<i>A mail system that doesn’t have a Bcc function doesn’t belong in the 21st Century.</i><p>This reminds me of a comment that we almost always get on HN when Facebook comes up, and its almost always right: it's not for you. If you want Bcc, it's not for you. The millions of people who are younger than you don't think to CC, let alone BCC. They want to communicate, and they want to do it now, and email is just that formal thing Dad uses. That's their terms, and Facebook gives it to them.<p>The author also discounts Facebook as being some sort of Neo-AOL. It is that, but where AOL faltered was being a completely walled garden. Facebook as a development platform, and, perhaps more importantly, an online identity to all sorts of other sites, makes Facebook use even more in-grained. I would love to see some stats from sites that allow Facebook Connect on how much their user registration went up. Facebook offers a portal, but also a wider identity, and they do it well.<p>If Facebook isn't for you, then that's that. But it doesn't mean what they're doing is wrong.
I honestly hadn't expected this outpouring of vitriol here against John Scalzi, of all people. The things I'm reading here - that he's "just jealous" or what have you - are frankly blowing my mind.<p>I thought his point was pretty clear: FB is rolling in cash and is the target of the latest 15-minute hype and 50 billion dollars of Goldman-Sachs paper valuation, but isn't really breaking new ground in providing the best possible platform for the Web, and he predicts that this will cause it to fail, like other non-ideal repackaging efforts in the past, because it is limited. And he has some experience in this, because he was an employee of AOL in the day.<p>And weirdly, here at HNN, of all places, I am witnessing a deluge of rabid Facebook fanboys, many of whom apparently think he's just an old fogie who doesn't understand the new generation. The world never ceases to amaze me.<p>EDIT: more words are always good, right?
<i>I wish I could sign on to the damn thing and not have the first thing I feel be exasperation at the aggressive dimness of it UI and its functionality.</i><p>People use Facebook because they see past the "website" and read the content. They communicate with their friends and family. How many non-technical people have you ever heard complain about email apps? They don't because they use email to communicate, not to use an email app.<p>If the first thing you feel is "exasperation at the aggressive dimness of it UI and its functionality" then you need to find some new people to connect with so that you're actually interested in reading what they have to say.
Just for the record, I was uploading my own website back in '93 too, and I use Facebook and quite enjoy it, for the same reason the author does, because not all my friends were in the same boat.<p>Calling other people stupid for not building and maintaining their own website strikes as bit elitist, just as saying that people that don't design and build their own houses are lazy. We specialize.<p>To him it is easy / fun / rewarding to build his own blog, photo sharing, thingamabob. Sure, it has been for me too in the past. But it isn't anymore, especially because Facebook wins on the front of notifying my friends of things of mine they might find interesting.<p>In short, he is really missing the point, that Facebook has allowed millions upon millions of people to participate on the web in a way they couldn't before. Were they the first to try? No, but they are the first to do so so successfully across such a wide strata of users.<p>I also find it super ironic that he seems to think highly of Twitter (talk about lack of features!!) while gives Facebook a hard time for missing functionality. At least I can comment on 'status' messages on Facebook without changing my own status. :)
Facebook is top dog right now, so I get that every highly intelligent hacker out there is going to take their potshots at it. I think everyone needs to take a step back and seriously thank Facebook, Myspace, AOL, etc. Why? Because they got normal people to use the internet. Grandma is now a customer for us hackers thanks to Mark Zuckerberg. We can all remember a time when the internet was our personal nerd playground, and yes it was awesome; but it wasn't very profitable. Now, everyone and their mother is on the internet, and their chosen platform of choice right now is Facebook. Yes, things have been dumbed down, yes privacy isn't what it used to be, but us geeks are now pulling down 6 figure salaries for doing the same stuff we'd be doing for fun in our free time anyways. We can't have our cake and eat it too..
<i>Zuckerberg is in fact not a genius; he’s an ambitious nerd who was in the right place at the right time</i><p>So the guy who created Orkut must have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Too bad for him. His Google stock probably only made him a millionaire. Totally uncool.
As time passes, and the users of the internet get more sophisticated, this wont seem so much like a rant, it'll seem like an opportunity for the next social networking phenomenon. The thing that replaces Facebook wont look much like Facebook. It will need to cater to what today seems like the power user.<p>Just my .02
Everything is getting more and more simple, isnt that good?<p>Lots of ranting towards Facebook here of late, I must say.
Facebook is a great way of telling your friends that HTML5 has got a logo, for example. Also, this way your friends that arent on sites like linkedin will get an idea of what you're up to.<p>I'm sure people who are interested in programming and building webpages will go their own way in the end anyway.<p>Maybe I misunderstood this article and the previous about Facebook rants, in that case I apologize.
I don't get this Facebook rage every year. Last year it was about the open social graph API and the third-party like buttons. Everyone was mad at Facebook. Calls for boycotts, mainstream press picking it up, Diaspora, etc.<p>Then it dies down and everybody seems happy about Facebook.<p>Until a year later, HN is full of hate-posts again. So, if history is to repeat itself, I'd say that the hate will have died down by June and I'll get my hate-blogpost ready for next year, having missed this years Facebook-hating-season
More and more I find that for people I see in real life facebook has become fairly redundant. And facebook has just clarified the reason that I don't see most of my other 'friends' in real life; I'm not really friends with them anymore.
Some time ago, a friend of mine told me that he had a great idea, something like Facebook, but, you know, for the "geeks" and all ze teknischen peepers, blogging, photo sharing, video, everything. At that point, it had simply occurred to me a very simple (and obvious) question: "Well, isn't that exactly the world wide web?"
Facebook is not made for smart people. It's not made for the readers of Hacker News, this guy's blog, or even the throngs on Reddit. It's made for everyone else. I work in a place with some people who will work/have worked minimum wage jobs their whole life (not that there's anything wrong with that). But these same people are on the internet all the time, and you know what they do? Check facebook. Facebook chat. Look through facebook pictures. Maybe browse craigslist for a few minutes looking for a used car or a new job. But 95% of the time? Facebook. I'm not saying this type of person represents the majority of facebook users, but it is this type of internet "familiarity", for lack of a better word, that makes up the majority of facebook users, and the world's population.
<i>Facebook shouldn’t be telling me how many “friends” I should have, especially when there’s clearly no technological impetus for it.</i><p>Does Facebook do that? I get recommendations of people I might know, but I don't recall ever being told how many friends I should have.
I don't use Facebook because I think it's social circle-jerking occupied by a majority of people who are only interested in inflating their own perceived image.
We had a stream of google-sucks/googles-dead kinda articles everyday just before while now. And now, suddenly all the bad attention turns to facebook since about a week.<p>I mean facebook had the same UI/policies/uglyness since quite some time, why sudden surge of facebook-bashing articles (followed by google)? I wonder how much of the content from above articles was written genuinely and not with alterior motives.
About a year and a half ago, I was thinking the same thing - Facebook = AOL.<p>I did make a cute graphic out of it, if you want it: <a href="http://jaysonelliot.com/blog/2009/06/13/what-does-facebook-remind-me-of%E2%80%A6/" rel="nofollow">http://jaysonelliot.com/blog/2009/06/13/what-does-facebook-r...</a>
<i>But the idea that it’s doing something better, new or innovative is largely PR and faffery.</i><p>Facebook is incredibly innovative at growing its user base. No other social network has concentrated on and succeeded at this like Facebook.
Sounds like he uses Facebook mainly to stay in contact with his friends but hates that Facebook doesn't do everything he needs. Facebook doesn't have to do that and the rest of the internet is still there.
My favorite quote:<p>> Its grasping attempts to get its hooks into every single thing I do feels like being groped by an overly obnoxious salesman.
I just delete all my information (which wasn't lot!) last night! and I wrote my email on first page so if anyone really wants to contact me there is a way!