Best Alternatives To the Big Name Social Media? 451
rueger writes "Over a couple of years I have actually found Facebook pretty useful and/or entertaining. It has certainly allowed me to stay connected with a lot of people with whom I otherwise would have lost track, and for all its weaknesses it was handy for sharing links and such. This week, though, the privacy escapades have pushed me (and a lot of other people) over the edge. If Twitter's 140 characters aren't enough, LinkedIn is too business-oriented, MySpace too ugly, and Buzz — does anyone even use Buzz? What social media options are out there for all of those non-uber-techy folks?"
Twitter's 140 Characters (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, the 140-character limit of Twitter is more than offset by the conciseness of the information it thusly transports. I find it actually very stimulating to be limited to 140 characters. Forces you to think a little longer before you post.
As Goethe once said: Sorry for writing this long letter, I didn't have time for a shorter one.
But in any case, you can combine Twitter with a Blog and use that if you really think you need to say something longer than 140 characters, then post the link on Twitter. Posterous is an excellent site for that.
And to those who still think that Twitter is the place where people tell you they're having a sandwich -- you are obviously following the wrong people. It is the most efficient information engine I have ever seen -- and many other things beyond that.
Re:Twitter's 140 Characters (Score:3, Insightful)
It is the most efficient information engine I have ever seen
Yep.. it burns through a lot of work, and produces a lot of noise pollution and hot air. All because you were too lazy to walk to the mailbox.
Big name = other people (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the problem: if you're on a social network that few have heard of, what's the point?
Isn't the purpose of say, Facebook, the fact that nearly everyone uses it? How would a "social network" without other people even work?
Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
The only social network worth joining... (Score:3, Insightful)
...is the one all your friends are on. Otherwise, what's the point? Write your own if you need to. If you want to meet new people, find a site that caters to your interests or join one that everyone else is on. If you want to keep in touch with your friends, who cares which one you use as long as you agree on it.
On another note, the idea that Twitter=Facebook is alien to me. Facebook is multimedia sharing (video, pictures, short status updates, blog entries, etc.) while Twitter is just status updates and link sharing.
Re:AFK 4 realz (Score:3, Insightful)
What if I don't want to travel 5,000 miles everyday to see how all my friends are?
Re:Blogs? (Score:3, Insightful)
What facebook offers is a single point, simple, solution to all the issues you listed.
Or stay behind the event horizon (Score:5, Insightful)
You can safely orbit a black hole, if you're beyond the event horizon and pick a trajectory that ensures you stay this way.
I think Facebook might be best treated this way: create yourself a profile with limited content. Particularly don't give informative answers to specific questions. Include a URL to your personal website / blog. Make that public. Make an email address and phone number visible to friends. Update your status and comment to friends periodically, feed links to content you have elsewhere through it periodically. You get most of the advantages of Facebook's visibility and keep their grip off your content and personal information.
Re:AFK 4 realz (Score:2, Insightful)
What if I don't want to travel 5,000 miles everyday to see how all my friends are?
Just use the transporter?
Re:IRC (Score:5, Insightful)
All that is true... but it does also have a dark side.
Just more of the same (Score:4, Insightful)
These social networking sites are, in the end, about making money in various ways. It may start off with placing ads, but eventually, they will not be able to resist the sale and ab/use of the data they collect about the users. If you want to do social networking that you can trust, you will have to put up your own site.
O'Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the whole rest of the planet isn't using it, what's the point? Windows is what we're stuck with. Get over it.
So its ok to just bend over and take it since it is popular? What if Torvalds had this attitude? If nobody challenges the leader, then we are stuck with their mediocrity; the lack of competition will yield sub-par satisfaction. Having that kind of attitude is completely nullifies any incentive for innovation and new ideas, and stifles the chance for competition to improve what the [insert mainstream platform here] offers.
Re:Missing the point (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing that makes "social media" useful is its userbase.
Indeed. But like everything else, it comes to down to implementation, yes? To steal a phrase coined by a fellow Slashdotter ...
Twitter: a listserv for the ADD generation.
Re:Twitter's 140 Characters (Score:5, Insightful)
So why did you tell us your opinion on this then?
Re:Missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Give up already! (Score:2, Insightful)
I deleted my account yesterday. Feels great :)
Re:Twitter's 140 Characters (Score:4, Insightful)
You have got to be kidding.
daytime=coffee, eve=pizza, night=beer (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Outside" (Score:5, Insightful)
What if you live in some dump where all the other people around are a bunch of dimwit rednecks or people who just want to talk about sports or something similarly inane?
That's the nice thing about internet boards, chat rooms, etc. You can find people who actually want to talk about interesting things, instead of reality TV and sports like most morons. Unfortunately, most of the time you find that they aren't located anywhere near you.
Maybe if you live in a region/country where the vast majority of the population isn't bumbling idiots, and there's no obvious way to find people who aren't, your advice would make some sense.
I don't know about where you live, but in my city, the only places to socialize offline are work, church, and bars. If you have interesting cow-orkers, that's great, but some of us are stuck with sports fans. Church is for people who are easily led into supporting Sarah Palin, and generally not a good place to meet people with intellectual pursuits, plus it can be a little awkward when they ask you about your "personal relationship with Jesus" and you tell them you think he was just some hippie spreading Buddhist philosophy, and the written stories about him are completely wrong just like any legend or myth. Bars are for people who like to drink to the point of inebriation.
No obscure social networks (Score:3, Insightful)
If you haven't heard of it, it doesn't do what you want it to.
Re:Are you really worried that much about Facebook (Score:3, Insightful)
if you don't put anything private on Facebook, then your privacy won't be compromised by it.
So, if you don't put up your real name, don't "friend" anyone, don't comment to anyone, don't join groups, and don't play games, you've removed all potentially private information. Oh yeah, you've also removed all usefulness at the same time.
Personally, I am not a facebook user, as I've never had any inherent trust of the company and Zuckerberg in particular. I'd like to say Google would do better, but with the uselessness of Buzz, and Schmidt's recent comments about privacy being only necessary if you're hiding something, I'm not counting on them either.
So, I'm waiting for an alternative to come around.
Re:Missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
while I gladly screw the fuckers out of any profitable data.
If you believe this you haven't been keeping up on the latest data mining research.
Even with fake info in your profile, the connections you have in that profile are already providing them with profitable data. They quite likely know more about you than you think.
the answer is in the question (Score:1, Insightful)
Facebook IS for non-uber-techy folk: non-uber-techy folk don't care about their privacy.
Face it, the key to a useful social media site isn't the features, or the security, it's the one with all your friends on it. You know, the "social part." Everyone you know is on Facebook. Learn how to deal with the privacy features such that they are, or do without the usefulness.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Twitter's 140 Characters (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why I go through and friend homeless people. It throws them off.
Re:Twitter's 140 Characters (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Are you really worried that much about Facebook (Score:2, Insightful)
The solution to truly being safe in your distopian world is to have no friends at all.
Re:Twitter's 140 Characters (Score:3, Insightful)
If they don't bother to read the blog, they won't be interested in the facts when I am on facebook or on twitter.
Not necessarily true. I have friends on facebook that I so rarely see in real life because they live on the other side of the planet from me (literally). On facebook, I look on the live feed and take in an overview of what everyone is up to. In general, most of it is pointless drivel and I ignore it. But, on the off-chance someone is doing something interesting I'll take note of it.
The best example is when an old friend was visiting France. I live in Germany but taking a quick trip over to Paris is pretty simple for me. They hadn't even considered I might want to do so (never considering how close north-western Germany is to Paris), so never let me know specifically they'd be coming. When I saw their facebook status update mentioning it however, I was able to make arrangements with them to meet up.
Yeh, MOST of what gets posted is rubbish, and that's the EXACT reason I wouldn't regularly visit the blogs of these people if they had them - they're my friends, but it doesn't mean we share all that many common interests (most of them aren't even geeks/nerds). But, by posting their status updates on facebook, it's trivial for me to "at a glance" see what's going on with all the people I know rather than checking a hundred or so blogs.
Re:Are you really worried that much about Facebook (Score:3, Insightful)
privacy != security.
Compromising your banking account information is a matter of security - it's about protecting resources or confidential data, and in that case you have all the reasons to go into a rant about not sharing info if you want to keep it secret.
Compromising your family's friends and activities is a matter of privacy - it's about protecting from undue intrusion and interference in their daily private life. The whole point of privacy is that these personal thoughts and activities are not *important* enough to be public, much less secret - it's the quotidian life. And the importance of keeping that private is that quotidian actions are not public speech or performance and are simply 'no one's business'.
It's no secret that public disclosure of the most banal activities modifies their behavior - you don't even need some oppressive authority watching and acting on that information, social pressure is good enough for a conforming/normalizing effect.
If everything in life is assumed to be public and subject to inspection by strangers, people will censor their actions and interactions in different ways - most by avoiding anything socially questionable or even just atypical, others by turning daily life into a clandestine process (and incidentally reinforcing the idea that privacy is about 'suspicious, secret activities').
I'm confused (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone needs to make a new Facebook, like how it was when it started up. Back when it was used to find people, connect to them, and keep in touch on occasion, but wasn't meant to be your portal to the Internet or a gateway to every social interaction in your life. I found value in Facebook back then. Now? The only value I find in it is what I've invested previously, not what I'm gaining. That said, I'm aware of the sunk costs fallacy [skepdic.com] and don't want to be a victim to it for too long, so if they push much harder, I will be leaving Facebook as well. From the very beginning I had everything set to friends only (or stricter), but now I'm being forced to remove parts of my profile as they make them public, since I simply don't want to share that information with others I don't know.
Re:Twitter's 140 Characters (Score:3, Insightful)
That is just so offensively wrong, nobody ostracises themselves by not uses facebook, facebook is just another social media site that has it's moment in the sun and fades away, as fashion changes. People attempting to monetise other peoples social interaction always accelerates the process but it is inevitable. Just like any other social location, the hip clubs, the top pubs etc. they always become unpopular as the new crowd shifts elsewhere to a place that is now perceived as being more up to date.
Of course that whole you aren't cool if you don't use it is just marketing bullshit, disgusting peer pressure manipulations, FUD at it's most deceitful.
Looking for social media sites then let the current cool source of knowledge lead you there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media [wikipedia.org], and who knows what future knowledge sites will lead you to what future social media sites but one thing is for certain the most popular sites will continually change, some will last longer than others, knowledge aggregation is more straight forward that social media with all of it's, well, social implications.
Re:Or stay behind the event horizon (Score:1, Insightful)
Which works until the nice pals that photographed you half drunk at a party tag you...
Re:Twitter's 140 Characters (Score:4, Insightful)
"Don't spend on shit, don't over-regulate shit, don't take my shit, or you're shit government."
-- 92 characters
"Don't do bad shit and don't touch my shit!" -- 42 characters