[Sorry I've been inactive for a while...I've been busy with school, classes, clubs, and trying to get involved socially while avoiding Facebook.
xp ]
I feel the same way, I mean, if I want to give someone my contact info, I'll give them my email and Skype username (Skype is cheaper than using cell phones, so I only use my cell for emergencies) and if they
really want to be friends with me (instead of just add me to their list of 200 friends and never speak/write to me again) they'll contact me that way.
I'm just glad that Facebook never caught on in Japan (Mixi and Twitter reign supreme there, and even though both of those social networks aren't perfect, I'm happy that I can be anonymous there, and not be worried that some future employer will find something I wrote without thinking).
You know, it's interesting, the bigger Facebook gets, the closer it'll probably get to being replaced by some other social network, like what happened to Myspace.
Right now in Japan, Mixi is still huge, and seems like it always has been,
but a while back, people started complaining of "Mixi tsukare" or "Mixi fatigue", and I know at least a lot of my former Mixi friends have left. Twitter and other social networks are "in" right now, and Mixi, despite still being huge and copying Facebook's apps, Facebook Connect and the "Like button", is kind of what "used to be cool" and is probably past it's peak. Mixi just became "too big". While Facebook could try to become "the new, hip thing", Japanese people don't like to put their full names on social networks (I know how they feel) so Facebook is only good for Japanese people who are learning English, or want to have an English business presence. I really hope for the day when some other new thing takes the place of Facebook...
To top things off, I learned that my younger sister has a Facebook account, and had a long discussion with her. She said that it was useful for networking, which will help her find a job, despite me saying that that's what LinkedIn is for. Maybe I'm getting too worked up over this...
At one time, Myspace seemed invincible too.
I hadn't heard that Facebook has a character limit. It
does sound as if it was made for gossip/small talk. Besides my bookish family, I don't I've ever had any people in "real life" who I can talk to about "deep" things (well, OK, I recently found a non-online "deep" friend, so one person), I guess I want to keep some degree of separation between my online life and offline life (Online life=username, "deep" and fun conversations, Offline life=Real Name, usually random, non-intellectual conversation) , so it's awkward when an online friend gives me their Facebook, or an offline one wants to friend me on Facebook. (I recently got my Dad's old Blackberry, which I use as a Japanese text/dictionary reader, so I can read novels on the go and still have my monolingual dictionaries. It can't connect to the internet or make phone calls, and yet, whenever anyone sees me with it, they seem to think I'm checking Facebook.
)
[If you're still questing for something, I'd still like to donate.^^ Since I'm happy with the items I have, I might as well donate to friends, so if you're not questing I can always see who else of my friends I can help.]
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