> Facebook keeps me connected to folks I care deeply about who aren’t nearby.
As soon as I saw it, I said to myself: "boy oh boy, he better give some hard evidence." The article goes on even without providing anecdotal evidence, let alone anything to the extent I was expecting or hoping. In fact, the entire discussion seems to be about the hiding feature. Yeah, everyone knows about it (and more and more people are using it), but I'm not sure how using a destructive feature of a service makes the service more necessary (I would argue for the opposite). If I hide 90% of my "friends" from my feed, for example, what's the point of Facebook? Apart from the ego-boosting friend-count (which I might also hide).
Now, going back to the initial (bolded!) argument: Facebook keeps me connected to folks I care deeply about who aren’t nearby. I think that this is just simply not true. Of course, a definition of "care deeply" would be needed, but my assumption here is that we're talking about moms, dads, sisters, brothers, aunts, BFFs, and the like -- NOT ex-girlfriends/boyfriends or classmates from high school that helped us out that one time on that one biology project in freshman year. If I only contacted my mom or dad through Facebook, my parents would first of all be quite mad -- and second of all, our relationship would suffer. People that I care deeply about get emails, phone calls, Skype calls, text messages, sometimes even snail-mail from me! I'm not sure how the OP expects us to connect Facebook to "caring deeply." Again, some evidence (or an actual argument) would've been nice.
I don't hate Facebook, but more often than not, I find myself just using it when I'm bored and semi-creeping around seeing what X or Y is up to and randomly clicking on that "cute girl that's a friend of a friend of a friend" (incidentally, this is what most people use it for). "Creeping on Facebook," has in fact, become a relatively common colloquialism; I wouldn't even attribute a negative quality to the idea, but I would argue it's a fundamental failure of FB (and something that should capitalize on). I posted about this before, but I really believe that the next "big social thing" will be a start-up that will somehow make it easy to approach people you don't know and spark up a conversation. There are so many people on FB, and yet most of us hide 90% of the people we're friends with and we don't add the ones we might find interesting but don't know. That doesn't seem "just fine" to me.
What, exactly, do you expect in terms of hard evidence from someone who is claiming they find Facebook useful? Do you expect to get a spreadsheet of their usage activity and a split test they ran where they defriended half of their closest friends and tried using e-mail for a week? The only people who can share "hard evidence" of engagement data of the Facebook news feed are Facebook themselves, and they are not going to do that.
When it comes to understanding user satisfaction, anecdotes count a lot, particularly when those anecdotes re-enforce the thesis of a product by example.
You raise the question of what is the point of Facebook if you hide 90% of your "friends". Just asking this question shows that you don't really get what the author is saying. Putting quotes around "friends" tells me you are missing the point that the author is, in fact, leaving left un-hid people who meet two attributes: are legitimate close friends/relatives and post interesting and meaningful content. What remains is a one-of-a-kind stream of content that provides him/her with the ability to feel they are in tune with the lives of people who they are no longer nearby.
People who come to HN and rail on Facebook about privacy concerns and ethics have a point. People who come on HN and rail on Facebook The Product are missing the point. If Facebook's news feed is not engaging, it means one of two things: you have over-friended and not hidden people who post bad content, or you are not connected to any people who post content on Facebook that you enjoy. There are many, many people that do not fit in either of these categories.
I think you missed my point. I expect hard evidence (or even anecdotal evidence!) when making the following claim: "Facebook keeps me connected to folks I care deeply about who aren’t nearby."
A) I think that care deeply needs to be defined.
B) My opinion is that FB is too superficial to merit any kind of "deep connection." Here is where some evidence would have been nice.
B.1) Even so, considering that (just about) everything on FB is semi-public, I'm not sure how anything posted on FB would be conducive to a personal and deep relationship with anyone. Unless we're only talking about private messages sent via FB messenger or something (but FB as a whole is a different kind of animal).
I wasn't railing on FB the Product, as you call it. But I think that the new generation is looking for something more substantive. (There have been slews of such articles [providing hard evidence, incidentally] lately.) I think I'd also be looking for something more substantive (even though I'm 27). My point is that it doesn't seem possible to maintain a personal and deep connection with just about anyone through FB (given the semi-private nature of the service); saying otherwise is begging the question: how, exactly, do you maintain this relationship merely though the superficiality of FB?
I don't see how this line of argument can be productive at all. Basically what you are saying is this person should go into detail about the specifics of individual interactions with their friends and family on Facebook, and use that as some type of "evidence" that those relationships are "deep."
The result of this, of course, will be skeptics conjuring up their own litmus tests for what constitutes a "deep" relationship in a way that the author's examples fall outside of that definition. Or, they will reframe the author's examples in other media or means and explain how those interactions would somehow be more meaningful than if they were happening on Facebook. This objectification of human relationships will, of course, be incredibly shallow and offensive to many people.
When you are dealing with people's personal lives and how they value relationships, it's pretty hard to come up with some objective measure of value beyond the self-evaluation of the people in the relationships themselves. Since otherwise, you are by definition being judgmental.
So then, are claims like "Facebook keeps me connected to folks I care deeply about who aren’t nearby." completely frivolous? I don't think so.
I'm not asking for the lurid details of a romantic relationship here, just some anecdotes that prove exactly how Facebook (as opposed to the myriad of other communication software: IM, email, Skype, etc.) helped foster a "deep relationship."
Someone argued that the OP and I have different definitions of deep. This could very well be the case. I consider deep relationships to be ones that I have with my family, best friends, romantic interest, and maybe some extended family or family friends here and there. If Facebook would disappear tomorrow, my relationship with the aforementioned groups of people wouldn't suffer one bit. But I could, as always, be mistaken.
First of all, everything on FB is as public as the poster decides to make it. If you put in a tiny amount of effort, you can separate your friends into groups and have your posts by default only visible by a selected group of friends. (Funny thing is that when Google came out with circles for G+, the people who raved about it never realized the same feature was available at FB for ages. Granted, the circle metaphor and UI made the feature easier to use in G+, but the functionality was always there at FB). Really, the only privacy issue with FB is controlling what other people post about you (i.e., your friend takes a picture of you and posts it to their friends).
Secondly, I don't think anyone has claimed that they maintain a deep relationship using FB only. Like I mention in a nearby reply, having the constant superficial connection through FB strengthens the actual time spent together.
I agree with this and the OP - but in my case Facebook has brought me closer to the friends I see every weekend. I mean, not only in the group messaging and event planning in preparation for our weekly gatherings, but it also improves our time spent together. We no longer need to talk about shallow details (restaurants we've tried, things that happened at work, what the weather is like on that side of town) but more quickly get into deeper conversations (or, you know, the drinks and board games).
It's also worth noting that hiding has improved dramatically since it was first introduced. Now, you have more control over what gets hidden. For example, you can remove a "friend" from your feed but still get notified when they have a major update or life event (e.g. get married, move away). That way, you can get rid of the noise that person creates but not throw out the signal at the same time.
The sentence you quoted actually is itself an anecdote, so this is an odd criticism to make.
And I don't think we should expect every opinion piece on the web to be a PhD thesis based on a ten year double-blind cross-over study. It's just a simple opinion piece that says, "Facebook works for me."
> The sentence you quoted actually is itself an anecdote
No, it is a conclusion drawn from an implied accumulation of anecdote. An actual anecdote would be something like, "when my brother on the other side of the country had a baby, I found out on Facebook, and was thus more connected to him." Ie. it would demonstrate connectedness to someone far away who is cared about deeply.
I think the original author and the poster you replied to probably have very different definitions of "deeply". Facebook doesn't seem very useful for first tier people who get the phone/snail mail/IM/email treatment or third tier people who you don't care to keep up with much, but it has a sweet spot in that second tier. It's usefulness to individual people is probably proportional to how large their second tier is.
If the OP said, "Facebook _helps_ keep me connected to folks I care deeply about who aren’t nearby," would that address your concerns? Because I think you're over-reading this specific sentence and assuming that it means that it's the primary means of communication. I don't think that's what the OP said or meant -- on the very next line he makes it clear that he means in the context of online, "It’s one of my very few “emotive” online experiences.
Even with my closest friends that I see every week, I don't run down the week's minutiae when we see each other, even though we might see/share it on FB. Tough commute to the office? Find an interesting article worth sharing? Bragging about the cocktail you're about to drink down? None of this stuff comes up every week, but I'm happy to Like or comment on them when I see them, and, yes, it does help keep me connected. And they're in the same city. I don't think any of this should be surprising.
Also, I contend that "semi-creeping" on friends of friends is not what "most" people use Facebook for. That may be what you and your friends use it for, but I think this all goes to the underlying crux of the OP's argument -- Facebook is a personalized experience that is very different for each person, depending on who they are, how they use it, and who their connections are, and he's happy with it.
Agreed with the last point here - I would be very surprised to find that 'most' people use facebook for that creeping the grandparent mentions. Perhaps most people in their personal social demographic? Perhaps just the poster?
I don't think those links are strong support for your point, which I understood to be that 'most people' use facebook for 'randomly clicking on that "cute girl that's a friend of a friend of a friend [but which I do not actually know]". The psych central article says that most people use facebook to look at specific people, as opposed to randomly clicking on unknown people. HuffPo also says that they are looking up people they already know.
I guess if your point was that most people use facebook to look at details of other people...well, I guess that's true, but it feels like saying the sky is blue, so I'm assuming you are trying to make a more specific argument?
I was mostly strengthening my first point ("seeing what X or Y is up to") -- to show that most people do not specifically foster the deep relationships OP was mentioning, but rather just see what random people (you may tangentially know) are up to.
Actually, I think that the ambient information provided by facebook is incredibly important to maintaining a close relationship. I live 18 hours away from all of my family by timezone and almost never use any realtime form of communication with them. Sure I contact my parents mostly by email because they're not big facebook users, but I connect with my siblings mostly through facebook where I can see that my sister is trying a new recipe for dinner, my brother is posting photos of his kids at the park or their latest school project, my other sister is complaining about her first day at a new job, jump in on a conversation between two of them about whether that outfit he wore last night should ever be seen again, etc, as well as emailing them when I want to have a specific conversation. This is what he refers to as "there’s a lessening of perceived distance from that connection. Those six months don’t feel quite as long. And you have a shared déjà vu of general knowledge of what’s happened between you both."
> but I really believe that the next "big social thing" will be a start-up that will somehow make it easy to approach people you don't know and spark up a conversation.
Absolutely. This is a particularly acute pain point for us nerds, but it afflicts just about everyone to some extent. Our social circles are unfortunately limited in a way that technology could certainly address.
I envision a service that would include everything from dating to finding Dungeons & Dragons groups to just finding people to chat with who are currently nearby and share an interest. Google Glass would make this kind of thing even more interesting.
I developed that skill. Took a few months. Would hang out at my local coffee shop and strike up conversation with random people. You know what I found out? Most people are seriously boring. I would not recommend this option for the GP's use case. Sure you could find your next D&D group that way. But you'd be far better served searching Yahoo! groups. (Do they even have those anymore? Been so long since I played.) If you're looking for random connections, sure, by all means, talk to random people. Anything else, you may want to find something a little more targeted.
Yeah, I think the average person underestimates how broadly humanity's interests range, and so vastly overestimates the chance that a random stranger will have something in common with him. When you're used to making friends through the organizations you're part of - school, work, clubs, activities - you get a biased sample because you have the organization in common. Try online dating or chatting up random strangers and you'll quickly find that most people are pretty different in their hobbies & interests.
This exists already, but you have to do some work to find it. LiveJournal used to be particularly good at making friends with random strangers; I'm still in touch with some that I made a decade ago in the Harry Potter fandom, even though I've never met them in person. Also, all the niche forums on the Internet - whether your interest is Game of Thrones, Starcraft, startups, JQuery, Apple products, Linux, gymnastics, food, Harry Potter, Star Trek, or NaNoWriMo, there are communities out there for you. You just have to do some Googling and link-following to find them.
I agree 100% in theory -- but it's still a nice essay to have on HN given the million of other blog posts about the complete opposite reaction to Facebook that get upvoted to obilivion when they're also all pretty much annecdotal.
Essentially I upvoted the article because it's nice to know that HN isn't completely a sound-proof echo chamber =)
The excuse that "relationships suffer" when using a different communication method is ridiculous. Now more than ever as people use it to justify whatever they want.
Face-to-face is better, my relationships suffer when I communicate via phone.
Phone calls are better, my relationships suffer when I communicate via email.
Email is better, my relationships suffer if I communicate via FB.
Maybe the problem is you, not the communication method.
When the Boston Marathon was bombed, I did a graph search on friends in Boston and checked to see if anyone I knew had been hurt.
Do I care deeply about those people? Maybe not enough to text or call each and every one of them (cellphone network failure notwithstanding) but enough to see if they had posted, "I'm OK. Thanks for checking."
That's more than I can say about any other social network.
There are other ways to use Facebook. I don't have a single family member of co-worker friended. I use it primarily to keep up with people in a fairly niche fandom I'm a part of, that I end up seeing maybe 2-3 times a year.
> Facebook keeps me connected to folks I care deeply about who aren’t nearby.
As soon as I saw it, I said to myself: "boy oh boy, he better give some hard evidence." The article goes on even without providing anecdotal evidence, let alone anything to the extent I was expecting or hoping. In fact, the entire discussion seems to be about the hiding feature. Yeah, everyone knows about it (and more and more people are using it), but I'm not sure how using a destructive feature of a service makes the service more necessary (I would argue for the opposite). If I hide 90% of my "friends" from my feed, for example, what's the point of Facebook? Apart from the ego-boosting friend-count (which I might also hide).
Now, going back to the initial (bolded!) argument: Facebook keeps me connected to folks I care deeply about who aren’t nearby. I think that this is just simply not true. Of course, a definition of "care deeply" would be needed, but my assumption here is that we're talking about moms, dads, sisters, brothers, aunts, BFFs, and the like -- NOT ex-girlfriends/boyfriends or classmates from high school that helped us out that one time on that one biology project in freshman year. If I only contacted my mom or dad through Facebook, my parents would first of all be quite mad -- and second of all, our relationship would suffer. People that I care deeply about get emails, phone calls, Skype calls, text messages, sometimes even snail-mail from me! I'm not sure how the OP expects us to connect Facebook to "caring deeply." Again, some evidence (or an actual argument) would've been nice.
I don't hate Facebook, but more often than not, I find myself just using it when I'm bored and semi-creeping around seeing what X or Y is up to and randomly clicking on that "cute girl that's a friend of a friend of a friend" (incidentally, this is what most people use it for). "Creeping on Facebook," has in fact, become a relatively common colloquialism; I wouldn't even attribute a negative quality to the idea, but I would argue it's a fundamental failure of FB (and something that should capitalize on). I posted about this before, but I really believe that the next "big social thing" will be a start-up that will somehow make it easy to approach people you don't know and spark up a conversation. There are so many people on FB, and yet most of us hide 90% of the people we're friends with and we don't add the ones we might find interesting but don't know. That doesn't seem "just fine" to me.
Oh yeah, go ahead and add me on Facebook.