The marketing companies and my wife says that my company needs to reach out to our market, programmers, using FaceBook.<p>I'm not so sure it's worth the effort. Do real programmers look for information/buzz on FaceBook?
Do I use Facebook? Yes. A lot. Do I use Facebook to look for programming stuff? Hell no.<p>Facebook's only going to be as good as the people you've added on it - in my case, friends, family, and other people I know personally. With a couple of exceptions none of my friends are programmers.<p>If I want to see what programmers and developers are up to then I'll go on G+, since most of the people I've seen on there are tech bloggers.
I use Facebook daily, but my purpose for using it has nothing to do with programming, nor would I want it to. It's for staying in contact with relatives and certain (non-programmer) groups of people.
I really don't look for anything on Facebook, 99% is messages to friends.<p>The probability that i find a single interesting thing on Facebook relating programming is near zero. Also maybe 3% of my friends are techies and they never use the like button.<p>The whole like system is a joke, the only time i see something that way now is a sponsored Message. One of my 150 Friends liked an ad for McKinsey, i care.....<p>Edit: G+ is not much better, the Hacker Circle makes sense but only in combination with Google search. I don't visit Google+ with such a low probability to find something interesting. I find on a single day more interesting stuff on HN than i did ever on G+.
I don't use Facebook at all.<p>My coworkers use it a lot but only to get in touch with friends/families, organize events or find funny viral videos. They, like me, have other means to get tech information.<p>Maybe you will reach your audience but I'm not sure they will pay any attention.<p>Also I chose "No" but not at all because "No real programmer would show his face there.". Your choices are very poorly worded and too polarizing: bad form.
I don't recall ever, before I null routed all the Facebook domains on my machine, having come across something useful and programming related on Facebook. StackOverflow and Hacker News (and to a lesser extent proggit) are places I go.
I don't even have an account there and don't plan on having one. Everyone in my extended family is baffled because I am supposed to be the "computer guy".
If you are evaluating "social" sites a lot better option for you would be google+ , I saw and participated there in many engineering and programming discussions.
Needs a third option that isn't so polarizing against not using Facebook.<p>I don't have an account and would never think of using FB as a platform for learning about programming news / information (barring if I needed to learn about their APIs, naturally), but I disagree with a statement that includes the phrase "No real programmer".<p>Then again, it's Monday morning and I'm tired and cranky.
I don't get Facebook. I have a hundred or so 'friends' on Facebook. I keep in contact with about 10 of them.. of those ten I phone or speak to them in person. I never contact them on Facebook.<p>The other 90% of friends are people I have lost contact with / old school friends. Neither of which interest me in the slightest.<p>Facebook status updates from friends and non-friends for the most part are worthless. "Today I am going to London", "I just saw an albino cat [photo of cat]" etc. I needed to know / see that!<p>The only thing Facebook succeeds at is managing an event. Everyone is on Facebook, invites are easy, its easy to keep track of who is coming. Everything else is fluff.
Facebook is where I discuss stuff with Friends. Twitter is where I discuss programming stuff. HN is where I waste most of my time, and is the place to reach out!<p>PS Facebook is not spelt with a capital B. You make yourself look rather out of touch.
I don't have a Facebook account. To me it feels creepy having what amounts to a permanent public record of your activity and interests which everyone can view and process - i'd rather keep such information between myself a select group of friends.
If I would see a programming related ad on facebook, I would not take it serious. There are more appropriate places to reach out to programmers. Facebook is for my bingedrinking related activities ;-)
I am there once a week as I have a big family, if I want to know wassup[sic] with 14 to 28 year old members I use facebook, if under 14 or over 28 it tends to be an email or text message then a mobile call, personally, 28, nothing beats a fixed phone line for best audio quality and lowest latency conversations with no duplex issues and a zero boot time :)<p>Would I read an Ad that was pitched at the right note selling the right product, sure, I might get called a programmer, but I am human too :)
Companies <i>must</i> be having success targeting ads to programmers and mathematicians on Facebook, because for the last several years, all 4 of my Facebook ads have <i>always</i> been filled with IT, programming, and math.<p>Here's a screenshot of my Facebook ads right now:
<a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/58785/FBAds-20120326.PNG" rel="nofollow">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/58785/FBAds-20120326.PNG</a>
This is the most ridiculous thing I've seen on HN. I'm curious, how much karma does one need to downvote threads?<p>edit: For clarification purposes, the question might itself be interesting: How does the facebook usage of hackers compare to that of the general populous. However, "FaceBook is how I find out about programming stuff" detracts from the objectiveness, and makes the whole thing pointless.
It's hard to take the ads seriously or to discover things that I don't already know from somewhere else. Having said that, I do follow a couple of products and it's a bit more convenient to see what they're doing in my stream than look for that info elsewhere.
FaceBook is for friends and family - almost all of whom aren't developers. I use Twitter for geek-related stuff (the term 'geek' encompassing more than just development). Haven't looked at Google+. Based off comments, maybe I should.
The only programming I've ever come across on Facebook is Facebook's own programming puzzles, and I haven't posted my solutions. I'd be more apt to go to G+; that's where I share all my tech stuff.
I actually discuss programming quite a lot on Facebook, but I suspect that I am the odd one out here. In any case, I would not generally characterise it as an ecosystem that meets that need, no.
Yes for social stuffs. I use FB to communicate with my friends or to keep me updated on where they are or what they're doing. I don't use it in work-related things.
Never for programming related stuff. The only Facebook product I use is the messenger app on android which sort of doubles as chat. Everything else is a timesink.