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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

for not having a clue what facebook is

58 replies

2spells · 20/07/2007 22:02

??

OP posts:
mammamic · 20/07/2007 23:29

totally addictive - i have it on the background at work and it's on in the background now as i type

ladylush · 20/07/2007 23:31

I can't afford another addiction. Mnet takes up too much time as it is.

americantrish · 21/07/2007 08:27

nope! not unreasonable! i only joined FB last month.

re: to ladylush> not anyone can access your profile if you adjust your privacy settings accordingly.

kittywits · 21/07/2007 09:27

i can't work out what the difference is between facebook and friends reunited. they look exactly the same to me. Can someone enlighten me please !?

SandCastspells · 21/07/2007 09:36

Facebook is free to chat to your friends...there is no fee to send messages

coddy · 21/07/2007 09:37

youa re an old lady

IntergalacticWalrus · 21/07/2007 09:39

Yes, tis addictive, especail;y whne you do things like searching for ex boyfriends, which is always good for a laugh (well, tis in my case anywye)

mummymagic · 21/07/2007 09:45

I love facebook. Its just pissing about with your mates. eg we have all added a pretend aquarium and send each other random fish, and notes etc. Its a bit silly and like being back at school - I am sure we will get bored with it in 6 mths.

You can set your profile to private which means that no-one you haven't approved can see your details. I don't allow anyone to be my friend I don't know in rl and I don't put anything really personal (eg contact details, real birthdate) anyway. You can also have personal emails too. So this is why I would use Facebook and not Myspace and don't mind using my real name and posting pics too.

You can join groups eg mumsnet group and join in discussions without them being able to see your profile.

Try it. Join under a fake name and search for people. You will soon see you can't see everyone's details.

Judy1234 · 21/07/2007 09:52

I have 3 children at university so have known about it for years. There are fascinating class issues too about which social networking site people choose. My son says they were all set up with secret CIA funding as a means of tracking citizens (he avoids them) and it's certainly true you can find a lot out about potential employees, friends, neighbours if they're on these places and friends reunited or have a blog etc.

mammamic · 21/07/2007 10:28

CIA

not sure they'd trawl something like FB....

if the CIA or similar wanted info on you, i'm sure there'd be easier ways of getting it. we went to the US 2 yrs ago with our 11month dd. they insisted on taking a pic of her and her iris at passport control (i argued the ridiculousness of this which ended with being told that if i didn't co-operate, we couldn't go any further).

if they start that early, by the time you get on sites like FB, they'd already have a pretty complete profile.

Thankfully, probably after millions of complaints, the US customs only take your prints/photo etc if you're over 14.

legalalien · 21/07/2007 10:42

I registered with it this morning, as a friend had sent me an email asking me to be her friend, and I hadn't caught up with her for a while and wanted to see her pics.

I looked around for a while, and then realised that it would be much better if I just gave her a call and organised to meet IRL. I guess it's good if you have a widely dispersed, international network of friends (which I do), but still not entirely convinced about posting a bunch of personal info on the internet. I wouldn't be that confident about the security.

X - I expect your son is right - this would be a mine of info for organisations like the CIA (at least until the European data protection regulators caught up with them!)

Think I'll go and deregister.

arfishy · 21/07/2007 10:57

But as far as I'm aware the only people I know using it are my teenage stepsons and other young people. How would I keep up with my friends? Would I need to tell them all about it and be further branded a sad old cow who never talks to people in real life? I already have to keep my MN habit secret for fear of further ridicule as it is.

[Is perhaps the answer to this that all my friends are technophobic old-timers or are you lot just young?]

legalalien · 21/07/2007 11:09

nope I'm late thirties. Is catching on in companies / workplaces (when I registered it picked up my work email address (where my friend had sent her email) and wanted me to be on the network of my employer. which is what I found a bit scary - hence deactivation

arfishy · 21/07/2007 11:11

But why would I register with my work email address when we all work and use our work email and IM at work anyway? I just don't get it.

arfishy · 21/07/2007 11:13

And I know I'm sounding like my mother did when I first tried to explain computers to her and it's killing me. Because I'm a techie. But I just don't get it!!!!

Judy1234 · 21/07/2007 11:15

I think people get a huge amount of pleasure out of it. You can only make your information available to certain people. I found it helpful in the last week in tracking down my daughter in Guatemala and working out which friends are with her from their facebook pages. My son even objects to the London tube pass Oyster card because it enables records to be kept of every journey you make and the time and I can quite understand his position. It would be fun to produce some babies kept entirely out of the system, not registered at birth and see how far you could go as an individual unknown to the state.

My 8 year olds have facebook pages but we check what they put on them and that's below the offical age range. Never assume anyone is who they say they are of course.

Employers often use it now to check.

Judy1234 · 21/07/2007 11:17

arfishy, I get emails ever other day from middle aged work contacts asking me to be their friend on facebook. I haven't put anything on my page which I only put up as my 8 year old wanted a friend connected to his page so I don't reply but certainly I don't think there's an age bar. In fact it could be a business tool and lots of people have always had pen friends and contacts they don't often see and this is just an extension of that.

kimi · 21/07/2007 11:26

I did not know what facebook was either so I ask DP who is a self confessed tecky geek and this is what he said.........

Can you imagine hell? well its worse then that. Its a bunch of emo kids whining about themselfs.

So glad I now know

amidaiwish · 21/07/2007 11:29

have just set up my profile on facebook.
divvy question - what year do you put as your university/school year? the year you joined or the year you left?
thanks

arfishy · 21/07/2007 11:38

Ahh. I see Xenia. Thank you. Yes, good for networking with business contacts. "With it" ones I assume. I'm going to go and see if anybody I've ever worked with who over 35 is on there. Especially the CEOs.

Judy1234 · 21/07/2007 15:25

I think it's a very useful thing for lots of people and a lot of fun but you need to be careful about what is put up or you could come unstuck - that girl at Oxford the other week was in trouble because confidential pictures on her page had been put up by her or others which showed she'd breached college rules and had been hacked into in some way by the college. In other words the privacy settings are only as good as you trust you friends etc.

I think my daughters find it helpful in keeping in touch with friends all over the world, particularly students travelling. Presumably people could fairly well fake stuff - pictures of their wonderful holiday in Bhutan (them in the backgarden photoshopped on to a Bhutan picture etc)

southeastastra · 21/07/2007 15:29

i don't have a clue either.

i lasted one day on second life as i couldn't get dressed so had to walk around in arseless chaps and too many people laughed at me so i gave up . oh and i got propositioned alot

MissTea4Me · 21/07/2007 15:41

Perhaps about the CIA mammamic but facebook did find it necessary to deny publicly that they let the CIA access data from the site. There are also countless instances of other authorities investigating info and pics-- admittedly mostly busting underage drinking in the U.S. but can you imagine what a mine, say, the benefits agency might find it in the U.K.? Check it out, by all means, but approach with caution, I would say.

mammamic · 21/07/2007 18:10

IKWYM about info being accessed but to be honest, unless you have something major to hide or are messaging wth people about stuff that raises flags, then I don't think there's anything to worry about.

We moved a few months before i got pregnant and it was hard to get to know people. MN was a bit daunting as everyone seemed to know each other and the few times i tried to get in touch with people in my area, nothing came of it. My Space was cr*p to say the least. Facebook would have really helped if i'd known about it. Now i have a network of friends where we are but it's great to keep in touch with distant friends and family etc.

I love it!!!

TheMoistWorldOfSeptimusQuench · 21/07/2007 18:36

Facebook is for egomaniacs.

Erm, present company excepted of course

And I asked on another thread, but no one answered: Why on earth do people who are not musicians or performers need to have myspace sites?

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