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I guess about a couple years ago you and I were both using the social networking site
MySpace, right? And apparently MySpace has dissolved into nothingness.
Yeah, I heard someone on television describe it as "the abandoned amusement park of the
internet".
That's a good way of putting it.
I didn't really read the article, so you're going to have to fill me in on it.
OK. It's actually a blog in the Houston Chronicle. The headline was that Mark Zuckerberg, the
head of Facebook, was wanting to allow children under the age of 13 to join Facebook.
Facebook requires that they collect certain amounts of private information, and I think
there was some legal restrictions to taking private information from pre-teens, maybe.
As the blog mentions, a lot of pre-teens are already on Facebook, so it's a moot point.
Well, I guess regardless of what the law says, or what Mark Zuckerberg says, I was kind of
curious what your thoughts were about the hold that Facebook seems to have on not just
the society that we live in, but pretty much across the world now. It's quite a phenomenon.
It's a great platform to inform people, to challenge people. But mostly it's used to
make people feel good about how they're presenting themselves.
So, your saying that people kind of enjoy getting some kind of recognition from others
that they may have never gotten otherwise.
I think that's the biggest appeal of Facebook. "I post something, and I hope to be admired
for my cleverness, my insight, my humor, my brevity, or how cute my kid is"...what have
you.
I want to close my Facebook account. [Oh, really?!) Well, I do that sometimes. Over
75% of the people on my list I don't really even have a close relationship to. There are
people that I know or am acquainted with, but I have tried to close my account once.
I don't know if you've ever tried to do it. And all of a sudden these pictures come up.
It'll say, "Johnny is going to miss you. Are you sure you want to...?" It shows another
picture... "Jeremy Smith is going to miss you." And of course, I "X" that one immediately
'cause, you know, I talk to you anyway.
Yeah, I won't be missing you!
"Carrie's going to miss you (your wife)."
No, she won't...meaning she'll see you tonight. If you close your Facebook account, it's as
if you died or something.
How about some of these applications that they have like Farmville or, ...no, you don't
do that.
I'll sum it up. My recent Facebook status said, "Jeremy Smith does not want to hear
about your imaginary farm anymore." But I got a lot of comments...
Were any of your friends, or your quote/unquote friends, were they upset?
If they were upset, they didn't make a comment because, well, there were so many people praising
my stance on [your honesty] all those games, my honesty, yeah. I think they would have
felt like an outsider if they had made a statement in protest. "Farmville, Farmville, Farmville."
Are you kidding me? It's the sort of thing that cluttered up MySpace. That's the sort
of thing that made MySpace fail.
Hopefully, that won't be the same situation for Facebook.