Claire

They are terrified of being cluttered up with spam, and so put restrictions on things (watch out — if your group is more than 500 people, you will not be able to send “updates” to group members en masse.) They are really trying to figure out what they are doing, but they are being smart to a certain extent and avoiding some of the problems of the “first generation” of social network sites.

I admit I friended Peter Segal when I saw his name. He is so cool! I am also friends with Harold Bloom (although the profile is actually set up by bored Cambridge students.) These are things that push the system, and they make facebook nervous (ideally, if I were a Peter Segal fan, I would join the “mellifluous tones of Peter Segal” group.) Orkut was much more draconian about things (e.g., if your picture was not you, you were deleted), they kind of overreacted to the myspace phenom.

danah boyd, guru of these things has an article on class and facebook: http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html (she is also mad at facebook because of the 500 people restriction I mention above — partly because it’s secret.)

For the old fogies who are just jumping on the bandwagon and too lazy to ask their students, the point of Facebook and Facebook friends isn’t as much who counts your official definition of “friend” as much as it’s a good way to find information about someone rather quickly. Need a cell phone number, or wonder if that cute guy in class is in a relationship, or a myriad of other things? You check out their profile. Granted, unless you’re stupid this means you make sure your pictures don’t show you engaging in underage drinking, but hey this is the Internet.

I will, by the way, encourage any university professors here to not search their name to see if a Facebook group has been set up about them, particularly in their university network. Chances are there is one, perhaps with a name like “[instructor] is a spherical cow” “@#$@$-face [instructor]“, so you might be better to steer clear of that.

Oh, and Facebook also means poking. How come no one else has mentioned poking yet?

“Reject” is such a harsh word. I wonder if the designers chose it to encourage interconnection…nah, it’s probably just a convenient antonym to “accept.”

As for “who’s a friend”, that brilliant little gmail trick told me that my landlord has a facebook page – prompting the question is he to be marked friend or foe? Which in turn led me to the idea that will surely make me a million dollars: an anti social networking site where you list your enemies, rivals, and nemeses.

And finally, LinkedIn is pretty great – but unlike Amara, I’ve had no job offers…. yet.

http://inquestoftherobot.blogspot.com/2007/06/and-there-go-all-my-friends-revoking-my.html

I’m still a tiny bit reluctant to classify “anyone who has heard of me” as a “friend,” even in the Facebook sense. But heck, I was born before we landed on the Moon, so I might be out of step here.

I currently have 107 friends listed, and all but 1 are actually friends. The reason for the large number is that quite often friends with whom you’d lost touch (school friends, university friends etc.) get back in contact by finding you on facebook.

I do find it a little odd to friend someone with whom you’ve had no contact. I have made one exception though, for a guy who shares my last name and explained that he was trying to befriend all the Fitzsimons on facebook. Seemed reasonable…