Love Facebook? How do you use it?

[Pingfah]

I use it only to communicate with my personal friends, arrange social activities etc. I have it set so people can't get anything useful about me unless they are my friend, and I am very careful about who I add. I have even refused all my family except for my sister. Not that I don't like them, I just don't want them to know about my personal life. They probably would not approve of some of it.

I don't use any apps, or subscribe to anybody, but a lot of the good stuff shows up in my feed because my friends subscribe to all that stuff. I do enjoy I Fucking Love Science.

[scotcat]

I used it initially because two of my closest friends moved away - one to western Ireland and the other to Edinburgh - and this was a fun way for us to keep in touch. Since then, my brother and his wife, who live in the south east of england, have had two kids and I've also recently discovered family in South Africa.

So, for me, facebook has been great. It's hard being hundreds of miles away from family - I miss my nieces tremendously - and Facebook keeps me up to date with photos.

[Josan]

I use it because it's something of a necessary evil for communication these days. I rarely post anything. When I do, now it's more of an cynical experiment. Case in point, posted about our latest ezine issue, something we put time, effort and care in to. Next to no response. Post about my "UFO" sighting New Year's. Lots of response.

[thestrangequark]

I use Facebook almost exclusively to assure my family I am still alive without having to actually talk to them.

[Warp Coil]

Facebook is a good way to keep track of friends and to organize social events. Everyone seems to be so busy. It's much easier to create an Event on Facebook than to contact people individually. It's also a good communication tool and a good way to share photos.

[tomalak301]

I use facebook for a lot of reasons. I play some of the games, but mainly chat with my friend through the messaging thing. I'm always looking for new ways to use facebook, and there are days when I wish we had the original college facebook back. Considering that's not going to happen, might as well adapt.

[Ood Sigma]

1001001 wrote:

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Well, I do not have a Facebook account, and I doubt I ever will,

I imagine there are many variables in this equation. Family and friends on Facebook, where you live, how old you are, etc.

If it works for you, more power to you.

As for me, I'm not interested. If I care about you, we are already keeping in touch. I don't care about stupid things people I barely know are doing. That's my perspective, but I understand others have a different point of view.

So I guess I'm saying I don't "hate" Facebook, I just don't care to be part of it.

This sums up my views about it almost completely. Except that I do believe it can become a self-destructive obsession (like anything), and I am personally dealing with someone who is in this situation, so I have a little bit of hate for it at the moment.

[Tora Ziyal]

Gul Re'jal wrote:

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I'm not a collector of strangers

Me neither. I have 43 friends, mostly people I know in real life, plus a couple from here and a few I met on Facebook itself. And I have about the same number of pages "liked."

What I love about Facebook:

1. FB private messaging is the most convenient way to communicate with certain friends.

2. There's an active private group of chordoma survivors, patients, and families. It's virtually the only place to meet other people who are dealing with such a rare disease.

3. It's the only way I can get my young-adult godchildren to (occasionally ) communicate with me.

I enjoy commenting on some pages, especially the NYT and local newspaper. But I don't update my status all that often, and I never play games. In fact, I have all apps blocked and my privacy settings as tight as possible.

[Zion Ravescene]

I just post what I like, and like what others post.

[Miss Chicken]

The current emergency situation in Tasmania has showed just how useful Facebook can be.


My sister's friend Janet lived outside one of the towns that was under threat from bushfire. Though my sister had had a text from Janet on Friday night, fire flared up in Bicheno again yesterday and we became concerned about Janet. My sister who didn't know how to use Facebook (she had only joined up a couple of days before), telephone me to tell me she couldn't reach Janet by phone. and ask if I could find Janet on Facebook. Janet has a common surname and there many women with her name on Facebook but none giving there place of residence as Bicheno. So then I had to look through the feeds of those Janets who didn't list their place name. My sister had told me that our Janet had a saluki and I found one feed with a picture of a saluki. Looking through other photos I found one that look it could be a beach near Bicheno so I sent a link to my sister. She confirmed it was Janet and we kept watching the feed. We found out she , and her three dogs, had made it to muster point at Cranbrook but then the police told everyone to leave there and drive to Swansea. Janet ended up on the wharf at Swansea but later, after being told that her house had survived the fires, she sneaked back and informed her Facebook friends that her house, horses and chickens were all OK.

Many other people have discovered the whereabouts of loved ones in similar ways to ours.

A page Tassie Fires - We Can Help has worked wonders. Through it people have gotten information out of what is needed and what they could give. Such as

Farmers in the north of the state started a Hay Drive and were able to arrange a delivery point in the south and arrangement to get it out to southern farms using volunteers is being arranged.

Vets in Hobart have offered free boarding to cats if their owners are going into emergency accommodation that won't accept their cats.

Bororong Wildlife Park has offered to take in injured wildlife and also has a field in which homeless farm animals can be placed.

The Hobart Showgrounds have also offered camping sites for people with animals and also to set up some boarding facilities for animals whose owners cannot stay with them.

An owner of a dog begged for it to be rescued. As the fires approached Eaglehawk Neck the owners had taken the dog to the relative safety of the jetty and tied it up and then gone off to fight the fires. The owners ended up being evacuated and couldn't get back to the dog. After a post on Facebook the dog was rescued and reunited with its owners.

On Facebook people were told were the could drop off bottled water and food for the firefighters.

this are only some of the ways that people have been using Facebook to help during the emergency.

[JoeZhang]

This is a minor thing but it really bugs me about facebook - it has my home town in the wrong country (Wales rather than England) and it's impossible to fix - you can edit places *within* a town or city but you can't fix an incorrect one.

[Tora Ziyal]

^Yeah, FB insists that the graduate school I attended is in a different city than it really is. Won't let me change it, either.

[Ar-Pharazon]

I only went on Facebook as a platform...to voice my aspirations for world domination.

[TorontoTrekker]

I just use it for keeping up to date on what my friends are doing, and let them keep up to date on what I'm doing (assuming they care). I don't play games, or use any apps, or anything like that.

Occasionally there are some interesting topics posted which generate a lot of conversation - conversations we probably would have in person if we were together, but we have them on Facebook because it's more immediate. You can talk about something right away rather than waiting a few weeks until the next time we see each other.

Right now, I have 635 friends (though some of them are accounts that have been deactivated, so it's probably closer to 625). They tend to fall into four major categories:

- people I know through fandom
- people I know through this place (which is, I suppose, a subset of fandom)
- people I went to school with (mostly university and high school, though there are a few who predate high school)
- people I know through other random activities (such as the bowling league I belong to), people I was friends with on Livejournal when I used it, etc.

I have very few friends who don't fall into any of these categories, and they tend to be people who have sent me friend requests and they seemed harmless enough, so I accepted them.

Every once in a while, though, I get a friend request that just confuses me. Usually they're from authors with whom I have several mutual friends, but I'm not sure why they're friending me. It's not as though they're likely to have heard of me (though I've certainly heard of them). Not that I'm complaining, because it's interesting to keep up on what they're working on.

[Tora Ziyal]

TorontoTrekker wrote:

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Every once in a while, though, I get a friend request that just confuses me. Usually they're from authors with whom I have several mutual friends, but I'm not sure why they're friending me...

Maybe to get their own friend count up? Or, less cynically, because they've seen you on their friends pages and think you might be interesting.