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Mike4
14th Apr 2016, 08:23 PM
I have been resisting joining any social media like facebook , but it seems that to get notification of emergency situations I will need to join.

What ever happened to SMS to any mobile on any network?

Do many members here also have facebook accounts and if you do is it worthwile?

Michael

KBs PensNmore
14th Apr 2016, 08:49 PM
I have facebook, but it was mainly to find my Grandkids, 3 of them to no avail. Is it worthwhile, only if you want to be inundated with friends requests from people with names like Horny ?9 and others like it? Read what people are doing every minute of the day, usually heaps of garbage as far as I'm concerned!!!! ALL my facebook notifications go straight to spam mail, worst part is, I find it practically impossible to unsubscribe to facebook.
Kryn

Oldneweng
14th Apr 2016, 08:52 PM
No, and never will. This forum is as close as I get.

Dean

BobL
14th Apr 2016, 08:56 PM
I have been a reluctant user of FB for a number of years as more and more OS relatives and friends sign up and communicate that way. Every day I get photos and news from these people so form that point of view I reckon it is worth

During this time I signed up and out (you can't check if you have actually signed out unless you sign back in again) multiple times.

A month or so I discovered F.B. Purity - Clean up and Customize Facebook (http://www.fbpurity.com)

This little extension enables the user to control the extent to which the bovine crap that FB continually feeds standard users.
I love it
No more
- ads
- trending trendy trends
- random, "you might like this"
- links to mindless this and that
- notices that your friends, friends, friends, friends, friends, friends, friend has picked their nose.
You can lock it down as tight or as loose as you like.

I have a South American relative who posts 20-30 web links a day in Portuguese which dominates and clutters the home page. I'd like to know what's going on with their family but not what their friends or two bit pollies are doing - this has all gone.

I've gone from ~100 things to less than 10 a day to look at.

You can still look at all the crap at a click of a button if you wish.

FB hate this extension and have tried to sue the folks distributing it and say to keep clear of it because of security concerns - never mind what they do with your data!
So far about 250,000 people are using it.

I tried posting the link to all my FB friends but FB won't allow the link on FB.

steamingbill
14th Apr 2016, 09:01 PM
I find it a handy way to keep in touch with distant family and friends. All up I've got 20 contacts in facebook and dont get much rubbish.

.RC.
14th Apr 2016, 09:12 PM
I was told how much I was missing out on by not being on facebook, and during a weak moment I signed up.

Saw it was 99.999999999999999999999999% crap. So I successfully closed my account and that is that.

If you are not very sociable then it is not for you.

I actually found it rather insidious.

BobL
14th Apr 2016, 09:33 PM
I was told how much I was missing out on by not being on facebook, and during a weak moment I signed up.
Saw it was 99.999999999999999999999999% crap. So I successfully closed my account and that is that.
Sounds like you need FB Purity.


If you are not very sociable then it is not for you..

Yeah that sort of sums it up.

It depends on the locality and number of people you are connected to.

If your connections are physically close by (i.e. next door, down the road), and you are happy with a few emails or phone calls from your long distance connections then there's less of a need.

My Dad is one of 11, mum 1 of 9 and I'm one of 10.
I don't know how many cousins there are (across 3 continents) but there are 26 nieces and nephews - and that's just my side of the family.
Plus i worked overseas for a period in 3 different continents so keeping up with even a few of these people is pretty difficult and impossible to do by email or phone calls.

steve.rsa
15th Apr 2016, 01:02 AM
I wouldn't have it at all but the archery club and my daughters afl clubs only communicate through their Fb pages. The looks I got when I asked where else to get the info |-O

Mike4
16th Apr 2016, 09:19 AM
RC's last post basically sums it up , I cannot see what is so wrong with a phone call or email .

Much of the stuff on facebook is crap put there by people who are way too dumb to see the waste of time it is.

I may try to speak to the people involved and will let the forum know .

Michael

sacc51
16th Apr 2016, 01:08 PM
Facebook can be a handy tool and there are many worthwhile and/or interesting groups to join. Depending on the group you can get inundated with friend/game requests but it takes little effort to either ignore them or block them. If you don't want to be bothered with friend/game requests or people contacting you simply sign up with a fictitious name. Unfortunately, many of the young generation seem fixated on posting pictures of themselves doing all sorts of mundane/uninteresting things: posting pictures of their breakfast/lunch/dinner and collecting as many friends as possible, strange, self obsessed lot today's young people! I don't have any family but facebook seems to be a very popular way to communicate with them these days, particularly if your in to keeping up with the grandkids, thank goodness I don't have family! Also a good way of keeping up with old workmates or in my case ex defence members/mates. Security settings can weed out most of the annoying bits!

.RC.
17th Apr 2016, 10:19 AM
Much of the stuff on facebook is crap put there by people who are way too dumb to see the waste of time it is.

I may try to speak to the people involved and will let the forum know .

Michael

Tell them you are running a machining business. Not the womans's weekly. :D

sacc51
17th Apr 2016, 11:11 AM
In reality facebook is not a lot different to this forum, both are platforms whereby a number of people with like interests can communicate their activities and interests, sound familiar?. Obviously there are those who see some of those actvities as pointless, a waste of time or boring, a point brought home on multiple occasions on this forum! For me looking at pictures of grandkids, tonight's dinner or a new cardigan is incredibly boring, but that's easy to deal with I simply scroll past. As in any forum there will be those who have no interest or do not enjoy every post, On facebook there are groups dedicated to subjects as diverse as current affairs, knitting, Triumph motor cycles, euthanasia, cooking, camping, canoeing and yes even metalworking. If you find discussing hobbies and interests such as these as pointless and a waste of time, makes you wonder why you would participate in this forum, after all it is a similar platform, just not as widely used.

BobL
17th Apr 2016, 11:14 AM
RC's last post basically sums it up , I cannot see what is so wrong with a phone call or email .
Phone calls can't easily contact a group simultaneously and unfortunately not everyone (including increasing numbers of younger people) use email and some older people have never used email or use it sporadically.
Don't get me wrong I like and use email a lot - I have archived every email I have sent since 1994 and can find most things within my my email archive.

Unfortunately if I send an email to a group as part of a general conversation (everyone sees everyone else responses) I might get 1 or 2 responses and when they do respond not everyone remembers to use "reply all" (even when I explicitly say this in my email) so conversations get mixed up and things have to be repeated, resulting in an overall higher level of confusion than happens with something like FB.

The mens shed committee email group (8 members) I'm on is a good example - Most of the senior members have only started with email in the last few years. The endless trail of back and forth and confusion that arises drives me nuts. This would be an ideal situation for use of a group based social media app. I'm not saying FB itself is the way to go but FB with "FB Purity" extension comes pretty close to what an uncluttered group base social media should look like.

In contrast to that the members of the International Science panel I'm on are all very experienced email users so much so that I when we physically meet every year our meetings are only half as long as they used to be.


Much of the stuff on facebook is crap put there by people who are way too dumb to see the waste of time it is.
I agree and much of the other stuff is deliberately put there by Facebook itself trying to direct you to what they want you to see.
The FB Purity extension allows you to remove all this.

clive hugh
26th Apr 2016, 07:51 PM
It can be a waste of time but both my wife and I sell stuff we have made on it and so far it's been OK, although you get a lot of tire kickers as well but they are easy to ignore.