Down with Facebook!

No worries, nimh. Give it a try, maybe you'll find something, maybe not... Nema problema.

With the new layout there are also new settings - more detailed. You can set different settings for different "friends". Limit certain parts of your profile from some people's view and such... I haven't experimented yet, but it looks more advanced than before.

I wish they did that for the chat thing - I find it useful at times, but I would prefer to be invisible to some people. It will come, I'm sure.

Yeah ...

So, uh (he wondered idly), do all your friends get to see everything? I notice there's people with hundreds of friends - do they all get to see everything you post, status updates photos and what not?

I could find a set of privacy settings, but all I saw was a way to make something visible to all your friends, or to your friends and friends of friends, or everyone.

I'm just thinking - say, purely hypothetically of course, I would like to use Facebook and for example share my Flickr photos or my blog posts - but, eeehh some of those were published in hours normally known as office hours, and your friends will, I suppose, generally include your colleagues and/or boss(es) ...

D'oh - posted in the same minute! We must be sharing a wavelength right now.

So, uuh ... dumb question: where would I find those settings?

OK, I know about the X thing but missed the sliding scales thing when it was around.

Yeah, I've messed with the settings, have different groupings now ("Family," "Madison," "L.A.," etc.) Haven't finished messing, but I think I can send stuff to only one grouping at a time now.

I think (I'm still figuring this out myself) that you can go to the "Friends" page and then choose to "make a new list," and you can have one list that's business people and one that's not, for example.

Well, that is to say, I know you CAN do that but I'm not completely sure what you can or can't do with the resulting lists.

If you speak of Facebook, I heard, I joined....and have made no use of the thing at all.

But I spoke not of Facebook. I spoke of Twitter.

I saw Robert speak of it, I think, and heard it being hyped, so I went and had a look.

I saw nothing I wanted to be part of, so I didn't join.

Likely these things might be useful if you had friends who were part of the thing, but mine aren't at all.


I do hear colleagues babbling about Facebook at work, and they have put me off more...I would almost prefer them to babble about celebrities and such.

I am sure people CAN and do use these places to good effect, but when you look at them they seem utterly mindless and boring.

You can limit users in what they see from your profile... you can, in your privacy settings click on Customize - and type in names for "except this user" -- i know this includes for example photos where you are tagged, not sure about flickr...but flickr you would edit in application settings i think.

those settings are between your name and log out on the blue bar on top. left of the search bar :-) there's a pull down menu, choose privacy settings from there.

application settings on the other hand are bottom left.

I were speaking not of facebook or of twitter, deb, but yer initial dislike of the I-phone, your subsequent purchase, your subsequent subsequent liking, and perhaps your subsequent subsequent subsequent disenchantment due to service limitations. But I digress (barely).

A-ha! Yeah, there seem to be more options here than last time I looked:

https://register.facebook.com/privacy/

eh, i give up for tonight. tried to tackle some settings but when i was testing, it keeps freezing.

Oh, OK, I found a useful way to use those lists.

I created a list for work contacts (only 1 so far, but I invited more). Then I went to the Privacy settings. Then for individual items in the list (eg status updates), as Dag explained, you can type in names of individual people you dont want to be able to see those ... but more practically, you can also type in the name of a friend list. So by typing just the name of the list in that "except" box, you can block all work or business contacts at once from seeing your wall posts, or status updates.

Ok, thats good. Thank you both of you.

I still dont expect to use Facebook much (he added stubbornly), and I am fully prepared to be annoyed or at least just nonplussed, but well. We'll see.

E.g. I noticed that Twitter actively profiles itself as a medium for the kind of inanities the OP and I were talking about ... this is its front page illustration if you havent signed up yet:

well, kudos for giving it a shot. after that, diss all you want.

when i joined, i couldn't imagine what i'd do there. J invited me there. she said "i can't believe you of all people are not on facebook yet" and i though "pffffft". when i saw it, i thought it was much less versatile than myspace....now i don't know what to do with myspace....though it's trying to catch up with facebook and is copying many of its features. meh. either way, it works for me.

Yeah...but I thought you meant that I, and possibly also Nimh, would soon be fans.

But I regress.

we already got nimh online :-) doesn't mean he's a fan yet, but he's giving it a try.

NBA Player Reprimanded for Halftime Tweet

MILWAUKEE (AP) " It might be the next big thing in online social networking, but Milwaukee Bucks coach Scott Skiles isn't a big fan of Twitter.

At least not when one of his players is posting from the Bucks' locker room during halftime of a critical game.

Bucks forward Charlie Villanueva got a talking-to from Skiles after the coach learned Villanueva posted a message to his Twitter feed " a "tweet" " from his mobile phone during halftime of Sunday's home victory over Boston.

"We made a point to Charlie and the team that it's nothing we ever want to happen again," Skiles said after practice Tuesday. "You know, (we) don't want to blow it out of proportion. But anything that gives the impression that we're not serious and focused at all times is not the correct way we want to go about our business."

Using the screen name "CV31" " Villanueva's initials and jersey number " Villanueva posted the following message during halftime Sunday:
"In da locker room, snuck to post my twitt. We're playing the Celtics, tie ball game at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up."
(from AP)

Similar reportage from the New York Times' recent piece on legal mistrials due to internet abuse:



Source: As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up (NY Times, 3/17/09)

I read that article in the NYTimes this morning. Boneheaded jurors.