Facebook talk.

Smoking is prohibited at work (even in my country) and we, smokers, have to seek our heaven (aka smoking place) somewhere outside. Good thing is that I live in a country that we actually see the sun most time of the year. So, being out smoking is a nice break from work. The other good(*cough*) thing is that in my country most of the employees smoke (that means the minority controls the situation - go figure) and that means you meet with other people, share thoughts, say jokes etc.


There are times, though, that I find myself alone. This is great as well since I enjoy my smoke thinking of various things. That afternoon I head some people talking about posting their vacation pictures at facebook. So, this is what we'll talk about today!


Facebook is what trend is all about (among other things). Before facebook there were other community but none reached its growth rate. I wondered what makes facebook such a success. I opened my account, for instance, because most of my friend did. I didn't choose facebook, or preferred it from another community site. So I am not a valid source to ask.

Asking around, I got a small amount of different answers. Most of them was "because my friends had already an account". Wait a minute here. If most of us had friends already in, how the heck did all of this started? Well my job is not finding out that answers, and although I promise I might dig this subject and post results in the near future, I decided to focus on another question.Why are we using facebook? I read that facebook now has more pictures than flickr! Come on. WTF? So I kept digging. Now I could see more variety to the answers. Some of them wanted a way to get in touch with old schoolmates, pals from military service etc. Others find it cool to have many friends and like reading their news, status changes and seeing photos. Others find it a good place to find a man/woman.

Now, do we need facebook to do all these? I mean, come on. Before facebook we would pick the phone and call someone to catch up, or even go out for a coffee. We could exchange pictures from our vacations when we meet each other. The last one does not even need a comment. If you don't know other ways, well... you are either too young or insecure(sic). 

But if we have like 430 friends how would you ever meet or even call all of them? Well, you don't. Naturally you cannot maintain such a huge circle unless your profession demands it. So, one could say that this is exactly what facebook is good for! Well, yes. You could say that.Most of it is useless info -in regard to what you actually care for- but it doesn't hurt to be there.

We said info? Nice word. Info is the reason this kind of sites live. Founders/owners have so much info. And the kind of info that is invaluable to marketing departments. And much cheaper than organizing a marketing research. So the owners provide us a "place to meet" (this sound scary) in exchange for our personal data. Maybe exchange is not an accurate word since it is in our discretion whether we share these or not. But trend, demands it!

Facebook is one of these things that could never end well in my opinion. Too much power or too much info often leads to inappropriate management decisions that will hurt its users first, but eventually the company itself. I don't wish to see that happen since I enjoy the positive features of this phenomenon but history has taught us this. We'll see.