James Robertson asks “where’s the social networking value?”

OK, let’s turn on the cynical hat for a moment and stop the hype.

What a shame you didn’t do that. Particularly this:

Now, about Facebook, well, it has almost instantly replaced my business card collection AND my contacts over on Outlook. Now if I want to talk with someone I go to Facebook and look them up.

Let’s get REAL. As in, uh, reality. Should the key word in that second quote be “almost” or “instantly”?

Or both?

I don’t see how anyone lives like you Robert. You really are manic-depressive. (Meant as a compliment.) If you aren’t hyping this, you’re hyping that.

Two weeks ago it was all about iPhone. Now it’s Facebook.

Get a life.

DaveD: are you claiming that my Outlook contact list is more useful than Facebook? It isn’t. I wasn’t on Facebook four weeks ago. Today almost everyone I want to talk with (including Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, by the way) is on Facebook. With MORE information than I EVER had about them before.

Second, the iPhone is the shiznit. It was last week. It still is. Just because I can’t keep going ‘iPhone, iPhone, iPhone’ doesn’t mean I’m not thinking it’s worthy of everyone’s attention.

Robert…I’d figure out how to get all that info (contacts/etc) out because next week/month/quarter there will be a new bigger/better/best with a feature you just can’t live without. There will be a new, young hero to replace Zuckerberg. And you’ll be off chasing rainbows. Nothing wrong with that as it’s your job. I don’t have the time to participate as it’s not my full-time job but it’s interesting to watch from the sidelines.

PXLated: that might be true. Google might be working on the mother of all social networking tools.

But that didn’t stop me from using Outlook before. It won’t stop me from using Facebook now. It has utility that I find very useful. The fact that you’re reading blogs might be derided by some as “not useful.” (and it was). One of my friends told me that blogs were a fad and that I wouldn’t do it for long. Heh!

To do something bigger than Facebook at this point, though, would require a whole number of steps. We’d see warnings coming for years. Heck, I knew about Facebook two years ago back when I still worked at Microsoft and ignored it then cause it was “only for college kids.”

The world changes. I just am going to be early on that change curve.

I find it funny how many of my friends don’t use Jaiku/Twitter/Pownce (isn’t it still in beta?)/Facebook and yet I keep in contact with them all the time. How? Call or email them, or better yet, personal contact. People I want to stay in touch with, I do via personal contact, not some social networking site where I can learn what other friends of friends they might have.
While Facebook is great for looking up old friends, the more I spend time on it, the less I really care about trying to find that old girlfriend I once dated in high school. Those that I care to stay in contact with, I do. THose I don’t I don’t. And you know what has replaced my Outlook contact list? Nothing

And my wife still uses a Franklin Planner to write her to-do lists and track her contacts and schedule.

Get out of the bubble more often

The winner for me is also Facebook. If they ever expand the “Status” feature, it may spell trouble for Twitter/Jaiku/Pownce.

Personally, I’d like to have my network in one spot…and I think Facebook has the best chance to make that happen.

Jonathan: like I said, you won’t get utility out of these things if you don’t know anyone on them. In your case only your ex girlfriend is on it. I wouldn’t see any utility in it either if that was the case.

But, luckily for me I have a really killer list of friends.

And I don’t want to get out of the bubble more often. Everytime I do it seems like I’m going back to the past.

Maybe you’ll ask me to start using the US Post Office to send mail, or you’ll want me to give up my Saturn for a horse.

Nah. I’d rather live in your future.

But I don’t live in the past, I wouldn’t ask you to ride a horse that would be silly.
I’m serious when you get out of the bubble and see how others view technology you would be suprised.
Does that mean I’m living in the “dark ages”…. obviously not. I would deem my wife and my family technologically savy and power users of their computers (Windows XP, Linux and Mac OS X are the different Operating Systems in use)… most of my friends we would rather spend time togehter doing things like going for a run, enjoy a beer and watching a sporting event, then “talking” over jaiku/pownce/facebook. I think we need to redifne what “friendship” really is

In the end, I wonder how useful any of these sites really are outside of the tech community and those younger users with lots of free time. I don’t know a lot of mainstream people with jobs and families who have time for any social networking sites or tools. So while Facebook and others generate a lot of traffic, they don’t really generate the traffic advertisers want. Is there a Facebook for families?

Thank god a lot of those useless networks are owned by privatly held corps, or else there would sure be a lot of mad stock holders (or there would be another Internet crash)

Then again, I’m sure Facebook would make a lot of traders happy.

With that said, I’ve yet to sign up.

Jonathan: I get out in the real world a lot. I just find that people hold onto what they know way too much.

Anyway, you must have missed yesterday. I got together with a bunch of my Twitter/Facebook friends and drank beer, walked on the beach, and had lots of fun too. Just cause you’re on Facebook doesn’t mean you can’t do stuff like that.

Joe Ranft: you might ask Barack Obama or John Edwards that question. They find these things very useful to keep in touch with their supporters. And not just the geeks, either. I also know a bunch of people who work outside the tech industry who are on Facebook. Facebook is NOT a “geek only” thing. It started out as a “college only” thing, though, and it’s growing out from there. Certainly if you are in the tech industry and you’re not on Facebook already you’re missing out on networking opportunities.

Jeff Pulver, for instance, who runs some of the biggest conferences in the industry, says Facebook is it for him now and that he’s dumping LinkedIn. http://pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/007226.html

Firstly, thanks for linking to my post! Deb Schultz’ tagline on her blog says it best. “Technology changes, humans don’t” We want to connect, we want to have a voice and have impact. Some tools allow us to do that better than others. Somtimes it’s useful to connect to groups with common interests, other times it’s good to get out of the echo chambers.

A Twitter friend @BlondeByDesign asked me to find her a soldier she could “take care of” on trip i recently made to Afghanistan. I met Sgt. Danny Allman in Kandahar and asked him to write down his email. Simple… done. I passed on the info. to @BlondeByDesign and she’s whipped up a huge campaign to send Sgt. Allman and his comrades “care packages” The outpouring has been tremendous.

THAT, to me, is a real, measurable demonstration of the value of social networking. And Jonathan, Kandahar, I assure you is about as real world as it gets my friend!

The connections we make via Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network are as real as we make them. It is true that technology changes while people stay the same. One could say that people will use technology that makes it easier to do things. For now, Facebook and Twitter make it damn easy to connect and organize. For now, they are the path of least resistance. All my people are there, as am I.

Jim Long is an NBC cameraman and yet another example of an interesting person you could get to know on Twitter.

Today in the Vancouver newspaper there was an article about how a mother and son, long lost to each other and who had been searching for each other, connected and are now together … via Facebook.

I have been less than impressed by essentially all the other social networking applications, starting long ago (anyone remember Orkut, for example, or Tribe ?), but I think Facebook is very well done. It offers users much more choice and control, and yet is open with respect to all sorts of other applications .. which will find a home if they are useful, and wither and die if they are not.

I’m also not really big on naming everything that has hyperlinks and tags as “social”, but in the case of Facebook calling it a Social Operating system for peoples’ activities on (and sometimes off) line seems appropriate.

I do wish they’d get the “how do you know this person” part sorted .. but it’s a minor quirk.

I think that as applications and services on the Web get easier to use, and more intertwined with each other, peoples’ life and work activities on and offline will just keep blending together more and more … and it will be up to each of us individually to make our own choices and draw our boundaries .. tho’ I suspect even those will vary, for most of us, over time.

As Doc Searls would probably say, for most of us it’s probably not “either / or” but “both / and”.

I prefer Pownce, but with no mobile interface it’s limited. I predict they will surpass twitter.

And you’re so right on about Google Reader’s app on FB.

It irritates the hell out of me that FB is so closed.
- You can’t see anything without logging in.
- It’s Anti-SEO. Google doesn’t see the content
- There’s no external API for updating and almost no export (RSS etc)

I really hope that when the next greatest thing comes along and we all desert FB, we’ll be able to get our data out again. Or maybe it won’t matter, we’ll just start over.

But right now, FB is like a black hole. It’s gravity is pulling everything into it, but nothing comes back out.

@19: Except Scoble’s posts about facebook

Julian, that’s what kinda makes it nice. Because if Google sees it, then someone will abuse the crap out of it. (read: SEO)

And hey, this is social stuff. A lot of folks act more normal and human on Facebook than they might on Twitter. Once those APIs and RSS feeds show up, guess what…. mmm audience! Time to perform, time to be a bit louder perhaps?

If I worked for the NSA, I would absolutely love whats going on in the social space,we’ve come to the point where we willingly give up all privacy and put our entire lives on a site for everybody to see and to act on, because it’s the cool thing to do.

I do believe there is some use for these things, such as blogs,but other things take time to gestate, and only then will we see if they have any long term value, regardless of how many neat things certain people perceive that it brings into their lives.

I have friends all over the world and we keep in touch without social networks.

But lets face it, we’re human, we have the Monkey see, Monkey do factor programed right into out DNA.

“But, luckily for me I have a really killer list of friends.”

No, you have a “really killer list” of contacts. (“killer list?” How old are you? 12?) I rather doubt all those 3,000 are friends Rather doubt Ballmer or Gates are your friend. Not saying your list is not useful to you, but to say they ALL are friends? Hardly.

Facebook is doomed, and iPhone forever niched, merely as Scoble is hyping it. His track record breathes death, Tablets, RSS, Longhorn, Xbox 360, Second Life and every start-up that somehow captures his short-attention-span. If you want to read the tea leaves in this industry, see what Scoble is flagging up, and bet the other way.

Robert – I just sent you this note on Facebook too – some friends and I are launching http://www.apprate.com as a place to rate & review Facebook applications. It’s a combination of editorial and community driven. Check it out!

Rodgers: let’s see. iPhone already has set all the sales records. Tablets? Still sold more than Apple has sold Macs. RSS? Gaining in strength every day, even if most people don’t know they are using RSS. Longhorn? Sold 40 million copies in first three months. Xbox? Outselling Sony PlayStation. Second Life? The story still hasn’t been written on that, but I haven’t hyped it up for a year now.