The Anti-Social Media

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Facebook Crap I hate

by The Anti-Social Media on September 21, 2010 in Facebook, I hate Facebook

I’m great at bitching about all the tweets I hate, but I never harped on the weird crap people put on Facebook all the time. And trust me, for all the mundane madness about coffee that drives me crazy on Twitter, there’s even more weird stuff that occurs on Facebook just because there are so many more functions and people.

So, without ado, the five things people do on Facebook I hate most.

Suggest Friends - I know who my friends are. I know who I want in my online life. I don’t need anyone to tell me who I need to connect with. If you’re suggesting friends for me, not only will I ignore them, I’ll probably unfriend you.
Suggest Pages - I’ve never had someone suggest something I actually like or that I am a fan of. I will support friends in their new endeavors, whether that’s a new website or a band, but I’ve never had someone suggest something to me that I actually enjoyed. I attribute this failure to the fact that they are Facebook friends and not real friends.
Invite me to Events I can’t Reasonably Attend - I stated using Facebook back when it was The Facebook and was for college students only. Six years later, all of my “friends” graduated and moved on in the world, yet they keep inviting me to events in the places they now inhabit. I’d love to come see your community theater play in Nebraska, if I lived anywhere near there. Facebook tells you where I am. Use that information.
Facebook Places Posts - I’ve yet to see anyone do anything useful or entertaining with this feature. I live in a pretty tech savvy area with some very tech savvy friends, and I still haven’t seen any of them do anything cool. Still, I know know exactly where home is for a good chunk of my friends who don’t care about their security.
Farmville, Frontierville, and anything else by Zynga - I don’t care that you’ve unlocked a new cow, or your barn needs raising, or that you’ve sold your soul for ten more Farmville dollars. Application spam is not fun for anyone.

I’m sure there’s a lot more stuff that our “friends” do. What don’t you “like?” What do you hate that people do on Facebook most?

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Facebook is Evil

by The Anti-Social Media on September 17, 2010 in Facebook

There, I’ve said it.

Any questions?

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Parents: Don’t make Facebook Profiles for your Children

by The Anti-Social Media on September 9, 2010 in Facebook, Kids

Parents who make and update Facebook profiles for their children drive me nuts. Why does your infant need a profile separate from your own when s/he cannot even update it on their own?

You don’t need to secure a domain for your unborn baby. You don’t need to start building their personal brand. Let them live their own life. Let them build their own online presence. Be there to guide them. Help them through the mistakes. But whatever you do, don’t do the work for them while they are still in the womb.

Your kids will not learn if you hold their hand through all aspects of navigating the online world. I built my own website when I was ten. My parents didn’t help me at all. They were absolutely amazed by what I had done. They told me what they liked and didn’t like, and what they thought was safe. My parents have never been web savvy, but they were able to keep tabs on me while still letting me explore and build my own presence.

You need to keep an eye on what your child does online for their security. But you don’t need to start feeding all their information into Facebook, Google, and any other database willing to build a profile until their ready to get online for them self.

And please, don’t sacrifice their eternal data to Facebook until they can make the choice to do so. By then, it will probably be like Myspace or Friendster.

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The Complications of the Facebook Relationship

by The Anti-Social Media on August 30, 2010 in Facebook, Relationships

Relationships were never easy. Facebook made them ridiculously harder.

Back in 2004, before Facebook had news feeds and was for college kids only, my friend had a Facebook stalker. When she ended her relationship, she changed her Facebook status from “In a relationship” to “single.” Within an hour, she had received two calls and a texts from that stalker asking her out, while condolences poured in slowly over the next week.

Things only got worse for relationships when Facebook’s news feed came along. Suddenly, your relationship status now played publicly for any of your “friends.” Instead of people finding out slowly when a relationship has fallen apart, it now is blasted out for the entire internet to read and comment on, whether directly or indirectly. This isn’t anything entirely new. People have always gossiped and talked about other people’s affairs, but it now we can read and react instantaneously.

In the age of personal branding, it seems such a strange piece of very intimate and personal information that is out there for people to “like” and comment on. Facebook is fun, but where’s the fun in dragging your relationships out in front of the whole internet?

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We All Hate Facebook Places Already

by The Anti-Social Media on August 20, 2010 in Facebook, Facebook places, Privacy

I don’t think I ran across a single blog yesterday that thought Facebook places was a great idea. We all know it was derived from Foursquare, Gowalla and their cousins. People detest “friends” being able to check you into places, and privacy groups are waging another war with Facebook.

I think enough has been said about how stupid of an idea this is from Facebook’s end. My major problem with Facebook places was when I tried to launch it, I got this:

Before I complain about a feature, I’m willing to at least try it. However, Facebook apparently released the version of the iPhone app that didn’t work (3.2), and I had to later install a new version (3.2.1) to get Places to function properly. Facebook, next time, launch the version of the app that actually works. Your users will thank you.

Regardless of that blunder, Places worries me. The logo, which my friend Maura pointed out, is a square with a four inside. FourSquare, anyone? There’s evil genius at work.

Thankfully, for every person that checks you in somewhere you can always send them this threat, so wonderfully articulated by my friend Laurie.

You got that? We will start checking you into Wal-Mart if you misbehave. You’ve been warned.

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Facebook Places - So your 500 “Friends” can stalk…

by The Anti-Social Media on August 19, 2010 in Facebook, Facebook Stalking, Facebook places

Facebook Places - So your 500 “Friends” can stalk you. You “like” this.

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Facebook Questions: Both Literal and Metaphorical

by The Anti-Social Media on July 30, 2010 in Facebook

Facebook is rolling out its questions feature to users. While I’m waiting to see the feature in action, I’m not too excited that this will be some type of killer feature.

As a highly opinionated person, it’s not much of stretch that I’m not a fan of crowd sourcing. To me, Questions seems like running out into the street and yelling your question out, hoping that some sane persona passing by will answer it in a timely, relevant, and much saner manner than you asked. These people are either saints or madmen. I’m not sure which.

Still, Facebook Questions will be better than similar services such as Formspring or Yahoo! Answers only because people won’t be anonymous. If people start asking dumb questions like, “Am I pregnant?!” or “I think I have a STD, do I?” the question will be associated with that person’s name and profile. This means one thing: Public Ridicule. While I don’t like to call people out, shame is a good tool to prevent really dumb questions.

The more features Facebook rolls out, the more Facebook becomes like AOL in the late 90’s. There’s a lot of interesting, useful, and relevant content on the site, but you know there is much more when you get off of Facebook and go onto the rest of the web. Questions is one more feature designed to try and keep people coming back for more, but doesn’t seem fully baked.

The biggest problem with Questions is it doesn’t connect you with your friends. Sure, you could make a new “friend” or ten, but the nature of this feature doesn’t build on any of the existing relationships you have. Where is the network in this social network?

So, do you want 500 million bad answers, or one good answer?

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