Facebook Talk

Call me crazy, but I’ve never been a huge fan of spam. There, I’ve said it. Slogging through spam is about as enjoyable as a root canal. In fact, a root canal is just a notch above sorting spam because at least with the dentist, there’s always the chance of pain killers being involved.

So with that said, imagine my surprise when I checked my Facebook wall tonight to find some lovely spam from a sleazy company known as Ring Rockstar.

I’ve messaged the friend who sent it to me and she assures me that she didn’t post the message. Thanks to her newsfeed, we’ve been able to see that her account only posted the message on my wall for some reason, but we’re not really sure why as neither of us have talked on Facebook in, well, forever. The spam seems 100% random and yet is still 100% annoying.

This is something that Facebook has in the past and needs to continue taking seriously. We can talk all we want about how Facebook is slowly turning into Myspace what with all the clutter on people’s profiles thanks to applications. Yet the day spam runs rampant on Facebook is the day it’s officially dead to millions of users. It’s the deal-breaker that keeps far more people off Myspace and on Facebook than some realize. I can’t tell you how many spam messages and comments I get on Myspace in a given day, but up until now, that number for Facebook was a resounding zero.

I certainly hope it continues to be that low for a long time to come, this one message aside.

Facebook, Myspace, spam

While doing my morning routine of checking my e-mail and updating my sites, I usually have ESPN’s Mike & Mike show playing in the background. Nothing says it’s a brand new day than the Internet, a gallon of coffee, and random sports talk. From time to time, though, I tune the background noise out and try to focus on the task at hand. This morning was no different, but just a minute ago I heard “Zuckerberg” come out of Mike Golic’s mouth and I had to turn around and go, “huh?”

Turns out they were doing a segment where they were asking people which 23 year old they’d rather be, Mark Zuckerberg or NBA superstar LeBron James. Much to their surprise, and I gotta say mine as well, Zuckerberg was winning overwhelmingly. This was even coming from a group of people who the majority are huge sports fans! Now we all know I love Facebook, but come on, really? Zuckerberg? I mean, money wise, it’s pretty much a wash. Yes, Zuckerberg is most likely worth a bit more than LeBron, but it’s not like he’s making chump change either. As that link shows, he had $22 million in the bank back in 2005 and has sense signed a contract extension for another $80. Throw in endorsements, celebrity appearances, and other random cash flows for LeBron and he’s got $100 million in the bank. Call me crazy, but once we start talking about triple digit millions, it’s a moot point as to who has more.

Next would be stardom. With Zuckerberg, I think it’s safe to say that he could walk down the street of Anytown, USA and go unnoticed. Even if somebody spotted him, what are they going to do, run up to him and ask for an autograph? Doubtful. So he’s certainly got that going for him. Whereas Lebron would get noticed in a heartbeat and from there it would only snowball. People who aren’t even NBA fans would be asking for his signature, wanting pictures with him, the works. It’s one thing to be famous, but it’s another thing when you can’t even enjoy a meal out with your family in peace.

Now let’s look at their jobs. Zuckerberg works with software, advertising, corporate charts, etc. Working in an office is one thing. But Lebron? Man, imagine being able to play a sport for a career! Having the talent to be a future Hall of Famer in a top sport, the thrill of playing in front of thousands of people, that’s just something I’d much rather do than just being famous for creating a websites.

The dealbreaker? Just think about how many people absolutely love LeBron. He’s the next Michael Jordan and the city of Chicago still treats Jordan like a demi-God. Heck, Green Bay treats Brett Favre like a full blown God! They love those guys. It’s a level of adoration that only sports figures can attain, a level that Zuckerberg will never reach. So the question comes down to whether you’d want to be a mega-super star and loved by millions or be an average Joe who happens to be worth a little bit more.

For me, it’s a no brainer, I’d rather be LeBron. What about you?

As I’ve written about many times before, Facebook has long since passed the mark where it was my number one site to surf and spend time on. Just last month, others began echoing my thoughts and now Jason Goldberg wonders if people aren’t suffering from Facebook Fatigue. I, for one, think this is a serious problem that Facebook needs to wake up to and learn from.

It’d be interesting to plot a timeline from when people originally signed up on Facebook to the point where they grew tired and jaded with it. I know I signed up back in mid 2004, long before it became a “hit” and media darling. Many of my friends were in that early wave as well, which simply shows that we were at the perfect age group back then for Facebook. Already a few years into college, looking for something to keep us all in touch with each other, etc. However, by mid 2007, only a small handful of us still used Facebook on a daily basis. That’s about a three year arc there from “OMG, you HAVE to check out this new site called Facebook!” to “Eh, I checked my wall posts last Monday…I can wait a few more days until I check them again.”

Now Facebook started shooting through the stratosphere sometime around mid 2005, if I recall correctly. So if the same three year arc holds true, we’ll soon start seeing a much larger number of discontent Facebook users start chiming in that they too no longer use Facebook for everything under the sun. Thus, with each passing month that small voice will grow a few decibels louder. Does this mean Facebook is in danger of losing visitors? Hardly. There are far more people still joining Facebook than leaving it, but that doesn’t mean that Facebook should entirely write off this growing minority of ex-users. There’s something of value in what they’re saying.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that 90% of Facebook applications are nothing more than spammy, pointless pieces of crap which do nothing but turn people off to using apps. As more and more people realize this, they grow sick of sifting through them all and just write off Facebook altogether. Hell, the recent comments section down on the sidebar is all the proof you need that more and more people are starting to really hate these stupid application. Facebook was behind the curve on the News Feeds. They were behind the curve on Beacon. They can’t afford to be behind the curve on Application Hate as well.

But the other side of the problem is that, well, Facebook’s original users are growing up. We’re out of college now. We’re starting to settle down with jobs, families, lives of our own. We don’t really need to check out pictures from the latest frat party or constantly refresh the page of the girl we’re stalking…I, uh, mean “courting” in order to see if she’s changed her status recently. Hell, many of us simply don’t have the time to do that stuff! Trying to make it in the “real world” will do that to ya!

So what does this all mean for Facebook? Well, for starters, there’s nothing they can do about the people who aren’t using Facebook due to Life getting in their way. Like the tobacco industry, the only thing they can do to stem the loss is replace the older people with fresh meat. Which means, they need to steak more people away from Myspace and make sure that high schoolers who are going into college are switching over to Facebook. And if recent numbers (and my own little brothers!) are any indication, Facebook’s doing a pretty good job at this.

However, Facebook needs to make sure they’re not turning a blind eye to all the people who are leaving and writing them off as “acceptable” losses due to age, etc. A growing number of people, from high schoolers up to baby boomers, are leaving due to spammy and over-intrusive apps and if Facebook doesn’t address this problem seriously and quickly, that number will grow even more rapidly than it is now. Facebook Fatigue won’t just be for the people in their late 20s, it’ll be for anybody with a pulse and that’s something that Facebook seriously can’t afford.

[via Web Community Forum]

Facebook

I might be one of the few Facebook fans to say this, but Tom Hodgkinson is spot on.

You don’t need to read his entire article to fully grasp what he’s getting at because much of it reads like the rant of the local crazy guy, so here’s the gist of it: Instead of bringing us closer together, Facebook creates more barriers between us and socially interacting with our friends.

I guess I should backtrack here. I don’t think he’s entirely accurate in some of his assumptions and analysis and he thinks the forces behind Facebook are almost evil and morally corrupt. He even goes so far as to imply that there’s a vast rightwinged conspiracy of shadowy men who control Facebook and are using it to push their wacko agendas. But if you can overlook all of that, then you’ll see he’s kinda got a point.

And does Facebook really connect people? Doesn’t it rather disconnect us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while chained to my desk? A friend of mine recently told me that he had spent a Saturday night at home alone on Facebook, drinking at his desk. What a gloomy image. Far from connecting us, Facebook actually isolates us at our workstations.

I can think of many instances where I rationalized not stopping by a friends house because I could simply message them on Facebook later on. Instead of calling people, I tend to poke them or write on their wall. In fact, I was once at a super crowded party and as I was leaving, I saw an acquaintance across the room. It would have taken me a few minutes to stop by and say hey, but instead I just messaged her on Facebook when I got home. Are any of these instances bad? I don’t know, but I certainly know they can’t be that good.

I guess it depends on how you end up using Facebook that defines whether or not it’s best for you. If instead of hanging out with your buddies or meeting new people in class you are surfing Facebook and messaging random strangers, you might want to reconsider how you use the site. Just like anything else, Facebook should be used in moderation and if you’ve let it become so ingrained in your life that you can’t go a few hours without checking it, then that certainly can’t be a good thing. I know personally, after reading this article a few days ago, I’ve only logged onto Facebook once or twice a day. And I must say, it’s been a bit refreshing.

So make sure you’ve found the perfect equilibrium for Facebook in your life. It’s great to have around to keep in touch with old friends and people scattered across the world. But maybe instead of poking your nearby friend or writing on his wall, why not stop by his place and hang out for a bit. You might find it’s a bit fun!

Facebook

I’d like to update and clarify a few points that I made earlier today in a post about some students being suspended in Minnesota after being “caught” drinking on Facebook. To begin with, I never once congratulated or applauded the students for drinking alcohol. Never did I say, “yeah, woooo, way to go guys for breaking the law!” If they were drinking, then they were breaking the law. That is crystal clear. But again, anybody who has had a little life experience knows that people love to brag about and pretend to do things that they won’t actually go through with. Yet I digress, as that’s something you’ll only understand if you’ve been around the block a few times and not still a youngin’. No, instead, we’re dealing with this: Some kids got “caught” drinking by administrators of their school

And here is where the story gets murkier than a Louisiana swamp.

It’s a school’s job to educate a child. That’s it. A school is not a substitute for teaching morals or enforcing the law outside of the property. It’s a parent’s job and responsibility to teach a kid about safe sex or underage drinking or religious beliefs or anything else that doesn’t have to do with knowledge. It’s also their responsibility to enforce it. It’s great that schools teach sex ed and that some teachers are still engaged enough and not yet jaded to try and teach morals to students. But leaving it up to the schools to fulfill this duty is not just silly, it’s irresponsible.

In fact, a lot has been made in the news recently about the mom in Iowa who sold her son’s car after finding alcohol under the seat of his car. THAT’S how a kid should be punished. Let the parents deal with the non-school problems: nowhere in that story did you hear about that kid’s school stepping in and slapping him with a suspension because they have nothing to do with this equation.

Some commenters on the previous post liked to point out that the kids were breaking a law by drinking and thus warranted the suspensions. Chances are they probably were breaking the law. But does every student that gets a speeding ticket get suspended? How about every kid that gets caught trespassing or spray-painting an overpass? What about when a parent finds marijuana in a kid’s sock drawer? All of these actions are illegal and yet I highly doubt anybody caught doing any of this would be suspended.

They also pointed out that it wasn’t nearly 100 students, but instead only 13. And that they were suspended from extracurricular activities and not school itself. If that’s the truth, my bad, but I was only quoting the article that was posted in the Minnesota Star Tribune newspaper. If a major newspaper can’t get the story correct, what the hell do you expect from bloggers?

Furthermore, this argument isn’t over whether or not the kids should have put the pictures on the Internet. Anybody with half a brain can tell you that’s a retarded move to make, as I’ve argued here on Facebook Talk many times before. To put them on Facebook and not expect anybody to find them wasn’t just stupid, it was moronic and they deserved to be caught. But they should have been grounded for a few months by their parents, not suspended by the school. Why?

Because the point here is that the school officials suspended the kids with no real proof that they’d broken any rules and that even if the pictures were enough proof for some, they had nothing to do with the school. The kids weren’t caught being actually drunk. They weren’t on school grounds. They weren’t at a school function off-campus. They weren’t even bragging about drinking while on-campus and thus overheard by a teacher. How this involves the school isn’t just unclear, it’s downright absurd.

Yet another case of the YCJA being broken on Facebook (for more info on this, read my previous post) has occurred in Canada recently. This time, four teenagers who are accused of microwaving a cat to death were named in a Facebook group, which led to threats of retaliation and violence against the accused.

The person who originally posted the names wrote, “They will all get their faces smashed in by January 6th.”

Someone on the website wrote, “I think people like that should be shot.” “I would say these monsters should be tortured, let society at them,” another poster wrote on a separate webpage. “As their parents, I would not be sleeping. They would not be welcome back to my home or my life, and I am a parent of a 13- and 15-year-old myself. My motherly love would be gone.”

By publishing the names outside court, the writer on Facebook was breaking the law and potentially jeopardizing the teens’ rights to a fair trial.
One Facebook poster wrote: “You might have just caused them to walk free. … The last thing I want is a mistrial that could have been prevented.”
Arthur Schafer, director of the University of Manitoba’s centre of professional and applied ethics, said, “Publishing of the names together with threats is itself bordering on shameful and is as worrying for society as the original act.

“We know they have been charged, we don’t know whether they’re guilty.”

This is really starting to become a problem here and I don’t see it going away any time soon. Even we here at Facebook Talk have been contacted by authorities recently asking for help in complying with laws that protect the identification of youths. WIth more and more people joining Facebook every day and the rate of violent crimes showing no sign of declining to zero, it won’t be long before we see a major legal case against Facebook. The question of whether or not Facebook should or could be held accountable for allowing such information to be leaked on it’s site is an important one. Because if they are held accountable, then what’s to stop Google or Yahoo from being sued? How about web hosting companies that host a blog that “reports” on a crime. What about the bloggers themselves?

facebook, ycja, crime

A young girl in Toronto, named Stefanie Rengel, was brutally stabbed by two fellow teens on New Years Day for reasons that are yet unknown. In Canada, there’s something called the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), which prohibits the publication of information by newspapers, radio, TV, etc “… if it would identify the child or young person as having been a victim of, or as having appeared as a witness in connection with, an offense committed or alleged to have been committed by a young person.”

Basically it means that if a minor is the victim of a crime, then the media can’t run around saying the minor’s name. We have something similar here in the US and until recently, it’s usually been followed by most media outlets. That is, until the Internet came around.

Anybody who has tried censoring something on the net knows that it’s impossible. From illegal music downloads to sex tapes to smuggled footage of a protests in Myanmar. If it’s not being shown on TV, but people want it, then they’ll get it on the Internet. It’s as simple as that. But what happens when people inadvertently break the law while trying to do good? In Stefanie’s case, that’s exactly what happened, as multiple “tribute” groups were created in her memory. People wanted to show their support for her and remember her life together, but what they were inadvertently doing was breaking the YCJA by “reporting” on her death.

It’s a pretty slippery slope to navigate, but it’s one we need to look at, because “Facebook is the way of the future” and all that other crap. People are on the Internet more and more and we’re getting our news from it now more than ever in the past. What happens when somebody breaks a gag order by posting about something on their Facebook page. Or writing about it on their blog or away message? I certainly don’t have the answers, but what do you expect from me? When have I ever had the answers? Well, other than with all that stupid application spam. But I digress.

[via Social Times]

Facebook, Stefanie Rengel