Comments on: The Facebook

By: Ira

Ira — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 00:13:36 +0000

This is similar to the new online communities
http://www.friendster.com and http://www.myspace.com
These are places where you create a profile for yourself and then search out other members of the site who are your
“friends.” Then you add them to your list of friends. There is a major competitive aspect as people compete to see who has the most friends. It’s kind of fun to click on your friends and see who they are friends with, etc. There’s a 6 degress of seperation aspect to it also… amazing who you will find just by clicking around.

By: Liam

Liam — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 16:48:10 +0000

It certainly seems true that people get into the popularity contest aspect of it. However I would have to say that most people use it to connect to people they have already met. The best feature for me is that it lets me remember friends of friends names who I’ve been introduced to. I’m fairly terrible at remembering anyone’s name, so every once in awhile I’ll browse through and have a few ‘Oh…. THAT’S that guy’s name’ moments.

It is hard to quantify why it has become so popular when other similar sites exist, it’s certainly not a complicated idea.

By: sieber

sieber — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 20:51:01 +0000

Hmm. Then the task is to compare the attractiveness of paper to Internet. It’s a rhetorical assignment since students are likely to find the Internet far more attractive. Question is, what percentage of the Internet users would actually MEET their new acquaintances? Or maybe that’s not the point at all but some kind of egostroking–“hey, the software shows I have more friends that you. Take that, you loser!”

By: Liam

Liam — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 20:45:09 +0000

Oddly enough, we had those sheets in residence, and everyone dutifully wrote their information down on the sheets, and they stayed up for awhile, and were mildly interesting for maybe a week.

The magic ingredient(s) seemed to be missing.

By: sieber

sieber — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 18:20:03 +0000

Is it simply the allure of new technology? I wonder if the concept would be as attractive if McGill merely offered large sheets of paper in the dorms and elsewhere onto which students and others could write down their interests and afix their photos.