Facebook, It's Like Instagram for Birthdays

A lot of web apps - both the established players and the startups - seem to be in a "sort of, but not really" state. I'm pulling this from a column by Thomas Friedman about Russia ( <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/friedman-russia-sort-of-but-not-really.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/friedman-ru...</a> ) where he says that Russia is "sort of a democracy, but not really". Applied to web apps, Facebook is sort of a way to keep in touch with friends and family, but not really, because it's mainly a pile of uninteresting crap streamed from a bunch of people you hardly know. Twitter is sort of a way to follow interests, but not really, since it's mainly a vast swamp of mind-numbing, hash-tag inundated stupidity that most people don't read.<p>That's not to say there isn't value in these services, because there is - I use both. It's just that it seems so half-assed. When you consider the ways in which, say, the introduction of the telephone changed society, Facebook just looks silly.

I was always perplexed by Facebook's decision to get rid of the birthday gifting system (on someone's birthday, you could pay FB $1 to give them some sort of picture as a gift). It wasn't popular among my friends at first, but it eventually got to the point where every time it was someone's birthday, they got at least <i>one</i> gift from someone.<p>I can only imagine that if Facebook had pushed it hard enough, it would only have become even more commonplace. When you have 500M+ users, each of whom has a birthday once a year, and each of whom has numerous friends to wish him a happy birthday, $1 gifts are nothing to balk about.<p>The opportunity they had reminded me of the story behind how the diamond business itself created the profitable tradition of giving engagement rings and wedding rings.

Very similar to my thoughts. Plus, I have some other experiences to compare to, and FB doesn't come out very well in those comparisons.<p>Some websites allow you meet new people and to get to know them better over the years. You'd think "social" networks should do that as well, but they aren't. In fact, Facebook sort of works in the opposite way. For the most part, it's a collection of people whom you used to know, but whom you know less and less as the time goes. It doesn't allow for much real communication (which is essential in preserving any kind of meaningful relationships) and it's designed to discourage speaking with "strangers". (Remember all those warnings about not friending people you don't know?)<p>What irritates me to no end is that there are lots of people who seem to be (socially) incapable of using email, IM or phone to share the same information they share on Facebook.

Facebook is also great for organizing events. I don't know anyone who uses e.g. Evite anymore. Social chatter.<p>I'm not generally a fan of how ubiquitous FB seems to have become recently, but when everyone is on the same network and that network has some simple tools for doing socially useful things (making plans with people lots of people and carrying on idle chatter), that's handy.

More than anything I miss the "How are you connected" feature that was sort of a six degrees of Kevin Bacon for every person in your school. I would spend a lot of time picking completely random people almost always finding a connection.<p>I guess the graph got too big.

"So should I un-friend that girl I met at a party five years ago but haven’t spoken to since? Oh wait, you make that nearly impossible. Plus, how then will I know that she needs my help to kill a rival Mafia?!"<p>If you no longer care about someone's updates or anything that's going on in their life, you can remove them as a friend. I know tons of people who have removed people from their friends lists. Or if someone plays too many games and you dont like seeing that update on your feed, mute those types of posts or posts from that user.

*"It was my Birthday a couple of weeks ago. From my 527 friends, I received 52 birthday wishes on Facebook. That’s 10% of my friends — more activity in one day than I saw in an entire year prior. Who are these strangers posting on my wall? I haven’t spoken to some of them in 5 years. What a wonderful treat to hear from them on my birthday."<p>This paragraph pretty much sums up why I deleted my Facebook account - either two or three (bad memory..) years ago on the 10th of January, the day after my birthday. I never hated Facebook, I never had any problem with the company... I just realised, having got a bunch of emails telling me that people who don't know me well enough to tell me in person, or on the phone, or on skype/msn, or via sms, had left birthday wishes on my wall, that I hadn't had a use for it in quite a while before then.

I understand the authors position, but FB's value is different for lots of different people. Your journey on Facebook might be very different than mine and I don't think that means there should be a blanket statement about Facebook's value. Part of that value is that everything is inter-connected.

A friend entered a fake birthday when joining FB, thinking it was not really something FB needs to know about.<p>The amount of greetings and happy wishes on one random winter day greatly amused him.

<i>Who are these strangers posting on my wall? I haven’t spoken to some of them in 5 years. What a wonderful treat to hear from them on my birthday.</i><p>I couldn't tell if this was sarcasm. Is it really a treat? An empty "happy birthday" posted out of obligation that took practically no thought from someone that has otherwise not bothered to contact you in 5 years and will probably not do so for another 365 days?

I have, and continually remove people from my friends list -- it makes no sense for them to know what is going on in my life if I barely want to speak to them in person. And wildly more important I really don't care what is going on in their lives.<p>I take the Larry David approach and prefer to have less friends and acquaintances

Facebook really needs a 'friend clean up' tool ASAP. The problem of having irrelevant friends is huge.

How did they know about my Facebook usage habits? Is this a thickly veiled privacy article? Though seriously, it's easy to look back in retrospect and summarize webapps like this. It would have been more interesting if they discussed what the future could hold for Facebook. They are in a bit of a "serves no real purpose" limbo for me and I'm sure many other people. I have some fuzzy ideas on where they can take it to become more engrained in everyday real life, but I don't think society is ready for what I have in mind yet...

Instagram, It's Like Facebook for your iPhone. Really now, is it that hard to provide Android support?<p>This is 2012. Whats the excuse?