Social Networking Sites: What do you think?

[DonQuigleone]

I only really maintain my facebook page so that people I know from around the world can get in contact with me.

For my everyday contact face to face(and not facebook to facebook) is king. Isn't some very large percentage of your communication non verbal? Text chat cuts that out.

It's particularly hard to be sarcastic, I swear, everytime I'm sarcastic on Asuki I get at least one guy replying or negrepping me, chastising me for my seriously held hypocritical views

[Hooves]

It's quite hard to be sarcastic without any facial expression or tone of voice. But then again, depending on how your post was made, it might be counted as sarcastic. But it also depends on where you were trying to be sarcastic. It would not be good to be sarcastic when a serious debate is occurring over a specific topic.

[Random32]

<sarcasm>These tags never work to ensure your sarcasm is interpreted as such!</sarcasm>

I would say that text based conversations are superior to other forms of communication most of the time. I wouldn't want to have a text based date or anything, but I feel that text provides several key advantages compared to face to face or phone.

-Its less rushed for response time.
-It helps organize complex discussions.
-It gives us a chance to look over what we want to say before we say it.
-It provides a solid history of what has been said.
-It allows one to participate in multiple conversations at once.

[DonQuigleone]

The problem with sarcasm tags is that the sarcasm doesn't seem funny anymore. Furthermore, part of the fun of sarcasm is the ambiguities, but ambiguities are hard in a text only environment...

[Sabaku Kyu]

Originally Posted by Random32

-Its less rushed for response time.
-It helps organize complex discussions.
-It gives us a chance to look over what we want to say before we say it.
-It provides a solid history of what has been said.
-It allows one to participate in multiple conversations at once.

Not only does it organize discussions, it makes them simpler. A lot of times, I just want to ask someone a question or tell them something quickly. Yet if I call and just tell what I have to say, it comes off as curt or cold. I feel obligated to make some kind of polite small talk, even though it's wasting time. But with texting, it's perfectly acceptable to just write what you need.

Overall I have mixed feelings about social networks. It's definitely no substitute for face-to-face but it does have it's advantages. Like it was mentioned earlier, social networks are probably hands-down the best way of communicating with groups people and coordinating most social events. Phone/email lists are unwieldy and have to be kept up-to-date. Social networks take those things out the equation.

[HasuMasu]

Personally I prefer forums.

[Mystique]

Originally Posted by Nightbat®

Find new friends that you can hang out with?

It doesn't become a matter of 'finding' new people, but the simply practicality of meeting up.
Take into factors of distance and availability of transportation.
Aligning schedules to set some time to meet.
Actually having the money to spend to meet (travel costs as well as entertainment costs)

Face-to-face communication is lovely and of course you can receive more information from a human from sound and sight but text forces you to think more, more brain activity going on as was previously mentioned, you gotta deduce tones and nuances because you're not fooled by your eyes.

Originally Posted by Endless Soul

However forums and social networks still don't convey the entire message that a face-to-face conversations would. Even with smileys added to a post () the post still seems cold. Of course I could imagine what your emotional projections would be, much like what I would imagine characters in a book would react, but you're not a character in a book. Neither am I.

Regardless that doesn't make it any colder than meeting face to face, hell I've been in much more engaging and heated interactions online than offline with people no matter if I can see everything.
If a person hides their emotions and 'seems' friendly, it's cold.
If a person throws their passion into their words online, even if I can't see them, I'll feel (sense) their energy through it.

And the way you perceive people online is different to me.
I make myself aware that it's a human being behind a monitor who's sat on their butt typing away in the same manner that I'm doing right this very moment. I don't think of them as a character, but a person.
What they write (if being honest and sincere) is no different to how they'd be offline for most part and the only difference that's missing is their physical habits that when I meet people offline I then get this new info.

But it doesn't change or make it any more awkward to who I just meet offline for the first time but feel incredibly connected or at ease with because of online communication. On the otherhand, I've met people who are incredibly good at seeming warm and friendly because they're behind a screen so they open up, but offline they're either nervous or not so good at verbalising their thoughts or interacting with people... it doesn't become fun or warm or relaxing at all but even more awkward.
Depends on the person.

But to bring it back to this topic, what social networks do is make it easier for those who do not have the luxury of setting up and having the time/money to meet those close to them (or even half the people on your phonebook even).

How many of you truly do call up (phone) an acquaintance to say 'let's meet up just to catch up' and set something up compared to sending emails or engaging in skype to get up to date instead?

There's "ideal preference" (which is a given that meeting in person is better than text) but then there's "actual practicality", which as with most things in Life doesn't give us much room or luxury to do what we want, especially since meeting up requires both people to be on the ball for it to work.

Me personally would rather treasure and preserve the stronger ties I have with people I currently know then make lots of weak/superficial ties with others just for the sake of 'hanging out'.

The argument from me isn't 'which is better, text or meeting up?', it's discussing the feasibility and the benefit of social networks over an international community that can help create and maintain bridges between people with or without physical distance.
(Since there were so much FB bashing going on earlier)

If you don't need it because your clique of friends/acquaintances are within easy each of meeting up and your friends feel the same then great.

For a good majority however be it family, friends, work, business networking, public advertising, charity awareness, it becomes an incredibly powerful and beneficial tool to use with many plusses

[Puddingman]

How many of you truly do call up (phone) an acquaintance to say 'let's meet up just to catch up' and set something up compared to sending emails or engaging in skype to get up to date instead?

Yea yea, I agree. I recently graduated college and most of my buddies are still attending. Not only is there a distance factor but they're busy with classes and school work. I see them in person maybe once a month, but talk to them a few times a week online/phone. And yea, stronger ties for sure, lol casually "hanging out" with more or less acquaintances is a waste of time for me. But I prefer solitude most of the time anyways

Facebook is great for advertising stuff like Mystique said. I know a lot of people in bands and I always see their events for gigs and stuff. It def helps to keep me in the loop with things like that. But I gotta say, I have about 100 facebook friends, and a lot of them I keep on there cause we were cool with each other in class, but I really talk to a handful of them, and probably won't talk to the others again.

[Nightbat®]

Originally Posted by Mystique

It doesn't become a matter of 'finding' new people, but the simply practicality of meeting up.
Take into factors of distance and availability of transportation.
Aligning schedules to set some time to meet.
Actually having the money to spend to meet (travel costs as well as entertainment costs)

In other words: You've said goodbye from actually spending time with people you previously were 'close' with

in essence in 'social networking' you are only exchanging information, you are not 'experiencing' anything

It's about as gratifying as watching a PoV Pornmovie

[SMT]

I don't think it's already posted yet so here's a video about the privacy policy of Facebook concerning how much data is being stored in their servers. Guess it's not everything of what they actually save.
It's in german, just activate the english subtitles.

Spoiler for Title says "Student declares war on Facebook":

[Tenken's Smile]

Originally Posted by KOapps

I don't think it's already posted yet so here's a video about the privacy policy of Facebook concerning how much data is being stored in their servers. Guess it's not everything of what they actually save.
It's in german, just activate the english subtitles.

Spoiler for Title says "Student declares war on Facebook":

I agree that storing people's info even after they delete it is inexcusable.

I wonder if FB able to get & store what you did not put on there....

[Mystique]

Originally Posted by Mystique

It doesn't become a matter of 'finding' new people, but the simply practicality of meeting up.
Take into factors of distance and availability of transportation.
Aligning schedules to set some time to meet.
Actually having the money to spend to meet (travel costs as well as entertainment costs)

You do experience a lot.
I'd have to ask what you define as an 'experience' though before I give you an example to counter it.
If you wanna use sex as an example, there's always having physical sex (intercourse) and it being bad, painful, awkward.
There's having phone sex (different set of senses to use) and it can be as gratifying and mindblowing as being there.
Not the same and never better than actual good sex (before people start going off on one), but it comes down to the same requirement as actual sex.
Good communication between your partner is needed.
With good virtual sex, (ideally) you need a damn good set of communication skills and then some.

The sense of 'touch' and 'smell' to the other person is lost, but 'sound' and 'visualising' is enhanced.
Not sure what the deal is for men, but for women, mental stimulation is a basic requirement before anything happens.

When you meet someone in person you exchange infomation, no?
Especially for women, going to a cafe to chat, or chatting over the phone is practically the same thing, it's the info we're after.
You go to a cafe, talk about each other, if it doesn't really click much it becomes awkward. If it clicks, the conversation works well.
Online is the same. There is not much difference between the two, except the location change.

However, when you watch a live feed to someone's rock show which you can't attend but you can support them online and easily share this info on FB, with everyone commenting in real time, this becomes an experience.
Online classes are also run this way as well.
It's a shared moment of seeing something live and participating even if no one is in the same physical space.

A memory is still created, it still will file under an 'event' with your friends or close ones. I'm seeing daily pictures of babies from mates around the world on FB every week, yet, I've not seen this child offline but I'm watching her grow and develop, that's an experience.

Keeping in touch online keeps the ties and bonds that you have with close people strong. I'm not sure what's limiting you from seeing the scope I'm talking about here since I've already mentioned it in my previous post, but there's no 'goodbye' about it.

A 'goodbye' is when you don't keep in touch with anyone no matter if they're 10mins down the road from you or living thousands of miles away abroad.

[Nightbat®]

Okay, imaginative experiences seem to be good enough for the modern world


But Sorry
You can show me hours of tapes of babies growing up, it's nothing compared to be there when a child grows up (didn't give a damn about the echo, the pictures or the movies of my little nephew,
but I was damn moved when he did his first steps on his own before my eyes)

Phonesex? It's PoV Porno without the images, that you can imagine it as real stuff doesn't make it real though,
having to bite your lip or scratch your back yourself to synthesize passion and thrill takes away much of the spontanity if you ask me

As for concerts: being squashed in the middle of the arena with your best buddy, blaring to the songs -or even by yourself- is not comparable to watching a on-line feed
Hell I've seen Iron Maiden't "Live after death" video, you think it even had the slightest emotional experience compared to going to the Ed Hunter tour?
I was at the Kiss reunionconcert in '96, freezing cold, but when the first notes started I instantly regained my warmth
seeing a live podcast certainly did NOT get the blood pumping



What you're pointing out are surrogates, I won't deny that they have value
life doesn't always allow you to have it all and you make due with what you have

I know hearing that it rains at your mom's place from your mom herself is a better experience than being told by the weatherman
But it's still a placeholder for being there looking at it raining with that same comment from your mom



You're not making memories by looking at pictures, you look at pictures to recall memories




And BTW

I'm having a field day with the Neg-reps since it actually shows/proves how much already gets lost with this kind of communication
I can post a smiley, but for some reason I don't need to do so in the 'real' world

[Random32]

Depends on how tightly you are attached to the physical world whether virtual experiences are inferior Experience is something that happens in the mind and I think you will experience virtually if you let go of the physical world as a requirement to experience.

There is nothing inherently superior about physical vs virtual experiences, just differences. Talking to friends over the internet while watching a live feed from a concert isn't the same as attending a concert, but its in no way a better or worse experience unless you think of it as such.

[Archon_Wing]

They are useful sometimes, but often it's too easy to get carried away. Also, privacy concerns.... damn e-stalkers. The internet can have a lot of creeps, so it's best to be careful since unless you know them IRL, they may not be who they seem. It would be most useful for people that have moved far away; but I don't see a need for it for people who I see regularly anyways.

[HasuMasu]

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

They are useful sometimes, but often it's too easy to get carried away. Also, privacy concerns.... damn e-stalkers. The internet can have a lot of creeps, so it's best to be careful since unless you know them IRL, they may not be who they seem. It would be most useful for people that have moved far away; but I don't see a need for it for people who I see regularly anyways.

Hahaha, no privacy settings will defeat my stalk-fu.

[pigoz]

I don't use facebook at all but find twitter to be really useful.

[Nightbat®]

Originally Posted by Random32

Depends on how tightly you are attached to the physical world whether virtual experiences are inferior Experience is something that happens in the mind and I think you will experience virtually if you let go of the physical world as a requirement to experience.

Like an MMORPG, where 'physical' is not appropriate, but you're still in a kind of experience

..but is that a surrogate of the real world? Or is it an actual 'Fantasy brought to life'

There is nothing inherently superior about physical vs virtual experiences, just differences. Talking to friends over the internet while watching a live feed from a concert isn't the same as attending a concert, but its in no way a better or worse experience unless you think of it as such

Don't confuse eating with a picture of food, because that's what you are doing

[Random32]

Originally Posted by Nightbat®

Don't confuse eating with a picture of food, because that's what you are doing

I'm saying that neither spending time making food nor spending time watching a cooking show is inherently better than the other.

[leehowachi]

its just the perfect thing for being lazy n socializing frm ur laptop by the bed :P