Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Friends

Facebook is, generally, pretty cool. Better than I thought it'd be. It makes it easier for me to keep touch with some of my friends who have gone off to college, and that's good. There is one thing that I don't like about it, though. One feature that really rubs me the wrong way.

Why, oh why, do they use the word "friends" to describe people who you've let see your stuff? Because there's a big difference between people I'm comfortable friending on Facebook, and people I would actually use the word "friend" to describe.

4 comments:

  1. I agree completely. Took me at least an hour to resolve the differences between the meanings of "friend" when I first got an account.

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  2. it's just a language thing. i mean "person i know that i will allow to look at my profile" doesn't fit in a button.

    it is a bit annoying. on facebook, i have 77 "friends". the thing is, i only have like 10 people i would actually call friends in real life.

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  3. It's partly a marketing thing, and partly that most people are more extroverted and have a large social network of "friends".

    They just subverted a term. They'd better hope it doesn't incite too much cynicism.

    I have 124 friends! Am I winning?

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  4. What we need is a new word for friend, something that means a bit more than "not a stalker."

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