Facebook

My son, Nathan, recently asked me why I am not on Facebook. He mentioned that both of my brothers and my sister use Facebook. I still haven't tried it because I prefer to talk about issues rather than myself (that's why I use A2K).

I thought ebrown nailed it when he said it's like those tedious Christmas letters people send, except you get them everyday.

i joined, but rarely go there

i'm not really that interested in finding folks i used to know, i use it to see pictures of my relatives and their kids and check up on them now and again

i use twitter to tell the world what i'm doing

I use it to stay in touch with close friends and relatives. I don't do all the Farmville and other such applications

I get very little out of it.

I see no attraction at ALL in the games and shops and such.

I might find some old friends if I used my real name, but I won't in case of clients finding me.

I might be able to arrange social events and such if any of my irl friends used it, but they don't.

Pictures. I use it because it's become a common place to see pictures of your friends and family. There are lots of other ways to post pictures, but FB is really starting to become the default.

I use it to publicize our band and it's very effective. We have about 140 fans who drop in to see where we're playing.
I also have enjoyed getting in touch with people I hadn't talked to in 40 years. The flip side is I found out some good friends had passed away.

I hardly ever use it because of privacy concerns. Does anybody know how to remove yourself from FB?

It's tool. A communications tool that is remarkably easy to use. But like any tool, the more you use, the more it comes in handy.
I have a network of about 150 friends, family and acquaintances. I am able to keep in contact with these people in a fairly personal manner even though I may live thousands of miles away from most. The beauty is, it can be a passive involvement. No one will know anything unless you or they post it.
I can pick and choose the people and the content I wish to share with them. When i first joined up, I fooled around with the apps, now I never even contemplate looking at them. I play one game, a scrabble type game with friends in far away places. I share pictures and anecdotes and the odd swipe, for the sake of humour. If I choose to reveal I am online, I can message in real time, which has come in useful on many occasions, especially when planning a surprise party et al.
Just recently a priest died, he was the school chaplain when I was in high school. He was 92. His death was not unexpected, obviously, but... within days, there were two sites and 4,000 people filling them with memories. His death went viral, if you will. People from all over the world left tributes.
A friends aunt went missing in the states, a facebook page set up to keep track of info and updates. She was found dead and then it was a convenient place to announce funeral details and tributes. People use them for causes, or petitions too. A rallying point.
I have several friends who have business, are in bands or are artists. I can keep up with schedules and latest pieces of flotsam with a click of the button. I only put stuff online I want to share, anything else is done the old fashioned way by phone or email. lol
There is nothing to get. You either use it or you don't. If no you know is on facebook, it kind of makes it a worthless experience but if you do have a group that uses it a lot, it definitely has it's benefits.
You can have an alias and only invite the friends you want and not worry about anyone finding out your true identity, just like here or... you can put it all out there.
My husband only just recently joined after many lectures to me on privacy. Now he's a complete slut. He's on there more than most, chatting and what not, but it's on his terms, under a pen name. He doesn't want everyone to find him.

I use it daily to communicate with old and new friends and relatives all over the world.

I mainly use it because many family and friends use it. I don't respond to the games and gifts they play.

Dutchy, my husband successfully deleted his account, but I'm not sure how he did it. I wonder what happens if someone dies, does their account just sit there like a cyber-memorial? Will it be like in Star Trek when they find a dead planet with videos of the former inhabitants?

I don't use it and don't plan to use it.
I'm ho0ked to many web pages already (A2K, Fantasy Sports of all kinds, newspapers and news-streams, mine and other blogs...).
My 16 year old is hooked to Facebook, and perhaps because of that, I have the sense (and the prejudice) that it's a teenager - young people passtime, and they should not trust anyone over 30 roaming their domains.
(But oddly enough, I missed a wedding invitation because all invites were sent via Facebook... or so they said).

I use it to organize and collect family photos from various relatives.

It's fun to chat with my friend in the states who's an incredibly early riser - he doesn't have anyone to talk to at that time of the morning, because no one over there is awake and we have the same sense of humor, so we always have a few laughs, and he's a music lover too - so we exchange videos with each other.

I've also been able to keep up with students - again- I don't ask them to be my friend because I don't want to cramp their style - but I've been delighted that some of them have found and asked me- although I don't look at their photo albums too closely - seems they all love to take pictures of themselves and each other with their phones when they've been partying and are in various stages of disarray.

I don't do much on the wall except photos - I usually communicate with people by sending messages - I'm a letter writer - not a twitterer and luckily I have friends who are also letter writers- and those are private as far as I can tell.

My daughter, who asked me to be her friend- I didn't ask her because I didn't want to put her in the awkward position of having to reject her own mother - and I also fool around and chat...it's sort of a novel and fun way to communicate with your own kids - I like to pretend to be a dork and write stuff like LOL to her and post embarrassing baby pictures- she can delete them if she wants I think- but it makes me laugh.
My son hasn't asked me to be his friend yet - but he's asked my sister - his aunt, so I think it's only a matter of time.

I've never played any of the games - except once when I was at my sister's house and she left her page up and my nephew and I answered Yes to all the questions on some quiz such as 'Does so and so think so and so is sexy?' 'Does so and so think so and so would look good in a speedo?'
That was fun.

I've read a few interesting links that people have posted that I probably wouldn't have otherwise.
It has ended up serving a purpose for me, moreso than I initially thought it would.

I haven't been worried about any privacy issues. What privacy issues are there to worry about?

I joined a while ago, expected to like it, and didn't. I'd check in, nothing much would've happened, I'd wait longer to check again, there STILL hadn't been much... and then I just kinda stopped looking at it.

It laid dormant for maybe 6 months to a year (I forget) and then it became the main place for activity around my 20-year high school reunion. My friends list exploded and THAT's when it started getting interesting. I only really started liking it after my friends list hit about 40. Like A2K, there are some frequent posters and some who mostly lurk, and to get a critical mass of the voluble types you have to get through several lurkers too.

What I absolutely adore about it is the community aspect (like, local geographical community). To take a random example, one of my friends posted that the police had just come knocking on her door asking for info about a robbery suspect that might've come her way. A bit later, another friend who lives near the first one but who doesn't know the first one posted that she was freaked out about helicopters hovering over her house -- I ventured that it might have something to do with the robbery. A bunch more stuff trickled in, I introduced various people who didn't know each other, we all sat there with bated breath (it was an armed robbery) getting real-time updates from people who saw one thing or another (I was Googling repeatedly but nothing had made the news yet), and then the guy was finally arrested in the very first friend's bushes. (Of course. She's the kind of gal who has a very INTERESTING life and it was extremely fitting.)

There's a specific usefulness to me because I can't "overhear" things IRL -- I've learned SO much from Facebook stuff about my community and the people in it. I've made a few friends basically just through Facebook (we kept seeing each other comment on mutual friends' status updates and then eventually became friends with each other, or we were nodding acquaintances and friended each other on FB but really got to know each other through FB).

In the same category, I've gotten to know a few of my husband's family members better -- family reunions suck for me in terms of lipreading load/ communication, and I tend to revert to nod-and-smile to get through it. One uncle has a really great acerbic sense of humor and I'm much better able to engage with that in a written medium. (I think I shocked him a bit at first, he may have thought I was a bit more meek than I really am.)

A good friend of mine from high school who lives in another state and who I'd barely talked to before re-connecting with him on Facebook during the Great Reunion Friending just bought a 3d printer kit that he's putting together (SO COOL) and sozlet saw it and became obsessed with it, I mentioned that and he gave a link to some free 3d modeling programs and said that he'd go ahead and print something for her if we sent him the file.

Etc., etc., etc.

I, personally, adore Facebook.

...on the other hand, my dad just posted an annoying political screed that he'd know better than to send to me via email (hopefully) but now I have to decide whether to ignore or acknowledge... well not that hard I guess, ignore it... but still one of the FB downsides.

I was befriended by the daughter of a man and woman I went to elementary school and high school with. Her mother and I were locker partners for 4 years. Her father was my brothers' best friend. Their daughter is a lovely young woman, smart, professional, a wonderful single mother of a precocious 10 year old girl. And because she remembered me from many years ago and flatters me with her admiration and respect, I get a ringside seat to her life, like a member of her family almost, and I greatly enjoy that.

Responding to one of her posts, I recognized the name of my grand-nephew who I had not seen or heard from in almost ten years. They went to high school together. He's married, living in Dallas, and the father of two beautiful little girls. His sister, my grand-niece, is also married with children. I am a GREAT-grand aunt. I sent him a message and he befriended me, reopening the lines of communication with a side of my family that I thought were more or less lost for me. That never would have happened were it not for Facebook.

Some of you know that as an art director, I often worked with children. One of my favorite little models from so many years ago befriended me on Facebook last year to invite me to her wedding. She is now the mother of an an absolutely gorgeous baby girl, and she and I are discussing modeling agencies. It's like the circle of life. I love it.

So many people i went to school with, worked on various jobs with, people who were close friends during the years we were together, I'm once again connected to. It's amazing. Like Soz, I love it.

My 30th High School Reunion experience has been enriched by FB, both before and after. It was other sites that organized the actual physical reunion, but people talked about it on FB before and they talk about it still on FB, including people opening up to each other about bullying from 3 plus decades ago.

I feel I'm friends with quite a few people I really didn't know well at all, and reconnected with one friend I haven't seen since graduation (she's an actress in NYC, single ....).

I also connect with my cousins much better than I do otherwise. We normally would just see each other at weddings and the like, but with FB we get a window into each other's lives. I know how their children are doing, whether they're happy in their jobs, etc. Things you never get a chance to discuss while there's loud music thumping in the background of a Bar Mitzvah.

My parents and brother are not members. RP is, and our older nephew is. So aside from first cousins, these are the closest relatives on FB, but those are people I see and talk to in other ways. FB is very good for the more extended family.

so there is a different tenor of conversation on Facebook ?