Facebook scares me

[baratron]

Richard uses Facebook rather than livejournal because all his paintball people are there. I wish he'd use the same "networking site" as me so I'd know when he's up to things, rather than having him announce randomly that he's out all weekend on Thursday or Friday night. I may have to get a Facebook account myself, on which I will be known by some made-up name due to my lack of desire to have my surname publically available.

Anyway, at the moment Richard's Facebook front page has a People You May Know box, which suggests that he may know some chap called Ian. It says, and I quote "You and Ian both live in London". My gosh, the boy & this other individual happen to live in the same capital city of 8 million inhabitants! So they must know each other! Er... ?

Comments

[hatter.livejournal.com]

Cath used to use my "shared calendaring solution" (a text file called 'calendar' that we both had write access to) but since she got her iphone she doesn't tend to log into pzat, so doesn't use it, and I don't tend to look at my google shared calendars thingie. Got a common calendaring option somewhere that you'd both actually remember to look at ? Phone/browser-based I'd guess. It'll take a few "but how would I know, you didn't put that in the calendar"s to get into the practice, mind.


the hatter

[pir.livejournal.com]

gcal is useful even if you don't look at it, you can tell it to send you daily summary email of what's happening today.

I've succummed to gcal because of a couple of people using it and it being available on my phone wherever I am...

[hatter.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and facebook doesn't have my surname, but I believe you have to be cleverer these days. I bet a 'ms astral alice' would be easy to direct people at; the problem with mine is the only sane way to look me up is with the numeric ID unless we already have friends in common.

[redbird]

I am fairly sure you could give it "Helen Louise" and have those treated as first and last names, if you didn't mind the system then referring to you as Helen. Our favorite fishie is on Facebook as Pir Anha.

(It doesn't handle names as well as it thinks. For example, I have a friend named Mary Kay. It thinks she's named Mary.)

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

That "you may know this person" is not entirely as stupid as you think - if Richard clicks on the person's name (not the add-as-friend thing but their name) it might show that they have some friends in common, too. That is how it seemed to work with me. It also kept suggesting that I must know my ex, which was more annoying (although it pleases me in a mean way that all my friends-in-common with him are our daughter, his relatives, and in-person friends from my former hometown - not internet friends.)

[firecat]

The other day I discovered that the "people you may know" widget has a little x in it, and you can click it and it will stop showing you that person.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

I know! I exercised it in this case!

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

It'll use that box to show whatever shared “network” you have with them, but I think it recommends mostly based on shared “friends”.

For example, a couple times it showed someone I didn't recognize who had some affiliation with the university where I'm a grad student; but the actual connection is (apparently) that he was on soc.motss back in the old days, and so knows a bunch of the same people that I do from Usenet.

[mjl]

The "people you may know" is based on mutual friends, actually. The little box thing identifies networks in what is supposed to be an shorthand way to remind you of the connection. Everyone gets to be in one location-based network, and London is pretty much the biggest (may actually be the biggest) of them. If you are both in the same smaller network (for example, alumni of the same school, or a workplace), it does show that instead.

One thing about Facebook is that there isn't (as far as I can see) the same level of expectation that you will actually keep up with everything your "friends" are doing. Even with a relatively small number of friends, I'd have to check the stream of updates several times a day to see everything, and you can't go back more than a day or so.

[mjl]

Having now read the captions on that paintballing album, I think you should definitely join Facebook so you can do more of them. :-)

[ludy]

H-L Baratron would work as a name - was ludy pobble for a few days before i realised i wanted to be contactable by some of my family and switched to my family me. It seemed to be enough of a known name for me not to confuse anyone apart from my more aged relatives

[johnckirk.livejournal.com]

I recently saw the pilot for the American version of "Red Dwarf". On the whole, it was pretty dire, but there was one bit I liked, where Lister meets Kryten. Paraphrasing:
"Hi, I'm Dave Lister, from Earth."
"Ah, I have a friend on Earth - do you know RXKB516?"