The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal - LiveJournal Vs. Facebook
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12:18 pm
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LiveJournal Vs. Facebook
"Come join us in our reindeer games!" shouted fellow Clarionite E. J. Fischer. "We are cavorting and frolicking on Facebook, e'en as I waste time leaving comments here on moldy old LiveJournal! If you don't sign up soon, we'll all be best friends by the time you arrive, and you'll be that gloomy, balding kid at the back of the bus who no one wants to talk to!"
...well, okay, that's not what he said. But it is how I read it. And so, since eight of the Clarion folks were already on Facebook, I went and signed up for my own account.
And honestly? I'm astonished at how well put-together it is.
Facebook is interesting because it's the first true social application I've seen on the Internet. Don't get me wrong, LiveJournal is an excellent blogging software crossed with a community - but it seems to have stumbled across the community portion accidentally, and as such there are all these Frankenstein-bolted segments that don't seem to quite work. What's that about icons? Or hosting pictures in your LJ? Oh, they came up with that after. And you suck at searching for names, too? And how's that friending process work again?
What you wind up with on LJ is a community, but you have to work at it. LJ is designed to put words on a screen, after all, and everything else comes a distant second to that one glorious function. And I shan't mock it, for dribbling words into Teh Intarwebs is my small claim to fame... But it's not socializing. Not really.
Whereas Facebook is so purely about putting people who know each other together that it's like the CIA's wet dream.
The first thing I adored was the usage of actual names. Yes, you're all very clever with your cool pseudonyms, but more than once I've been caught off-guard by the lack of actual naming. I've had old friends who've been reading me and commenting for years, and only recently discovered that hey! El Jay user=dorkfish is in fact my old friend Gordo "The Lariat" Francisco!*
In fact, the usage of names actually pushes me away sometimes. I have no idea who's reading me, just some crazy agglomeration of letters and numbers. (And for God's sake, if you knew me in the flesh before I started blogging, tell me who you fucking are.)
Whereas on Facebook, bam! Seconds after I signed in, it was suggesting people I already knew, allowing me to Tarzan-swing my way across the web of networks I have with an astonishing rapidity. All my Magic pals? On someone else's friends' list. All my old Connecticut buddies? If they'd signed up, they were there. It was kind of crazy, how quickly I accumulated sixty friends, almost all of whom I knew in real life - and even now, people I hadn't picked up on are finding and friending me.
And it's all done with a very professional and clean interface that looks like a program. Most AJAX Web 2.0 applications seem to scream, "LOOK! I'M NOT A WEB BROWSER! ISN'T THIS COOL!" - I'm looking at you, Gmail - but Facebook's usage of AJAX is restrained but constantly, almost ingratiatingly, useful. It does everything quietly, efficiently, and cheerfully.
Plus, let's be honest - one of the main charges of having several thousand readers is that I get a continual stream of feedback. Y'all leave comments, so throughout the course of the day I get little emails telling me, "Someone said this!" or "Someone did that!" And that's awesome. It breaks up the monotony of a work day and gives me the illusion that something exciting is happening in my life.
Facebook allows you to have that constant buzz of "FRED PHELPS friended you! Confirm his friendship!" and "MARY JOY is now single!" and "MUGGS STUMPLEY wants you to join his mob!" Yes, it's low-content crap most of the time, but it makes you feel like your Facebook page is an Exciting And Happening Place - folks are writing on walls, joining groups, becoming fans! And it's a lot better at making you feel involved on LJ, where sometimes you can write a heartfelt post and get a single drabble of a comment that consists of "*hugs*."
Now, does Facebook have as much content? Well, that depends. You can have little comment-discussions all day, and that's cool. But it's not that different from email. Their threading kinda sucks, and a lot of the content consists of application add-ins - which is a very cool and very smart way of inviting user-created content, just ask ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) boutell - that may or may not be any good. (But to be fair, the same could be said of any user-created content, and the fact that Facebook's opened up an API is really the wave of the future.)
It's certainly not blogging. But not everyone feels the same urge to diarrhetically spew verbiage onto the page the way that I do. Some folks just wanna have an occasional place to gripe, a place for a pseudo-Twitter, and a fun game of Scrabble. And Facebook is pretty awesome at doing that, despite what some wags have said about it.
Facebook is - and I shudder to say this - like MySpace 2.0, which is to say that it seems to have learned from MySpace's bargain-basement approach to "Shit, we'll let them put up anything." It seems engineered to let you make connections quickly, and to be a low-maintenance way to keep in touch with people without having to contribute, say, thousand-word comparisons between networking sites in order to keep up.
And for that? It's golden.
* - The name is made up, of course. I'm from Connecticut. We didn't invent Hispanic people in CT until the late 1980s.
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"In fact, the usage of names actually pushes me away sometimes. I have no idea who's reading me, just some crazy agglomeration of letters and numbers."
Hey, stop talking about me.
Regarding Facebook, the only thing that truly frustrates me about it is that I often want more information than just a person's name and whatever image they're using (which may not be their face) - even if it's just very basic profile information, when someone's requesting to add me, I feel I should get to peek at who they are before confirming it.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/7448451/1366673) | | From: | anivair |
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| Date: | April 8th, 2008 04:41 pm (UTC) |
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I didn't know you before you were blogging, but I'm not sure that I had grown-up teeth before you were blogging.
I did know Roni beforehand and that's why I read your blog (it's odd to find other people I know that read your blog for very different reasons, like my friend JR - that is, sadly, his given name, and his sad middle name is the letter T - who reads you via Magic the gathering).
I know people that love facebook. I think i'm too wordy for it, but you have just convinced me to give it a look. I'm on a new software kick today anyway.
Facebook is great at its basic function - a contacts list, and the ability to send messages to them. There are even a few applications that work well - the events application is invaluable to me.
The initial rush wears off after a while, but it's still very handy.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/51294795/371438) | | From: | woap |
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| Date: | April 8th, 2008 04:44 pm (UTC) |
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Facebook has the "notes" function, which despite its name works fairly well for blogging. You can also tag people as mentioned in it, and they get a ping that they were mentioned in the note. http://www.facebook.com/notes.phpI haven't used it much, but I think LJ would still be better for real blogging. Can't hurt to poke at it a bit. :)
Seen that. That's what I was referring to. Still wasn't impressed, though.
tribe.net was around long before Facebook was, and while it became popular with the Burning Man contingent, especially here in the SF Bay area, it never really hit it big.
It doesn't necessarily have real names, but what it does have are open-ended discussion groups. Want to talk about X? Create a group dedicated to X. Like-minded people will then join.
The look is a bit on the primitive side - the first version looked a lot like craigslist, and it hasn't advanced much from there, but that's part of the reason I like it.
FYI.
Yay for Tribe mention!
admittedly I'm on Facebook and MySpace too -
-MySpace is where I simply have a superficial "worship me I'm cool" page and I could care less about the people I know on it.
-Facebook is kind of where I interact with people in a professional/educational or otherwise not-personally manner. There are definitely close friends of mine on it, but I use it a lot for keeping in touch with people who I don't see every day or networking.
-Tribe, however, is the online extension of my physical community. I'm located in New Hampshire, my dearest friends (and love) are located an hour south in Boston, and more are scattered across New England. We organize our plans, parties, update each other on life, share stories, photos, and join online communities for everything from polyamory, to mushrooms to paganism to bellydancing. I actually live on Tribe. It is my Tribe. :)
i don't use my Facebook account. i'm here for the content more than the contact. somehow Facebook feels like an extension of the worst parts of high school. (or, in fact, the object it's named after, the college freshman meatmarket guidebook.)
I am addicted to Facebook Scrabble.
"You can have little comment-discussions all day, and that's cool."
Actually, you can't. Facebook is notorious for disabling accounts that have too much activity on them. They just think you're spamming. =/
He meant that you can do that on LJ. At least, that's what I thought he meant :)
I dunno, you can't really do anything on Facebook. I use it to find contact information and get invited to parties and poke people, which is nice and all but doesn't take up more than maybe five minutes at a time. Compared to LJ, Facebook is useless as a timewaster. Which, you know, is what matters.
I wish to differ.
Facebook has so many timewasting apps it is actually a big timewasting extravaganza. In the words of Matt, from Dork Tower, Facebook should be dubbed Wastebook.
When I look at profiles with fifty-twelve zillion apps intalled, I feel vaguely sorry for them.
In fine, what did I find on Facebook :
- nice apps for when I've got free time on my hands;
- friend I can reach by other means, with whom I can enjoy some of aforementioned apps;
- old acquaintances from high school, whom I then thought were my friends, who added me as FB friends and NEVER EVER told me anything since then. Not a word, not even a poke or an invitation to use one of their chosen apps.
Now, I have a simple but strict policy regarding social networking sites.
I could work out a chart referencing the likeliness of me adding you to my friend list depending on circumstances.
But since people I know (or I've known, as it appears... maybe I knew, even) and who don't have any other mean than FB to reach me never use it, why should I bother adding people I don't know in the least ? Why would they bother talking to me more than people I know ? I've never understood the concept of friend whoring. Looks like a modern version of dick size contest, to me.
As such, Facebook is a really great timewaster.
Whereas LJ gives me an opportunity to exchange views with people I don't know, without coercing me to anything, or giving me info I really don't care about what my friends are doing.
LJ seems to be better than Facebook to, you know, COMMUNICATE with people, while Facebook might be better to keep up to date with what's happening to your folks. Might even be a little too good, if you ask me.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/57527790/2702865) | | From: | beldar |
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| Date: | April 8th, 2008 05:01 pm (UTC) |
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After experiencing the suck that is MySpace, I haven't gone near Facebook, especially since I had heard it was for high school/college students and I'm a bit old for that.
As for names vs. pseudonyms, I know a lot of people would rather you know them by their internet handle first before trusting you with their real names, if they ever do.
Facebook isn't for meeting new people so much as for keeping in touch with people you already know, so the "waiting to divulge your real name" thing isn't an issue.
I use facebook mainly for keeping track of people - when you have friends scattered all over the globe it's a nice and tidy place for tracking what they're doing.
Exactly. I move too much.
The fact that you use your real name on facebook means that people (like college admissions people and HR people) can look you up and know instantly, by the name and photo, who you are. If other people have put up less than flattering photos of you, they can find those too. I would recommend being careful about which photos of yourself you allow to be posted on facebook and what information you let float out there.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/90322443/3683204) | | From: | soleta_nf |
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| Date: | April 8th, 2008 10:09 pm (UTC) |
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| | Re: A word to the wise | (Link) |
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If you max out your security settings, random searchers should only see your main pic and your networks. (Not even your list of friends!)
Ironically, at this very instant I am sitting in a session at the Computers in Libraries conference about Facebook and how and why libraries should use it.
...oh god, that icon is making me giggle.
The one bad thing about Facebook is all the games/toys "apps" which default to "invite 20 of your friends today" every time someone signs up for one. Another big gripe I had got fixed recently - when you do sign up for one of those apps, you can, but only in the past month, tell it to not send you email *when you sign up*. (Before, you had to change that setting after the fact.)
Yeah, I hate this too. I like Facebook for the most part, but this is probably the most annoying aspect of it.
I like facebook for allowing me to keep in vague touch with people I went to college with. I am not *really* friends with them, still, but if I need to get in touch with them, I can. If something big happens in their life, I may see it on their status, and can reach out. But unlike LJ, I don't have to hear their every day adventures or whining or feel like we're close (or decide via custom friends groups just how close I want htem to be...).
I love LJ for the content. I love Facebook for the superficiality. Oh, and for Scrabble.
Yeah, I'm pretty much on Facebook for the Scrabulous.
Well, and to stalk people too.
I'm on Facebook for one specific reason (a friend can use it in a country that blocks blogs) but otherwise it seems pointless. I so much prefer the LJ setup that lets me read all my friends' posts plus professional writers like you, and make comments that others read, and find communities centered on my interests. I've met so many wonderful people that way. But Facebook? I get messages individually, and in different ways from different people. If there's anything like a Friend's List, I haven't found it.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/38601266/9028525) | | | OK, as a sheep, I'm gonna try it now | (Link) |
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I hope I don't run into too many old flames.
Also, I'd like to raise my own grubby hand to brag that NOT ONLY did I know Ferrett* before he started blogging, I can assure your readers that you are so interested in free-speech commentary that you used to read, reprint, comment on, and respond to BATHROOM STALL Graffiti.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/64041832/52013) | | From: | parachles |
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| Date: | April 8th, 2008 07:37 pm (UTC) |
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| | I guess I'll just bleat with the rest of them... | (Link) |
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Yep, I'm trying it.
I'm a bit cautious, considering that MySpace is already too much like high school for my taste... (If it weren't for MC Chris absconding from LJ to MySpace I wouldn't darken my profile door again... bleh, the things I do for fandom.) But I'm willing to add it to my blog bookmarks and see what happens. Hopefully it won't end up like another Imagini for me.
Hopefully the lame-o stalkers that haunt MySpace won't find me at Facebook. I'm as much a sucker for anonymous folks stroking my ego as the next person... but when they blatantly ignore the "IN A RELATIONSHIP" plastered directly on my profile it makes me a bit mad.
Yeah, you have a little networking site crush on it now, but wait until you get invited add to every dumb application that there is just because someone was to lazy to click "Skip" when they were installing "What 60s song played backwards married to a celebrity eating vegetables are uuuuu?"
Actually, it's not always about pressing skip. A lot of those apps force you to send those notes to 10 of your friends before you can see your own results.
It's really not hard to ignore them, by the way. You don't have to do anything with them.
Honestly, I liked Facebook before it started becoming MySpace, and added all the widget crap. As a way to keep in touch with former people you've lost contact with, it's great.
Feel free to add me on FB.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/90031419/18840) | | From: | amurana |
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| Date: | April 8th, 2008 08:45 pm (UTC) |
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I always hated myspace, but I instantly loved facebook. I couldn't find a way to explain it. Thankyou for doing the work for me!
That is everything I hate about Facebook. It does what it does very, very well, but I'm appalled by what it does. I think the underlying issue is the real names thing. I don't want my real name on the internet. I don't want people to know that they know me in real life, and in fact I don't want to know that I know them in real life.
The internet and real life are solidly divorced from each other, at least as long as you aren't on Facebook, and I like them that way. We do completely different things on the internet and real life, things that go together really badly sometimes. The internet is the outlet for all of out madness and hostility and perversion, so that we can be civilized people in real life.
Facebook is attempting to slave the internet to real life, and while that is a logical use for the internet, it's a foolish one. I'll conduct my real life in real life, thank you, and stick to sharing elaborate sexual fantasies and bizarre hobbies with people I wouldn't recognize on the street on the internet. That's what it's there for.
I disagree. My internet life and my real life are mostly intersected, and not just on Facebook. I am friends on LJ with several of my real life friends, and become real life friends with people who I met on LJ, even met some of them (with splendid results so far). I talk to people in real life about things that happen on the internet (and not just memes, but posts I make or have read that are relevant to the subject at hand), and I talk with people on the internet about things that happen in real life. The only distinction, for me, is that one involves a computer and the other doesn't.
I was intrigued by your outlook on this and automatically assumed that you were older than me, as I usually see this attitude in people of older generations, and was surprised to learn that we are about the same age. I suppose we just have very different personalities.
You've listed a number of the things I've found surprisingly pleasant about Facebook, and that's why I'm glad my freelance job uses it as a social networking center.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/63547817/564175) | | From: | yndy |
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| Date: | April 8th, 2008 10:54 pm (UTC) |
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Welcome to Facebook.
I grudgingly went there are the request of several of my Twitterpals - at this point, I mostly use it to play Scrabulous.
But I suspect you'll end up on Twitter by Clarion... it seems to happen that way...
To my knowledge, Facebook came out before MySpace but went "general public" after MySpace. |
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