Friends?

[Reboot]

Friends seems kind of funny. Anybody know the purpose?

We're all friends anyway or we wouldn't have come here or stayed at MCF for so long, right?

Not complaining, I've made some requests just to test it.

[luciferase]

You can make your blog or pictures viewable to certain people categories:

Anyone
Your friends
a certain person only
your gay friends

I asked everyone to be my friend. I have 12 friends and you have 4. You must be a loser.

[Reboot]

I've asked, hardly anyone has replied. :-(

;-)

[macbeemer]

"Friends" is ok, and is handy in a more polarized environment - and since the election was an "off" year, we didn't have too much trouble around here, or back at the other place.

In Facebook, they have "poking." I don't mind poking Christine, but I draw the line at giving Fred a poke.

I think i have more friends than my profile page shows. I see different totals in different areas. I think this place is haunted, and it hates me.

[James]

Annoying is more like it. Some of these sites just try a little too hard. But it's not too bad. I just wish it was more customizable. I would get rid of well over half of what is showing on the pages.

[Shooshie]

Man, so would I. I'll tell you what's going on here. These Face-Book style people apparently need visual confirmation that they have friends and that the internet is indeed a community. We were doing community on the internet before facebook's creators were in 5th grade. Community is people who want to talk, find each other, and communicate. Communicate contains the first 8 letters in Community. They're all about the same thing. We've been doing it for over a decade at MacCentral. Not like we discovered it or anything, but we were doing it online in a set place with set rules, and look at us: 10 years later we're still together. We've mourned the loss of our friends. We've fought and made up. We've done all that stuff without a friggin' "These are my friends" page. But hey... plus la change! We'll embrace it and take it into our community and make it work, and still be a friggin community. Or we'll make a mosaic and ship it around the country and sign it, and STILL be a community! ;^)
Shoosh

[luciferase]

I feel validated as a human being because I have 24 friends in Ning. If you click on the very top left icon of yourself on the top of all pages you can see the longest list. In my profile I have fewer friends. Some used to have pics and now they don't.

Social graces: one can remove a friend. Too funny. Do they get a Dear john letter? Or does the person get an ESAD notice? One can also ramp up and "Block message from this user". Maybe that is when the "You used to be my friend but now you should ESAD".

[Kate]

That little envelope next to each picture is a PM, I think. Or email. I've played with so many features I forget now. The missing ones may have been a glitch, temporary, someone working on the picture or God telling you something about choosing friends!

[macbeemer]

I wish the old SAAB 93 with the 40 mpg freewheeling cornpopper was still a viable car. I really liked being able, after a road trip, to be able to open the doors and hose out the floormats. But, I also really enjoy the 40's-only channel on the radio of my full-tilt current saab. The old stuff was great, and always will be great in our memories. I think MrB had a sig that said "the older i get, the better I was." And all that was MCF years ago is available here, with added options. The friends thing isn't so much about ego gratification, but selectivity. You can display a more deeply defined online persona on your page here, but aren't forced or obligated to share your stuff with trolls or socks. Extra value, I say. I guess there are some who will always prefer the 2cv to the DS9, but here you can use what you like and simply not use most of the rest.

[luciferase]

And I am about to jump in my 99 4Runner for a road trip to Cornell. It would be more fun in my wife's Acura RSX Type S but she won't let me have it for three days.

I think I might like it. There are pics and words I have not posted over in MCF because google can find them. These modest layers of defense may work out quite well.

[macbeemer]

There are some mysteries here. It's like a new girlfriend. Notice the picture of me in your friends grouping, on my knees looking for a golf ball. That's not the same as my "profile" shot. I'm not sure where the ambiguity began, nor do I know how to fix it. If the thing was perfect, it wouldn't hold my attention.

ps - new videos!

[Max]

But not in a bad way.... right?

This appears to be borrowed from the likes of MySpace and FB... I never tried the former but I did the latter and it was my experience that this "feature" represented a cheapening of what friendship used to mean.

I had people I barely knew from my first year uni days asking to be comfirmed as my friend. One or two guys I didn't particularly like, either. Seems to me some people think it's a sweepstakes where he who racks up the biggest number of friends is da winnah.

Phooey!

[Reboot]

You know I jest Max.

Love ya' man. :-)