Facebook?

[randomness]

So, I have this Facebook account that I don't really use much, except when friends contact me through it. But it seems like a useful tool, and lots of people (including gilana, whose post inspired this one) seem to like it. I just don't seem to have found the particular foldy bit of the Swiss Army knife that is particularly compelling for me. I'm looking for it, though and now I'm asking for help.

If you use it, what do you use it for? What bits do you like about it?

Comments

[hawver.livejournal.com]

"mildly"

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

*snicker*

"clearly"

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking that! :P

[spatch]

Apparently on Facebook you can play Scrabble.

I'm not sure of this claim 100%, as all I did when I got an invite was fill out the bare minimum of information (no, you cannot have my gmail address and email password to "send invites to my friends" -- seriously, what the hell?) and make sure none of it was visible to others.

Exactly the opposite of what most people want to do with a social networking site, I guess. But conceptually, these social network sites -- Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, whatever -- are all alike to me. You go in, fill in personal information, write down your favorite bands, find people you know, etc. It's the same activity, just different UI.

But hey, Scrabble, apparently.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't actually put any personal info on my LJ profile or my Facebook profile, either. I *have* put my contact info in Facebook so friends can find my phone number if they need to contact me. That's actually been useful on occasion.

Scrabble, huh?

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

I just started with the Scrabble app, and I'm pretty sure it mis-scored my second turn. so bleh.

[cerridwynn.livejournal.com]

I thought facebook was pointless but then a friend from frosh year found me online and we had a chance to catch up. Social networking -- crazy!

Anyway, i still don't find much to do with facebook -- but occasionally it leads to neat little connections...

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I play Scrabble with it.

Um.

Sometimes I use it to flirt with people. And sometimes I share links on it.

And I talk to people who found me on Facebook and who it's thus the way I get in touch with that person.

That's about it. I don't spend tons of time on it.

[rfrancis]

Honestly, just like any other social network, I use it to keep track of people of whom I can apparently only keep track there. (In the case of Facebook, many of those are local college, barely-post-college, and high school types, from SCA and church. Yes, I keep track of locals via online. It's not as lame as it sounds. People let their guard down and it's very interesting.)

[saladpants.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I just made my account 72 hours ago and already hooked up with two friends from high school I haven't heard from in ages, and who i haven't seen on friendster or myspace.

[ekuhn.livejournal.com]

my 2 cents: i haven't set up a facebook account because i already have 3 or 4 times more social networking sites than i use and i'm getting invited to join new ones every several months. i *just* jumped on the myspace bandwagon with great reluctance b/c all of the other methods of communication about electronic music stuff in the area have gone away (due to being supplanted by myspace).

[bloodstones.livejournal.com]

I concur that it's useful mostly as tracking down people who aren't anywhere else. I also like the status updates for the silliness. And while I have very little personal information on my profile, it's hypothetically possible that I once used information farmed* from facebook to facilitate a flirtation. But that's very hypothetical.

*I originally said gleaned rather than farmed, but I liked the alliteration.

[gravitrue.livejournal.com]

Their main draw indeed seems to be market penetration.

There are a number of things I seriously don't like about them, but I won't rant about those.

I haven't looked closely, but the ability to build an application platform on top of the social networking aspect is potentially very powerful; it could allow one to combine music pref servers like pandora, event db systems like going.com (which now has a facebook app; not sure how powerful it is), and other apps in a structured fashion.

[midsummernd.livejournal.com]

so, I was one of the REALLY early fb users. Before applications, before high schoolers were allowed on, before there were more than ten schools listed on the whole facebook. So I use it now pretty much exactly as I used it then. I search for people. I connect to new people. I'm really, really boring. But I'm also fascinated by who knows who, how they know them, etc... so it's interesting to me in itself.