Are Facebook and Twitter really that great, or are they just filling a void?

What need?

To me, the effects of social networking are greatly exaggerated. Both negative and positive.

Facebook is good. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been able to get ahold of someone even very late at night (yes, I know this one dude who’s on Facebook even at 4 but that guy’s obsessed).

Never used twitter. I don’t think I ever will.

@DominicX The social networking need. The desire to take your real life and digitalize it. I mean, it’s not a need like food and water, but if it didn’t tap into what people want neither site would have been big.

I deleted my Facebook account quite a while ago, because I felt that it was stupid, and also because of the privacy issues. Twitter… I go back and forth about. Sometimes I hate it, other times I like it. Seeing little, random snippets of people’s lives is fascinating to me (most of the time). I just figure that life is already so goddamn short, why not document everything?

@weeveeship But is it actually Facebook that’s good, or the ability to do x, y and z but not necessarily Facebook that you care for? For example, I don’t really like Big K club soda, but all the similarly priced ones are in too large of containers for someone living alone, and I can’t afford Canada Dry, and I love club soda far too much to not get something, so I settle on Big K.

I have no complaints about either site except when they are down. Perhaps it’s because I grew up with the internet, but the desire to share one’s life and interact with friends and strangers all over the world sounds completely natural to me.

The popularity of facebook suggests to me that it is currently the best way to fulfill this desire for social networking. There’s a lot of money out there for somebody who comes up with a better option, so I am inclined to believe that facebook is actually pretty great.

@weeveeship It’s specifically that many people keep facebook open regularly and you could see and chat with whoever’s online that makes facebook good. AIM and MSN Messenger are ok, but not everyone I know has an account. Most people I know have a facebook.

The need for connectivity is inherent in people. Facebook and Twitter fill that need.

On facebook I have found relatives I have never met before, and friends I had not talked to in a long time, probably never would have without facebook. At minimum it is akin to an international phonebook.

Facebook is good for connecting with old friends and distant relatives, and keeping in touch with everyone. It’s not great in its functionality, though. It could be a lot better, in fact.

Side note: @JLeslie and I went to high school together, and connected many years later via facebook. She wouldn’t be on this site if it hadn’t been for facebook!

I think it’s filling a void more than being an excellent app.

If there was something that I felt was better than Facebook I’d probably switch to it, especially if it gave less priority to game updates (all my human updates get overwritten by stupid game crap).

But it would have limited usefulness unless everyone else switched to the same site, which would inherently make it not better.

I’m not crazy about the ubiquity of Facebook and I don’t use Twitter. The internet does fill a void in my life, but I’m not sure that void couldn’t be better served.

I was addicted to Facebook, but now since I am preparing for the IB Diploma Programme, I have been ditching facebook and have been managing my time pretty well. I am really proud of myself. But yesterday night was the best night on Facebook that I have ever had. One guy in my class created a group and added all of the classmates to the group so we can chat as the whole class at the same time and yesterday everyone was freaking out because of the Biology report we were doing and it was really helpful asking questions and get different opinions on them.

So I say facebook for sure is good. If you dont like it its easy you just deactivate your account.

Facebook fills a need. It is a method of reconnection. I have reconnected with members of my extended family through Facebook. I IM my great niece and she me. Conversations I would not have without Facebook.

Twitter is navel gazing. I think it is worthless.

Both of them satisfy a need for a “soundbite” approach to Internet socializing.

I think Facebook is great, especially for people my age (39) and older that want to connect with old friends and family that lives far away. I’ve been in contact with people that I thought I would never see again. I also keep in touch with my sisters more often now, thanks to Facebook. I live in Illinois, they live in California & Nevada, so it makes it easier to send a quick “I love you” or share pictures.

No complaints here.

I love how easy it is to stay in touch with people on Facebook over the years. You can send a message without worrying if they have changed their e-mail address and can see pictures of their family and special events in an instant. We are over a thousand miles away from our family. Facebook helps close that distance in some ways.

I use Facebook and am quite content with it. Just like most things in life, the complaints are voiced loudly, and one horror story hits the news and spreads like wildfire. Most of the concerns voiced are usually caused by user ignorance or just plain stupidity.

My only issue is that it isn’t all that intuitive when it comes to privacy controls. There is a decent online Help Center, but it appears that many people don’t use it. If an answer cannot be found there, they have a Fluther-type function that allows you to ask other users. If that doesn’t solve the problem, the administrative team can be contacted, but they are painfully slow to react and rarely if ever communicate the status.

Like many here, the ability to stay connected with far-spread family and old friends has been wonderful due to Facebook.

Filling the void of our lost selves.

I agree with @Seaofclouds and @Pied_Pfeffer, whilst sharing @janbb‘s view. As a not-so-young Facebooker, I find the prevalence of the games and pages really annoying, but the pictures and notes from family and friends really useful. Being at home most of the time and not socialising much, the internet has been both my window on some of the world and a chance to make links that weren’t possible in the past.

Facebook itself seems to be an unwieldy thing though. Again, not-so-young methinks, how come there are no true ‘spin-off’ sites, perhaps entirely for youngsters, with parental permission required… Or for the ‘Silver surfers’, to link up and compare notes? My Mother is 84 and sees little use in Fbook, although various family members send her messages from time to time.

A friend reckons that Fbook will contribute to massive social change in the next couple of years, but I disagree. It is mainly really shallow, difficult to filter (I have family members that are less close than some friends, and don’t always want to ‘share’ my comments with them!), and unless there is a big common issue being discussed, mainly trivial.

Twitter? Just plain daft, except when someone in a war zone manages to get a message out via their mobile…

Facebook is kind of cool if you avoid the apps. It is a great way to rediscover decades-lost friends and start something new.

Twitter? We don’ need no steenkin’ Twitter! However it is useful as a disciplinary tool to get effective communication whittled down to a very small number of characters.

Linked-In is sort of stagnant for me too, right now. Sort of a vague, floating polymorphous resume.

But do you like Facebook itself, or is it just the best option for doing what you do on it?

I’m pretty happy with both of them. They both have their uses.

Facebook keeps me in touch with family members I rarely get to see (I have a large family that’s spread throughout the entire continent of America).

I also use Facebook for my book club – we send out notices of upcoming books, and I suppose an email mailing list could do the same, but with the FB Group we also can post relevant articles or share websites of interest, post necessary contact info, and keep a running list of books we’ve read.

The third thing I like FB for is that I can share an issue or news item with my family and friends. Sure, I could email them all, but I find it intrusive and annoying when people do that to me. This way, they read my message if they read their news feed, and if they’re interested they can do something about it, and if they’re not interested they can ignore it.

Twitter I use for an organization I’m involved with. I follow other users who post about relevant things, and I post my own things about the organization. There’s no other way I’d be able to keep on top of the issues my organization is involved in. Some of the users I follow also have blogs I could subscribe to or newsletters, but not all of them do. Sharing of news and info – it’s amazing.

I don’t really get why people use it for themselves, as individuals, though. Tweeting about what show you’re watching or what you ate for dinner… who cares? All that stuff would be better suited to a profile page somewhere (like FB or a google profile, etc.).

You seem to be mostly interested in the cultural/social aspect of the social media phenomenon, but from an internet marketing point of view, Facebook and Twitter are really vital features of successful search engine optimization. Whether they’re great or not, they’re essential for business development in the next era of Internet.