Facebook vs Twitter as latest refuge of the nerds

Mark Evans writes that he’s almost done with facebook. He’s not the first or the last to grumble about the blue book (see my post for example on “attention viruses”: Facebook Fatigue, it’s Spreading?.

As Mark says, is the facebook honeymoon ending? A certain schadenfreude [twopointoh-denfreude?] in me would like to claim it so (damn that Zuckerberg, so rich and so young).

Certainly, the “open” application platform (open crapplication platform?) has nearly been facebook’s downfall. A grand experiment in which Mr Z has learned that if you do freely open up your wildly successful internet platform to thousands of pointless, self-interested, attention seeking crapplets, that – like some epic biblical plague of digitally-winged attention locusts – tens of thousands of self-interested, attention sucking crapplets will rapaciously attempt to take advantage of your success. Who knew?

My facebook page looks as though seized by a grand mal craptileptic fit in spam factory.

Meanwhile, it gets worse, you just can’t hide on facebook anymore. Every ‘slackjawed acquaintance’ you’ve ever known is poking you now, biting you like a zombie or worse. Some of these people don’t even have any proper geek cred at all (the horror). I joke, but there is known problem of managing facebook if you are a highly popular person.

So anyway, the real nerds are going back to Twitter. [I don’t know where the actual popular people are going]

Twitter is safe. For one it does a lot less, so it’s as yet uncorrupted. And, lets face it, it’s really only the nerds who are on Twitter so far. Twitter is mostly interesting for who’s not on it (and it’s handy that you can discretely un-follow people if need be) and for the special culture and secret @ # language that has grown up around it.

I like twitter a lot, but know that facebook is working hard to put the wrong bits of toothpaste back in the tube, and will be doing a lot to, no doubt, be twice as big in 2008. And if the alpha geeks are turning away from facebook, maybe this means they’ve actually exactly hit it right, and made something everyone else can use.

When twitter too, jumps the shark chasm this year to general popularity, I’m sure the flighty geek-set be on to something else by then anyway. Mixin anyone?

You can add me on twitter here.

You can add me on facebook here.

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8 Responses to Facebook vs Twitter as latest refuge of the nerds

  1. bernardo says:

    “My facebook page looks as though seized by a grand mal craptileptic fit in spam factory.”

    Heehee! Seems that we all have that impression. But as you said, it also seems that Facebook “is working hard to put the wrong bits of toothpaste back in the tube”. Let’s wait for the big revamp.
    Best regards.

  2. Bernardo says:

    “My facebook page looks as though seized by a grand mal craptileptic fit in spam factory.”

    Heehee! Seems that we all have that impression. But as you said, it also seems that Facebook “is working hard to put the wrong bits of toothpaste back in the tube”. Let’s wait for the big revamp.
    Best regards.

  3. I’ve found that never adding (or responding to) any stupid applications helps. No, I don’t want a superwall. No, I don’t want to be bitten by your vampire. No, I don’t want to beat you (and I WOULD beat you) at movie trivia.

    I’m also merciless when it comes to rejecting people I don’t really know, so my Facebook experience has been reasonly clean. Hey, not terribly useful but with minimal annoyance is about all I can ask from a friend anyway…

    I just think the elitist nerds want a new club that doesn’t allow the unwashed masses.

  4. I’ve found that never adding (or responding to) any stupid applications helps. No, I don’t want a superwall. No, I don’t want to be bitten by your vampire. No, I don’t want to beat you (and I WOULD beat you) at movie trivia.

    I’m also merciless when it comes to rejecting people I don’t really know, so my Facebook experience has been reasonly clean. Hey, not terribly useful but with minimal annoyance is about all I can ask from a friend anyway…

    I just think the elitist nerds want a new club that doesn’t allow the unwashed masses.

  5. It’s a minor-major irritation of mine when a “nerd” (sic) says something is “over” or the honeymoon has faded or etc. It’s the tech equivalent of Ben Mulroney on E-talk daily gushing about who or what is hot and what is not. Because it’s tech doesn’t make it any less annoying to be told by people who’ve got their mouse on the pulse of web culture (or whatever) that something is over.

    People with FB pages that look like crap because they’ve added too many application or have trouble managing too many friends only have themselves to blame. Facebook works, and works brilliantly, if you apply some common, real-life sense to your participation. As Dan mentions above, ignore and delete all the ridiculous applications. Like in music, art, etc, you’ve got to wade through, or avoid, lots of crap to find the real gems (gems that would not have happened had FB not opened things up).

    With FB friends I’ve got a rule that I need to have met/interacted with the person two separate times before I approve, so my network has some base in reality (virtual meetings count, I know some people quite well but have not met in the flesh). It limits the one-off meetings where you’re stuck with somebody you’ll never interact with again (some exception apply sure). I’ve got a few dozen people who have requested friendship that I haven’t replied to or approved because I either have never met them or i met them once or I knew them in highschool 15 years ago. That doesn’t make me popular (though maybe an asshole), but you’ve got to be a little rigorous to make it work.

    If facebook doesn’t work for nerds, that’s fine, it works for everybody else. And I second Dan’s “elitist nerd” comment above. No different than an insufferable indie rock fan who moves on to the newest ironic crap-in-a-cardigan band before anybody else does, and tells you all about it. It’s all Ben Mulroney.

  6. In re-reading this I didn’t mean to sound angry — I wasn’t. Still believe what I said, but nope it wasn’t angry sounding.

  7. In re-reading this I didn’t mean to sound angry — I wasn’t. Still believe what I said, but nope it wasn’t angry sounding.

  8. It's a minor-major irritation of mine when a “nerd” (sic) says something is “over” or the honeymoon has faded or etc. It's the tech equivalent of Ben Mulroney on E-talk daily gushing about who or what is hot and what is not. Because it's tech doesn't make it any less annoying to be told by people who've got their mouse on the pulse of web culture (or whatever) that something is over.

    People with FB pages that look like crap because they've added too many application or have trouble managing too many friends only have themselves to blame. Facebook works, and works brilliantly, if you apply some common, real-life sense to your participation. As Dan mentions above, ignore and delete all the ridiculous applications. Like in music, art, etc, you've got to wade through, or avoid, lots of crap to find the real gems (gems that would not have happened had FB not opened things up).

    With FB friends I've got a rule that I need to have met/interacted with the person two separate times before I approve, so my network has some base in reality (virtual meetings count, I know some people quite well but have not met in the flesh). It limits the one-off meetings where you're stuck with somebody you'll never interact with again (some exception apply sure). I've got a few dozen people who have requested friendship that I haven't replied to or approved because I either have never met them or i met them once or I knew them in highschool 15 years ago. That doesn't make me popular (though maybe an asshole), but you've got to be a little rigorous to make it work.

    If facebook doesn't work for nerds, that's fine, it works for everybody else. And I second Dan's “elitist nerd” comment above. No different than an insufferable indie rock fan who moves on to the newest ironic crap-in-a-cardigan band before anybody else does, and tells you all about it. It's all Ben Mulroney.

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