I spent most of yesterday evening enthralled by Facebook, the social networking site.
Unlike Myspace, it seems to be based more around people you already know, rather than collecting complete strangers along the way, which suits me. I find it hard enough these days keeping up with the friends I already have.
It’s actually insanely addictive, and I’ve faffed around adding photos and amending my profile (sorry, no links as it’s under my real name in an attempt to get back in contact with people from the past). It’s certainly much more user friendly and fun than Friends Reunited. You can also network with others in your region (if you so choose) and join various special interest groups.
I do have this nagging doubt that my age group isn’t exactly the target audience though. Partly because no-one in my school is listed earlier than the year 2000 or so, and partly because I only seem to have about 5 friends, yet everyone else a decade or so younger seems to have a few zillion.
The effect is that I feel I’m turning into one of those weird adults who pretend they’re “hip” to what the younger generation are up to, while really they’re just sniggering behind my back… It’s good future practise for embarrassing my children, anyway.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Alley Katt // 5th Jun 2007 at 7:52 pm
What you might find is that the other poeple who have zillions of friends probably already have myspace accounts and have imported the people from there. With me and my wife, there is five years between us and I quit myspace because I had 1 friend, and after a week she has 79.
It is not only who you know, but also the types of things you are into. For example, my wife is into Goth stuff and sick metal bands like Cradle of Filth. As a result, people with that idea in THEM will automatically go for that person. People a generation younger are more into hip hop slop, so they will network faster. Don’t get dispondant. I did a couple of weeks ago, and look what I did!
2 Dom // 6th Jun 2007 at 9:15 am
The thing you have to remember about Facebook is that it started 3 years ago at a single US University, and until recently was invite-only.
The vast majority of Facebook users are going to be of university age, simply because that’s how it originially developed.
But it’s actually an incredibly well designed and stable site, so I think you’ll find a lot more old friends on there in the next year or so. Us old people like Facebook because it’s genuinely a good way to keep up to date with friends and find old friends. It’s nothing like MySpace where the point it to be as much of an attention whore as possible.
Give it a while. It’s really only just beginning to take off outside the US.
3 Katherine // 6th Jun 2007 at 12:50 pm
I’ve recently found facebook and have been pleasantly surprised at how people have found me. I agree though that at the age of 31 I feel a bit older than many other people :-)
4 John Kirriemuir // 6th Jun 2007 at 6:31 pm
Agree with your comments re: Friends Reunited, and think Facebook could blow it out of the water:
http://www.silversprite.com/?p=318
5 Pewari // 6th Jun 2007 at 6:43 pm
Alley Katt: oh I’m not despondant, it was more an observation :) I don’t want to collect people, just get back in touch with old friends I drifted apart from. It suits me for that purpose :)
Dom: I didn’t know that was how it began. Makes sense :)
Katherine: nice to know there’s others whose teens have passed them by using it successfully ;)
John: great article on FR vs Facebook – I found myself agreeing with all of it.
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