Wikipedia says, "Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004…with more than 500 million active users in July 2010. Users can add people as friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. ….Facebook allows anyone who declares themselves to be aged 13 or older to become a member of the website….Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade 'best-of' list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabble before Facebook?" Social Networking, huh? Well, I guess that's a nice way to put it!
I became part of the Facebook community kind of through the back door. There was a picture that someone at WABC showed me of a much younger me sitting at the board in the old WABC studios at 1330 Avenue of the Americas (in fact, it's this very same picture that graces my profile on this blog). He told me that Phil on the WPLJ side of the floor had found it on the internet. When I asked Phil where he'd gotten it, he emailed me a web address. Turned out it was from someone's Facebook page, and the only way I was able to get the picture was to register for Facebook…so I did!
Now let me stop this narrative and give you a little background. I had been strictly forbidden by my 3 children (Bill 27, Krissi and Kenny 23) from joining Facebook. They felt that this was something that belonged to them, if you will, and that they didn't think it was a place for their folks. I honestly understood that, as I really didn't want to know every little detail of their young adult lives, so Facebook wasn't even something on my radar…till this picture came up.
Well, I completed the sign up, signed in, found the picture, downloaded it, signed off, and thought no more about Facebook….until the first person found me a couple of months later! Out of the blue there was a notification from Facebook sitting in my email inbox that I had a "friend request". A friend request??? What the heck is that, I thought. So I followed the link and signed into Facebook. I don't remember who that first "friend" was, but I know they were someone from my past who I never in a million years thought I'd ever hear from again. WOW, I thought, this could be cool! So they had the hook in!
I spent some time and filled in some of the background information that they wanted. Told them school names, where I'd worked, etcetera. - No, I didn't give them a lot of info, so don't worry that I committed the Facebook sin of telling too much – and signed off. The next thing I know, my inbox is full of notifications of friend requests from folks. They were people I use to work with at WABC, WHN or WOR, people from high school, people from college, the sister of my best friend, and lots more! There were people I hadn't heard from in years, and people I see every day at work. Even Gloria who I went to first grade, with and who played Mrs. Clause to my Santa in our first grade Christmas play at Garden School!
I tried to be very conservative at first and didn't seek out friends, but rather let them find me. I didn't want to be one of those folks who worried about how many friends they had, and who seemed to need to win the numbers game, but eventually I too started looking for folks from my past. I am still conservative and won't accept friend requests from people I don't know (why would you…what are they, your audience??) and only have about 150 friends. In the couple of months I have been involved in Facebook, I have discovered some interesting things about my "friends", and I bet these same types exist on everyone's friend list!
The first Facebook member is the person that has to tell you EVERYTHING that is gong on in their life! I mean the ones that say things like, "taking a nap now, then out to dinner with family" or "rotten day at work…stopping at the bar in Penn on the way home." These folks also seem to be the ones with a smart phone and manage to give you up to the minute updates on their every situation. "WOW…long line of traffic to get into the parking lot at Jones Beach" or "I'm really wasted..hope I can make it back to the bar from the men's room". The more obsessive ones also seem to have a camera with them at all times, and there is almost always a photo tagged to the update!
The second type of member is the one that seems to be on 24 hours a day! Sign on at 7:30 in the morning and they're there. Sign in at noon…yep, there too. 3PM…you got it…still on! 10 at night…ditto. Can't sleep and you're cruising at 3 AM and they are still on! Now, perhaps this is a case of folks that never sign off, but it's really strange when they always seem to be on line! This person is also bound to be the one signed on via their office computer and sometimes even the ones that bitch about their boss or work load!
Then there are the ones that post links to anything and everything you can think of! These folks obviously spend lots of time everyday on the internet looking for things to link to their Facebook wall for the enjoyment of the rest of us. I want to grab some of them and say, "Hey…I can use Google too"…but I don't.
Then there are the game players. You can read about their crops and pigs in Farmville, cheer along with them as the get gems, and God knows what else! I suffered through these friends till I realized you could tell Facebook not to show them. Thank you Facebook!
I hear a lot of people my age bemoaning what the younger generation shares with the world on Facebook, and the amount of time they spend on line. You know those inappropriate posts we've all seen…like the picture of you doing a keg stand last weekend, or the obviously drunken pictures from the strip club, or the bitching about your boss, workmates, family, or whatever else you can imagine. "These kids today, (him…sounds like a line from Bye Bye Birdie) this living on the internet is going to come back and bite them in the ass!" Well, I do believe that, but it seems to me that there are lots of folks of an older demographic doing the exact same thing! I see posts every day from people who's 20s are but a dim memory posting complaints about their boss or work load (and during the hours they're at work), putting up pictures that are at best of a questionable nature, posting hundreds of times a week, telling me intimate details of their life, and just sharing too much information! I heard two people complaining recently about a mutual Facebook friend who was doing exactly that. I had to laugh when one of them said to the other, "Well what do you expect from a 65 year old man who spends all day on Facebook!"
So Facebook…wonderful tool or curse? I can see how it can go both ways and I guess a lot of it is your choice of friends, kind of like in real life! Did you know that there is a Facebook command that allows you to ignore your "friends" without them knowing? I tell you…gotta hand it to those 4 Harvard students who put Facebook together. Geniuses!!
Ya nailed it!! :-)
ReplyDeleteHey Frank..Needed 1 good neighbor for my huge farm...Interested??? You sound like a real farmer at heart!!! If not i also have a great winery, up and coming with the finest of wines on the Northeast Coast..why I could even name them after you!!! always in need of a good worker....Just pop on over anytime you are in the area....Ps when I am not at my 2 businesses I also spend some time at Hampton with a certain Susie...!!! Great stories..:))
ReplyDeleteHere are some interesting facts I just read on the INTERNET about providing too much info via Facebook and the consequences...courtesy of CBS's Marketwatch:
ReplyDeleteYour Birth Date and Place
Sure, you can say what day you were born, but if you provide the year and where you were born too, you've just given identity thieves a key to stealing your financial life, said Givens. A study done by Carnegie Mellon showed that a date and place of birth could be used to predict most — and sometimes all — of the numbers in your Social Security number, she said.
Vacation Plans
There may be a better way to say "Rob me, please" than posting something along the lines of: "Count-down to Maui! Two days and Ritz Carlton, here we come!" on Twitter. But it's hard to think of one. Post the photos on Facebook when you return, if you like. But don't invite criminals in by telling them specifically when you'll be gone.
[See Burglars Picked Houses Based on Facebook Updates]
Home Address
Do I have to elaborate? A study recently released by the Ponemon Institute found that users of Social Media sites were at greater risk of physical and identity theft because of the information they were sharing. Some 40% listed their home address on the sites; 65% didn't even attempt to block out strangers with privacy settings. And 60% said they weren't confident that their "friends" were really just people they know.
Confessionals
You may hate your job; lie on your taxes; or be a recreational user of illicit drugs, but this is no place to confess. Employers commonly peruse social networking sites to determine who to hire — and, sometimes, who to fire. Need proof? In just the past few weeks, an emergency dispatcher was fired in Wisconsin for revealing drug use; a waitress got canned for complaining about customers and the Pittsburgh Pirate's mascot was dumped for bashing the team on Facebook. One study done last year estimated that 8% of companies fired someone for "misuse" of social media.
Password Clues
If you've got online accounts, you've probably answered a dozen different security questions, telling your bank or brokerage firm your Mom's maiden name; the church you were married in; or the name of your favorite song. Got that same stuff on the information page of your Facebook profile? You're giving crooks an easy way to guess your passwords.
Risky Behaviors
You take your classic Camaro out for street racing, soar above the hills in a hang glider, or smoke like a chimney? Insurers are increasingly turning to the web to figure out whether their applicants and customers are putting their lives or property at risk, according to Insure.com. So far, there's no efficient way to collect the data, so cancellations and rate hikes are rare. But the technology is fast evolving, according to a paper written by Celent, a financial services research and consulting firm.