samwise samwise@bagshot-row.org wrote:
A reminder that we voted to try out Facebook this month, so I've signed up (with this email address). If y'all want to do the same, we can either try and find each other on the site, or you can post the email addresses you've registered with here for a quick method of identifying ourselves.
Woot! I have friends.
Though none of you lot (that I have found, anyway) have bothered to admit to being a friend of mine, you miserable lot.
On a more serious note, I've signed up, found a few friends, joined a few groups, but now can't help thinking: Now what? Is it just a way to keep in touch? I managed to do that before reasonably well, using (e)mail and the telephone. Perhaps I'm just a luddite.
Also, what's in it for Facebook? They've taken no money off me, I've seen no adverts, so what revenue stream do they have?
Greg (going now, remembering a vow taken long ago not to write emails late at night after a few (or more) drinks).
On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 01:09:52AM +0100, Greg Thomas wrote:
Also, what's in it for Facebook? They've taken no money off me, I've seen no adverts, so what revenue stream do they have?
I've been caught by facebook in the past week, but there is advertising.... and plenty of it just it is done in a relatively unobtrusive way. Are you running some kind of adblocker?
I must say that I was quite anti-facebook given how many other now defunct social networks I've been a member of in the past but this one at least lets me keep in passing contact with a few freinds who live in different bits of the UK who I wouldn't /normally/ phone/contact and see what they are up to. Perhaps it helps relieve the guilt complex of not keeping in touch with friends? although I must say it has been slightly useful so far for me just not so useful for people who I am in contact with every few days or so but the people who you only think of rarely.
Adam
On Sun, 2007-07-08 at 01:38 +0100, Adam Bower wrote:
I must say that I was quite anti-facebook given how many other now defunct social networks I've been a member of in the past but this one at least lets me keep in passing contact with a few freinds who live in different bits of the UK who I wouldn't /normally/ phone/contact and see what they are up to.
I somehow joined Facebook ages ago without actually remembering I had done so or why. It is only today that I have actually logged in to do anything with my profile.
I must say at this point I am wondering what all the fuss is about and already some brokenness has bugged me.
The most annoying thing is that I get those horrible "type the letters you see in the image" things every time I try and add a friend. There is a link that offers to verify my account by me typing in my phone number, but this fails when I do so saying it can't verify my provider.
Worse than that the whole add friends dialogue actually excludes those with poor vision who are unable to read the security check image (hey I have 20-20 vision and I struggle enough), where is the button to read out the characters ? (plenty of other sites manage it)
I have found a couple of people at previous places of employment, and their profiles say they worked there, but when I try and search for that company to find more friends it returns no results.
It isn't obvious how you add a company or a regional network. My Home town does not have a regional network and only one of the companies I have worked at seem to have one.
Maybe once I have built up my networks a bit I will start to see the point but at the moment....feh
Perhaps it helps relieve the guilt complex of not keeping in touch with friends? although I must say it has been slightly useful so far for me just not so useful for people who I am in contact with every few days or so but the people who you only think of rarely.
Adam
Wayne Stallwood ALUGlist@digimatic.co.uk wrote:
I somehow joined Facebook ages ago without actually remembering [...] Worse than that the whole add friends dialogue actually excludes those with poor vision who are unable to read the security check image (hey I have 20-20 vision and I struggle enough), where is the button to read out the characters ? (plenty of other sites manage it)
I routinely fail those eye tests a few times, so it sounds like I won't be on Facebook in the near future then! By the way, don't be fooled by Google's Blogger service: its eye-test may have a "read it out" link, but that often returns 404 Not Found for me.
As Planet ALUG readers will know, I've recently joined LinkedIn and been fairly impressed with how easy it is to use, if a little slow. I'll write more on the web as I get further with it, I expect. I'm also on SoFlow, which can be interesting in its forums, but hasn't done much for me so far and has a few accessibility problems.
I've been on the Norfolk e-club for a while too. That one has done absolutely *nothing* for me and occasionally sends me vague alert emails which are too vague to make me actually look at the site. Now I've moved, I should probably kill that membership.
Regards,
On 08/07/07, MJ Ray mjr@phonecoop.coop wrote:
Wayne Stallwood ALUGlist@digimatic.co.uk wrote:
I somehow joined Facebook ages ago without actually remembering [...] Worse than that the whole add friends dialogue actually excludes those with poor vision who are unable to read the security check image (hey I have 20-20 vision and I struggle enough), where is the button to read out the characters ? (plenty of other sites manage it)
I routinely fail those eye tests a few times, so it sounds like I won't be on Facebook in the near future then! By the way, don't be fooled by Google's Blogger service: its eye-test may have a "read it out" link, but that often returns 404 Not Found for me.
As Planet ALUG readers will know, I've recently joined LinkedIn and been fairly impressed with how easy it is to use, if a little slow. I'll write more on the web as I get further with it, I expect. I'm also on SoFlow, which can be interesting in its forums, but hasn't done much for me so far and has a few accessibility problems.
I've been on the Norfolk e-club for a while too. That one has done absolutely *nothing* for me and occasionally sends me vague alert emails which are too vague to make me actually look at the site. Now I've moved, I should probably kill that membership.
Facebook steadfastly refuses to accept my email address saying that it is not a valid address. Well it works for the alug list and every other site I've needed to use it for. Quite why mail@mydomain.co.uk isn't valid escapes me so I'll confine it to to my room 101 with my yahoo account and various other badly programed crap.
Cheers, BJ
On Sun, 2007-07-08 at 23:40 +0100, John Woodard wrote:
Facebook steadfastly refuses to accept my email address saying that it is not a valid address. Well it works for the alug list and every other site I've needed to use it for. Quite why mail@mydomain.co.uk isn't valid escapes me so I'll confine it to to my room 101 with my yahoo account and various other badly programed crap.
John,
When posting to the list please be aware that there are many different age groups who may be reading be be aware of the language you are using. Some may find your use of the word "yahoo" offensive.
:)
Seriously though, I can only think that some trap is thinking that mail@ is a bogus email address which is more than a little braindead.
Personally I still assign different local-part's (blah@) to different services which in the case of facebook does make it a bit harder for people to find me. But does at least mean that when someone sells my soul to spammer scum I can start to work out who it was.
On 09/07/07, Wayne Stallwood ALUGlist@digimatic.co.uk wrote:
When posting to the list please be aware that there are many different age groups who may be reading be be aware of the language you are using. Some may find your use of the word "yahoo" offensive.
Oops sorry least I didn't say Hotmail ! :-)
Seriously though, I can only think that some trap is thinking that mail@ is a bogus email address which is more than a little braindead.
Thats exactly what I thought iof they are that branless I'll vote with my feet (or mouse)
Personally I still assign different local-part's (blah@) to different services which in the case of facebook does make it a bit harder for people to find me. But does at least mean that when someone sells my soul to spammer scum I can start to work out who it was.
I really ought to do this but I'm too lazy I s'pose I'd better start doing this to avoid such pitfalls.
Cheers, BJ
On 08-Jul-07 23:17:00, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
When posting to the list please be aware that there are many different age groups who may be reading be be aware of the language you are using. Some may find your use of the word "yahoo" offensive.
:)
googloogloogloogloogloog.......
:) Ted
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 09-Jul-07 Time: 13:18:20 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 01:18:38PM +0100, Ted Harding wrote:
On 08-Jul-07 23:17:00, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
When posting to the list please be aware that there are many different age groups who may be reading be be aware of the language you are using. Some may find your use of the word "yahoo" offensive.
:)
googloogloogloogloogloog.......
Watch out, that *really* might offend people (/me waves to slef).
Of course, the fact that google is still the only search engine that gives me the data I need when I need it is neither here nor there... anyone fancy setting up an ethical search engine that's not trying to take over the world and just sticks to actually making searching easy (rather than trying to take over with "office" products, blogging products etc).
Cheers,
On 08-Jul-07 22:40:11, John Woodard wrote:
Facebook steadfastly refuses to accept my email address saying that it is not a valid address. Well it works for the alug list and every other site I've needed to use it for. Quite why mail@mydomain.co.uk isn't valid escapes me so I'll confine it to to my room 101 with my yahoo account and various other badly programed crap.
Cheers, BJ
Ahh, Room 101!
Just out of interest, I started up my browser and pointed it at:
and got:
You just landed on www.johnwoodard.co.uk content to follow.
Now is a good time for using the back function of your browser.
Well, since I'd newly launched it, the "back function" left me where I was -- in Room 101?
:) Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 09-Jul-07 Time: 00:18:00 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On 09/07/07, Ted Harding ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
Ahh, Room 101!
Just out of interest, I started up my browser and pointed it at:
and got:
You just landed on www.johnwoodard.co.uk content to follow.
Now is a good time for using the back function of your browser.
Well, since I'd newly launched it, the "back function" left me where I was -- in Room 101?
Aha! So my evil plan to send all web users into room 101 is working!
/BJ stalks off uttering his best pantomime evil cackle :-)
Cheers, BJ
On 08/07/07, Wayne Stallwood ALUGlist@digimatic.co.uk wrote:
I must say at this point I am wondering what all the fuss is about and already some brokenness has bugged me.
The real value of the site, is the connections with other people you know using the site - it's like a big directory. If it takes off as well as friendsreunited.co.uk did, you stand a chance of finding old friends without paying the fr. utd. annual charge. :) If the bugs and american-isms are really grating, you can always refer people to your email address off-line, if someone hunts you down through it. There's no killer features and stuff, over and above it's value as a directory, AFAICT, though - you can do all the photo sharing and IMing junk without the need of the site.
I have found a couple of people at previous places of employment, and their profiles say they worked there, but when I try and search for that company to find more friends it returns no results.
It isn't obvious how you add a company or a regional network. My Home town does not have a regional network and only one of the companies I have worked at seem to have one.
This seems to be a major drawback and might cost them users over here - it's still very US-centric and there's only about five major UK cities listed, which is rubbish. I don't want to sign up as a London member when I clearly live 100 miles away! The unclear process for sorting that out and setting up a definitive network for a company (particularly when you no longer work there, and therefore don't have an active email address for that company's domain name) are real issues, I think. Originally, you couldn't use the site at all without a university email account - they broadened the scope, but there's still a lot of silly limitations in place.
Maybe once I have built up my networks a bit I will start to see the point but at the moment....feh
Make sure all your contact information is up to date, add your secondary school, college, universities and places of work ... then search for any groups like ALUG or other interests ... join them and then just see what happens. Search occasionally for old friends and you'll be surprised who crops up. And once you've found one, it's easy to find others by searching through their friends lists ...
You do have to put up with all the annoying cr*p requests like people biting you to make you a Zombie ... that stuff, unfortunately, seems to go hand in hand with web 2.0 sites. :)
Of course, once you've re-established contact with peeps from your past ... I'm not sure whether there's going to be much of a long-term reason to keep coming back to it. I suspect not, and once the flash in the pan has faded, everyone will move on to something else.
On 08/07/07, MJ Ray mjr@phonecoop.coop wrote:
As Planet ALUG readers will know, I've recently joined LinkedIn and been fairly impressed with how easy it is to use, if a little slow. I'll write more on the web as I get further with it, I expect. I'm also on SoFlow, which can be interesting in its forums, but hasn't done much for me so far and has a few accessibility problems.
I read that a lot of LinkedIn users were slowly moving over to Facebook, though I don't know how much truth there is in that. Certainly, the idea of being contacted by a lot of business contacts hasn't convinced me that I want to sign up to it as well yet. :)
Not heard of SoFlow before ... is that a business-centric one? Is there anything unique to it?
Peter.
On 08/07/07, Adam Bower adam@thebowery.co.uk wrote:
On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 01:09:52AM +0100, Greg Thomas wrote:
Also, what's in it for Facebook? They've taken no money off me, I've seen no adverts, so what revenue stream do they have?
Are you running some kind of adblocker?
A fair point! I'd all but forgotten about AdBlock Plus. I've just disabled it temporarily, and sure enough, an advert appeared.
I'll now have a momentary feeling of guilt as I remember that I'm deliberately avoiding seeing the very thing that is funding the site.
There, it passed, I feel better now.
Greg
On Sun, 8 Jul 2007, Greg Thomas wrote:
Also, what's in it for Facebook? They've taken no money off me, I've seen no adverts, so what revenue stream do they have?
Wasn't Google like that back when they started? The bigger Facebook get, the more free advertising they get and can then place adverts when they get big enough. Being popular and well-known is a huge advantage for them, even if they don't get any money from it.
Srdjan
Woot! I have friends.
Though none of you lot (that I have found, anyway) have bothered to admit to being a friend of mine, you miserable lot.
Sorry, Greg - I'm afraid my home PC and work laptop (which I can hook up at home) have all chosen this past week to die. :( So, unfortunately, my Facebook shenanigans have been curtailed as I try to hastily build some replacements ... I have seen your request, just can't action it yet! Same goes for anyone else who thinks I've ignored them on Facebook - I'll get back on as soon as I can! (annoyingly, it's blocked at work so I can't even use a temporary machine there to authorise the request).
On a more serious note, I've signed up, found a few friends, joined a few groups, but now can't help thinking: Now what? Is it just a way to keep in touch? I managed to do that before reasonably well, using (e)mail and the telephone. Perhaps I'm just a luddite.
The benefit of Facebook is the ability to hook up with people you've lost touch with, IMHO. It's a similar model to Friends Reunited but noone pays anything. :) This means, it only works if it takes off in the UK - I've avoided messing with myspace thus far because they're mostly the province of US-dwellers (or nerds - but I'm more likely to still be in touch with them!). However, Facebook is beginning to take off in the UK, in my experience, which is why there's a benefit to signing up - I've already been in touch with at least one Uni. friend I'd lost contact with ...
That said, because the value is solely in the relationships, the site will only be useful for as long as it's being used by the populist mob. If they choose to move on to something else (myspace, once the darling of social networking, is haemorrhaging active users atm from what I've heard), Facebook will lose it's value.
Also, what's in it for Facebook? They've taken no money off me, I've seen no adverts, so what revenue stream do they have?
There's definitely ads ... thank the maker for AdBlock Plus. :)
(going now, remembering a vow taken long ago not to write emails late at night after a few (or more) drinks).
What a silly vow ... that's how all the fun conversations start! :)
Peter.
-
Adam Bower -
Brett Parker -
Greg Thomas -
John Woodard -
MJ Ray -
samwise -
Srdjan Todorovic -
ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk -
Wayne Stallwood