Wad'ya make of Facebook?

I don't like it. We don't need a another, arguably easier, internet.

BIG BIG DISCLAIMER: It seems I don't have a first hand experience of it (in other words i don't know wth i'm talking about ). 

I love FaceBook.

I can keep all my friends that I really dont want to meet IRL.

Don't have to write birthday cards anymore, just click on the dude and doodle down some grats and DONE!

No one ever phones me anymore, except my grandmother and my parents who are not on FaceBook, because they can all read about every detail of my life.

@fanbaby: I use it for sharing photos and party invitations. I think FB has reached its peak and the world is waiting for the next thing to come along.

I use Facebook for two purposes -- to keep in touch with people I don't physically see often (or at all), and for keeping up with workmates exploits over the weekends so we have conversation starters during the week.

Herbie

Whilst I'm spellbound by the concept and how it came about, I really can't read enough about it lately. It really doesn't do much for me personally as a service. Although I can see why it is so popular for so many.

For me, it seems to be mostly old people from school (who I didn't really care for) posting basic, boring and down right stupid things. Funny thing is, most "status bunnies" (OMG I'm buying Broccoli, I'm so drunk etc) would bash on geeks like myself for using IRC etc back in the 56k days at school... Funny old world.

Facebook's only value is it's popularity. If you've ever advertised on Facebook you will quickly see that only 0.3% of users in the target marketing group visit the website daily or bi-daily.

If your target group for the ad is 100,000,000 only about 300,000 will get your ad or featured story twice a day with no budget limit instead of 600,000+ getting it once a day.

Advertisers know the real damning secret of Facebook and that is that most of the profiles are bogus and that their dailys are tiny.

GM waited until the IPO to pull it's ad budget from FB. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/facebook-general-motors-advertising-ipo-social-media

There are lots of alliances with FB to keep the veil up while they pull out money from the public to feed the good friends of Peter Thiel, Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg. It's similar to robbing a bank.

Microsoft and a NYC hedge fund were early investors at a 15B valuation for FB to use Bing instead of Google search on the website, which is why there is such silence about FB here. Plus Channel9 founder Lenn Pryor is their mobile biz dev person at Facebook.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21458486/ns/business-us_business/t/microsoft-invests-million-facebook/

Facebook as a service is mediocre, but that's all it needs to be because the value is not in the actual service itself.

The MySpace effect is upon Facebook right now and they're not coping well.

I just don't think the Facebook ads are really well thought out or built in the right way. I'm always getting ads for "meeting singles"...you my status shows me as married. You'd think they have so much profile data they'd be able to target perfect ads for damn near everyone...

6 minutes ago, Harlequin wrote

[...]

I'm always getting ads for "meeting singles"...my status shows me as married.

[...]

Maybe their telemetry beats your common sense. Or maybe they just happened to notice that divorce lawyer tend to have large yachts.

@Harlequin:

The people they hired to run the Facebook campaign work on commission. They checked every box when they booked the ad to make more money. 

Case closed.

Awww... butthurt much?

amazed at someone who doesn't use FB. If you are in China, you are excused.

@magicalclick: I don't use Facebook, and I'm in the US. Few of my friends and family do either, and we're all tech-y folks. No Facebook, Twitter, or any social networking of any kind. Bunch of luddites I guess.

1 hour ago, Blue Ink wrote

*snip*

Maybe their telemetry beats your common sense. Or maybe they just happened to notice that divorce lawyer tend to have large yachts.

Now that was funny.

I use Facebook as a kind of simple RSS feed (I never used actual RSS though). I subscribe to different groups (companies, bands, TV Shows etc.) and I end up getting news about certain topics this way. It's also good for sharing photos but that's pretty much it.
It's ugly and clumsy but people still use it because it's what everyone else they know uses.

I also don't think I've ever clicked on an ad on my Facebook page.

The part where you stay in contact with people you know in real life doesn't interest me much unless they have some photos to share. If you're going to use it just for posting text, you might as well get yourself a real blog.

@kettch:Likewise - no Facebook, no Twitter, no need, no interest... no friends... LOL.

I had a Facebook profile for awhile but I shut it down. It was getting a little too creepy.

What would I make of Facebook?

I can make a hat, a brooch, or a pterodactyl.

@cbae: LOL -- obscure movie reference FTW.

Herbie