With the ambitous vision Facebook has of being the OS for the Internet, it would be hard not to blog about Facebook. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see Yahoo as a widget on Facebook, after Facebook turned down the $1.6B offer?

Personally, the most interesting “feature” for me is that Facebook is the ‘website about nothing’.

There is no “purpose” for me to go to Facebook. It’s not like I need to make a hotel reservation, buy a book, or even find a contact that draws me to facebook. Yet I still do. It’s the digital water cooler. The place where “the raw information” gets exchanged.

Besides face-to-face interactions, what other forms of communications do this? Definately not e-mail… Think about it, aren’t you required to put in “To:” and a “Subject:”?

I have been friends with Mike for a number of years and while his petite efforts to look into SJM’s BD are cute, it and Facebook’s attempt to get us to learn about and make efforts on a buddy’s birthday are downright scandalous. Birthdays are something my wife is excellent at remembering – why – because she and her girlfriends expect each other to remember them. In fact if there is no communication effort made on a birthday in the female world it is a social slap in the face. Why do guys not care about birthdays, the same reason guys do not “chat” on the phone with other guys, or gossip, or need to stay in touch. Guys do call to set up a time to get together for a beer, or a game of something. It is a simple fantastic male social pleasure of low expectation. The only expectation in the guy world is that once you do get together for a beer, a game or whatever, is that you pick up where you left off be it a week later, a month later or a couple years later, it should be like you saw each other yesterday. The only difference is that the bald spot is bigger, the girth is greater or the girl who remembers you and your friends birthdays is now your wife. Looking forward to seeing SJM this summer in Toronto

Oh, and Shaherose…

Facebook reminds me to wish you a very happy birthday.

People are always wondering what Facebook is about, why and how people use it and what the heck we might do with all those additional features.
I use Facebook for fun, to keep in touch with my family who are all over the world/country and find out the latest. (And I must admit, have recently been using the birthday feature with friends in my network, cause it’s fun). I use Linked-In for my professional network.
These new tools give me the great new capability of keeping in touch without “high touch” until they or I need/want to.
With respect to the academic research angle, I totally agree, it’ll be interesting to see what they make of poke etc but these news stories feel more like the result of the swarming mentality or buzz that surrounds the product. I remember talking with researchers in the early days of internet about the sociological implications of connectivity and what was called “peer to peer” computing at the time (an early version of social networking now). I’d love to find out what happened with those discussions. If I recall correctly there are some research papers coming out now based on studying this for the past several years vs the current focus just on Facebook or twittr or the tool of the day.