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Facebook: a reminder

I Do Not Use Facebook. Or MySpace.

I created a facebook account solely to pre-empt identity squatting. I don't use it. Don't friend me there; I will not friend you back. One social network is enough for anyone, and Facebook doesn't fit my requirements.

41 Comments

1:

Which one do you use? Or doesn't it exist yet? Why?

2:

That's like the guy who bought some patents on human DNA to ensure that (for ideological reasons) they would not be used. Even 4 years ago: One-Fifth of Human Genes Have Been Patented, Study Reveals http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/1013_051013_gene_patent.html

3:

JA @1: I'm not going to answer that question.

4:

I'm the same way, although I'll admit I use LinkedIn primarily because I use social networking for business.

I created a Facebook account because of the rise of games on Facebook; my day job is online game developer, so I wanted to keep up an eye on the games. Every time I go check out a game, though, I have half a dozen friend requests that have been sitting there for a while.

Looking at history, social networks tend to be ephemeral. Friendster is now a shadow of what it used to be, and Orkut (which I previously used) is mostly for Portuguese-speaking Brazilians; sadly, that's one language I don't know that well.

5:

I'm still gathering data. One LinkedIn friend has connected me with several potential paying writing gigs, but none would pay enough AND select me yet. Right now, I have 248 Friends on Facebook, whom I find almost always delightful online company. But it's hard to prove what I gain professionally. I did once win a pyrex graduated cylinder coffee cup from a contest at Science Blogs. I might reveraluate if I ever earn as much per hour writing as Mr. Stross does currently. I did, in flashes, early in my career. What, correcting for inflation, is $2,500 for a 2,000 word cover story in the late great Omni magazine, converted from 1979 to 2009 money? Assuming that I wrote fast...

6:

One social network is enough for anyone

Nice to meet you, anyone.

7:

And who remembers Friends Reunited? Arguably version 1.0 of the whole thing, not that the MSM remembered when they came all over again over Fbk/twtr/whtvr.

8:

Don't friend me there; I will not friend you back.

The fact that this sentence makes now makes grammatical sense is one of the major black marks against social networking sites.

That's like the guy who bought some patents on human DNA to ensure that (for ideological reasons) they would not be used.

Actually, I thought it was just part of his divorce battle with Pamela.

9:

I JUST STARTED A MYSPACE SIGHT FOR MY NEW BAND, IT WAS WIERD LAST TIME I HAD A MYSPACEPAGE, I WOULD GET ALL THESE REQUESTS FOR FRIENDS, THAT LOOKED LIKE MODELS, AND THEN I KINDA FIGURED OUT REALLY FAST, IT WAS ONE OF THOSE AUTOMATED THINGS, I THOUGHT, TOO KINDLY OF MYSELF, AND THEN I ALREADY NEW THE SPOOKS HAVE BEEN THROUGH ALL MY MAILS, AHHAHHAA, SO I SAID, TO MY SELF CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP, ILL JUST HAVE A NEW MYSPACE PAGE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS, GOTTA CONNECT SOMEWAY, AND SURE ENOUGH I THINK THE SECOND TIME I LOGGED IN I GOT PHISHED! A TRUE STORY BY THE WAY, IM NOT WORRIED THOUGH, MY IDENTITY, FOR A SPY WRITE NOW IS LITERALY A SIRIUS LIABILITY!

10:

The prosecution rests.

12:

Have you considered a Facebook page instead of a profile? It lets your fans show their, um, fandom, and it also lets you send out updates about new books, signing tours, etc. You don't need to accept people or respond to anything, so it's pretty low-maintenance.

13:

Simon: there's a fan club, I believe. Not interested: I already have enough time sinks on the web. If you want to know what I'm up to, look at this site.

14:

There's a Charles Stross Fan Club, a Charles Stross "celebrity" page with regular updates about events, and an event named "Charles Stross" that appears to be something happening in Denmark in June. There are also 3 people named "Charles Stross" with no profile pictures.

15:

and an event named "Charles Stross" that appears to be something happening in Denmark in June.

Yeah, that sounds like the Charlie Stross whose fan club we're in, despite the lack of a Facebook page.

"Coming. To Denmark. The Event of the Summer. CHARLES STROSS."

Too bad Don LaFontaine isn't still alive to do the voiceover.

16:

In Soviet Russia, Facebook Use You.

Alright, I'll get me coat.

17:

@1: I think you're currently looking at Mr. Stross' social network site.

18:

I still have good hopes for Web 3.0, where our computers take care of maintaining the social networking sites, leaving us humans more time to do actually useful things.

19:

It seems to me that Charles Stross is successful in several social networks, at least these: (1) I've witnessed him happily surrounded by a remarkable wife and friends; (2) He is in conversation with other authors, and with readers, through his long and short fiction as published on the physical or virtual page; (3) He is a personage of the blogosphere, and not a mere user of the infrastructure, but as simultaneous hands-on proprietor and pixel-stained blogmeister.

There have been others, as with employer-employee, and teacher-student. He has written about the structure and function of extrapolations of these.

I think that he is denying a cost-benefit basis to engage in a 4th social network. As with driving automobiles, he computes the costs and the benefits differently from some who know him through said networks, as Your Mileage May Vary.

20:

For various commenters: Charlie does have a Facebook page, as well as the fan club.

21:

Well, the next step is people bugging you to tweet all the time. So then you can complain about your shitty service at the restaurant while you're eating there. Wow!

22:

I'm wondering if this is a luxury afforded only to the established. Avoiding those sites seems a great way to miss an opportunity for the young/new (full disclosure: me).

Makes sense to me; but does that logical knot stink of stupid to anyone?

23:

I am considering tweeting. Goal will be to emit one tweet per day. Tweet content will consist of an under-140 word piece of flash fiction. Goal of fiction: make Warren Ellis throw up.

24:

I usually do not use technology. I do not socialize with others. They drag you into the continuously accelerating, spinning maelstrom of technology. Do not bother me, I will not respond. I will go back to my hole in the woods. Reading Stross has made me a better human.

25:

TWEETER=NOVELTY=FAD????? HOW MANY OF U STILL LISTEN TO PIANO PLAYER ROLLS???? AND I SAW A DYSON SPHERE IN MY RIGHT I THE OTHER MORNING.

26:

I got arrested because of something I wrote on Facebook. Turns out freedom of speech is pretty much fine as long as you're not making sick and twisted jokes about victims of kidnapping.

http://moonlightspiders.blogspot.com/2009/01/part-one-of-my-arresting-story.html

27:

Please Mr. Stross - Veto caps. Have your site automatically reject entries with over a certain amount of caps? No... ? Please, I beg of you. For sanity and decency and humanity!

28:

@Twitter: Enjoying new thing. Like web but without boring CONTENT.

29:

Tweet content will consist of an under-140 word piece of flash fiction.

I read that as "slash fiction" and for a moment my brain fairly goggled.

30:

Goal of fiction: make Warren Ellis throw up. Tell us if you succeed, please? I would love to see something that overcame his immunities.

31:

I suppose an aspiring novelist could publish their own novel 140 words at a time. How long would it take?

32:

Robin: Weird Al worked that joke well when he signed up for Twitter. He did several 140-word chunks of Moby Dick, was informed that someone else had already done it, and switched to chunks of War and Peace. In Cyrillic. (And yes, it actually is Weird Al Yankovic, as confirmed from several fronts, celebrity impersonation being a concern worth looking into in such cases.)

33:

@31 - its obviously mis-read day: I was very impressed that you could tell it was really Weird Al Yankovic by his use of fonts...

34:

@charlie 23 Ummm i suspect that anything you come up with to make Warren Ellis puke will have killed all of your other followers.

But hell, what a way to go...

35:

I imagine that a Twitter novel wouldn't take any longer than a Japanese Cell Phone Novel. Keep in mind that Moby Dick was done by a program that broke it up into Tweet size chunks and posted them automatically. Posting an original novel that way could be an option.

36:

@23, @34:

One of the few interesting uses I've seen for Twitter is to broadcast short stories one line at a time. Twitter lets fans have the opportunity to submit suggestions for what the characters should do at certain points. Sort of like a group game of Zork.

And if Twitter can induce projectile vomiting, so much the better. :)

37:

I suspect the likelihood of making Warren Ellis throw up as a function of time follows a roughly diurnal pattern. Time your flash fiction about the San Diego Comic-Con wisely.

38:

@30

714 days, that's 1.95 years. So roughly two years.

39:

I just got a Facebook friend request from some Edward S. Chaton. Should I be worried?

40:

I just got a Facebook friend request from some Edward S. Chaton. Should I be worried?

41:

Facebook is too busy kicking MySpace around the block to notice. Does make one wonder: what is the Sustained Competitive Advantage? What is the Monetization? What is the Valuation? What does this mean to me (if I am Charles Stross, a pseudo-non-user)?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/166774/myspace_staff_slashed_almost_30_percent.html

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This page contains a single entry by Charlie Stross published on May 23, 2009 6:12 PM.

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