Business communication generally is still email, but that line is being blurred too. Demographically, Facebook already has a broader spread than MySpace (kids and bands) and LinkedIn (business): for a social network it's got to be easier to grow your userbase within demographics you already reach, than to break into completely new demographics.

A potential showstopper (notwithstanding the challenges that Google are hoping to raise with their own social network?) is that social networking sites in general are blocked by many corporate firewalls, so there's a limit to how pervasive it can really become unless that changes.

Back to your original question Carl:
- I like being able to keep in touch with a wide group of people relatively easily
- I like not having to worry about remembering that somebody's email address has changed
- I like the 'wall' idea: informal banter between friends
- I love the photo upload and tagging - much slickr than Flickr
- I like subscribing to my friends status updates as a feed - gives me something to smile about once or twice a day

- I really dislike the fact that when somebody sends you a message it doesn't give you the content, just the fact that the message has been sent (at this stage, dearest facebook, is it really necessary to drive traffic to the site in quite such a crude manner?!)
- I don't like how addictive it is, but that might be my fault