I'm Just Sharing

At this point, I’ve been on Facebook about 18 months. I realize that I’ve talked less about it specifically, as this is only my third post about them, than about Twitter, whom I’ve talked about more than 30 times; wow!

The last point I wrote about Facebook had to do with what I considered bloat, as in all those applications and games and the like that seem to proliferate there. And it continues to grow, as well as the little odd stuff, and even Facebook’s advertising. But this post is kind of a follow up to a post I wrote last year in May called, oddly enough, Thoughts About Facebook.

Back then, I was saying how I was slightly dismayed because there doesn’t seem to be much conversation going on there, even though they have literally thousands of groups. That still seems to be the case now. I have noticed that the users of Facebook seemed to have figured out that they have some kind of power, because groups can spring up out of nowhere about something that someone dislikes, and within a week can have well over 50,000 people who are mad about the same thing; how come no one ever creates one of those groups where everyone is happy?

I also talked about a group that I’d set up at the time, and even though it seemed to be a needed topic, I had less than 25 people who had joined. Well, I never have reached 50 people, and the people who have joined almost never talk; actually, most of them have never said a word. I’m an only child and know how to talk to myself, but I’m not going to publicly keep doing it if I’m not sure if anyone else really cares.

I will give Facebook some credit for this one, though. In the last few months I have connected, albeit briefly, with people that I haven’t seen in years. And I’m not talking 2 or 3 years. I connected with a guy who was one of my first roommates in college over 30 years ago. I only saw him the one semester, then never saw him again, and he found me on Facebook. Then about two weeks later, someone who was supposed to be my roommate for my junior year showed up and reached out to me; that’s just under 30 years. I’ve connected with a few other people I hadn’t talked to in many, many years, or rather they found me, and that’s always a nice thing because, well, that used to be me, searching for everyone, then at one point I thought “hey, they don’t care, so I’ll stop”, and then they’re suddenly anew in my life.

And, just as suddenly, they’re gone. And it’s that thing that’s disappointing about Facebook. People may have great intentions, but there’s so many distractions on Facebook that they just can’t stay focused, and they either get caught up in all that noise oro they leave because it’s all too confusing. People rarely talk, and that’s bothersome to someone like me. And what was Facebook’s solution to that? They added a Twitter stream to the site so people can see Twitter messages there; what does that say about Twitter? And are they going to get me to talk about Twitter here now?

Nope; the links I’ve put in are sufficient. Still, I have to say that, though I’m kind of disappointed, I’m staying on Facebook. Just having the opportunity to find long lost friends and acquaintances, and get to play all these different versions of Scrabble (I’d play Scrabble, but the folks who created it messed it up, and it moves too slowly), is enough to keep me visiting. But I rarely stay long, and if Facebook is going to hope to make money off itself, it’s going to have to figure out how to keep people still long enough to get their attention. Then again, in my affiliate marketing attempts, I guess I need to figure out the same thing, eh?

That’s how I see it, though; what about you?