Wise Startup Blog

I decided to tackle these questions posed by Alex over at Read/Write/Web and put my own spin on them as a recent graduate from college now entering the web 2.0 workforce.

BASICS

When did you first become a Facebook user?I opened a Facebook account my sophomore year of college in June 2004. We were one of the first 20 or so colleges, University of Florida, with a Facebook account and being that it was summer, not too many people were on Facebook.

Along with a couple of my friends, we spent the majority of our time looking at hot girls, and exchanging pokes (well poking girls and not getting poked back), and trying to determine if a girl was hot from her one picture; “her neck is fat, that’s how you can tell,” “if it’s just a picture of their face, that’s a bad sign,” “she lists chocolate as an interest…”.

What are your typical activities on Facebook? Now I mostly use Facebook for staying in touch with my friends that have moved on. I am still in my college town, working at a startup and find it hard sometimes to stay on top of everything. I occasionally view photos, but mostly find Facebook overwhelming.

What is the social impact of Facebook? Facebook is basically an always-on AIM, AOL Instant Messenger. Before, if you wanted to talk to someone, you had to wait for them to sign on AIM, and then you had the tentative moments of girls signing on and IMing you and you getting all excited and also having them sign on, stay on for a few minutes and you IM they as they sign off and you feel like a moron — ah, the good ‘ol days

Now you can stalk people regardless of if they’ve signed on, and you can browse their pictures and realize how ugly their friends are or how drunk they get, quite fun stuff. Also, before Facebook, nobody had an email box, so if you wanted to reach them you had to call them or hope to catch them on AIM. Now with the pseudo mailboxes on Facebook, you can drop people notes and more easily stay connected with those friends of yours that don’t use email.

FUNCTIONALITY

What Facebook features you could not live without? I think the photos are probably the key feature that I enjoy the most. It allows me to sit back, relax and either get a little emo or LOL at when you see ridiculous pictures. My friends like to use pictures as a forum as well, starting 150 long comment strings on pictures we particularly like or don’t like Also I’d say messaging and poking are two of the crucial features that truly set Facebook apart from the other social networks, with their ability to contact people in different ways.

What features do you wish Facebook had? Honestly, I wish I had more easy control over the content I receive in my news feed, and more control over the connections I have to people. Originally, when I added people as friends, I wish there were options to control my degree of connection to people. The whole ‘how do you know this person’ doesn’t sit well with my generation, and I find whenever somebody prompts me with that question, it’s almost insulting. What do you mean you don’t remember how you know me? We hooked up! …joking!

What do you think of the Facebook user interface? Facebook has definitely been improving their interface with additional use of Ajax, simplifying menus, navigation, controls. The biggest feature they should add is the ability for me to view people’s pages without the annoying widgets or whatever you call them.

How did the Facebook platform changed enhance your usage of Facebook? Facebook Platform? What’s that? The annoying applications and everything? It seems like it gave my friends more reasons to waste time and not focus on getting rich, so that’s a plus for me. Some of the applications are useful, like Picnik for photo editing and the event management stuff, but for me, I’m more of a peanut butter jelly guy than a triple mocha whipped frappaccinno. (sp?)

Do you have a lot of applications installed? How about your friends? I have like 5 applications installed, all of which were installed in the early days when I thought it would be cool to list my drinks — I chose like pina colada or something ridiculous for fun, but after being bombarded with 8,000 invitations to be a vampire, it got old real fast. I’m too lazy or it’s too hard to disable the notifications, so now I check my Facebook once a week and just clear out the messages.

My friends have a lot of applications, Jetman being particularly popular. But to me the game sucks, maybe I’m too old or “mature,” but I just feel like I’m wasting my time. By the way, I’m not too old at all, I’m young, 23.

PRIVACY

Do you trust Facebook with your personal information? What is Facebook going to do with it? If I say I like pizza in my profile, and I get 50 more offers for Pizza, isn’t that what I want? Yes. The only time things like this turn bad is when you receive stuff you don’t want, and if there’s no limit to the moderation: enter facebook applications.

What have you seen that people have shared that you found out of line? Nothing really, I’m never one to judge. I personally find it ridiculous that businesses look on people’s Facebook to determine if someone will be a good ‘job candidate’. Unless they have pictures of themselves at Michael Vick’s dog camp or waiving Confederate flags, let kids be kids and have fun. In fact, isn’t getting drunk what these executives do at their last Christmas party?

What sort of things would you hesitate to share? Your true feelings. Facebook is so sensationalist, if you post anything that offers a true picture of yourself, you can be open to all sorts of “what’s wrong, blah blah, etc.”.

ADVERTISING / SHOPPING

What do you think of Facebook advertising? Do you find Facebook ads more relevant than other online ads? Ha! Facebook advertising is the worst. However, with the integration into the feed I have found certain ads not so bad. I mainly use the ads as a way of telling what new movies and TV shows are out. Perhaps if Facebook linked new movies/tv shows up to reviews, they might be more valuable.

Facebook ads are like ads on TV, nobody pays attention to them because they’re on TV or Facebook, only if they resonate to them. If you’re seeing ads on your favorite blog, you draw a personal connection to the ads because of the medium, Facebook is just too mainstream.

Would you purchase books, movies, or music if you saw that your friends bought them? If my friends purchase something they like, they’ll tell me about it. If I see they buy a book, and don’t mention it to me, it means the book probably sucks. Consumers naturally want to tell other people about the cool things they buy, it gives them a feeling of satisfaction and is a reward in and of itself.

THE LONG TERM IMPACT

Would you still use Facebook after you graduate? I just graduated in May of 2006 and have definitely decreased my Facebook usage, but this may have to do with the fact that I have a girlfriend and all of my free time is spent with her, but with people splitting apart Facebook loses its core utility of connecting you with the people around you.

Would you be comfortable using Facebook to connect with your co-workers? Again, this goes back to my original point about employers looking poorly upon Facebook. If you want to be successful at your job, you have to get along with the people around you, and connecting on Facebook is a good start.

Where will Facebook be in 5 years? Facebook will probably never morph into Linkedin unless they can figure out a way to segment people into different groups. As of now, I look to Linkedin for people who are more business-minded and looking to network. Facebook is basically a hodgepodge ranging from the town moron up to your CEOs, but that huge range makes navigating and trying to use Facebook as a utility very difficult and frustrating. Facebook does have all of the connections I need in my personal life, so if they can find a way to interlink these connections into every application and device I use from my cell phone to my GPS, that would be pretty damn cool.

Conclusion After completing this survey, it probably makes me want to use Facebook even less as I just think about all of the stupid application requests sitting in my inbox and me trying to avoid. Oh well, Facebook, I haven’t deleted my account yet and probably never will, so rest assured, you still have a special place in my heart since the time we first met over 3 years ago <3