Greetings fellow philosophers. Today I feel slightly vindicated by, ironically enough, Forbes, the magazine of capitalism. You probably remember my rant a few months ago against Facebook. The latest issue of Forbes Magazine has an article by Kym McNicholas: "Ten Reasons Not to Invest in Facebook."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kymmcnicholas/2012/02/01/ten-reasons-not-to-invest-in-facebook/2/
Many of them are the same reasons I had for criticizing Facebook. Ok, most of Forbes' reasons are about why you might not make any money off of it, but at least one reason they gave is that Facebook is useless, it really doesn't do anything new and good, and in fact makes you do bad, stupid things. I already said that, and I also pointed out that you can do better social networking by creating your own blogs and websites, have complete control of your own content and make it look the way you want it to look and do what you want it to do. Also, if you want advertising on your own blog or website, you get paid for your own content. On Facebook, they get paid for your content but you don't see a dime of that.
Ok, 'nuff negativity, here's the positive side of social networking. Two of my talented siblings, Christopher K. Moon, photographer, and Carol Louise Moon, poet, have posted their work on the net. Check it out, friends.
Moonerisms
I appreciate your viewpoint on Facebook, but must disagree on your assessment that it is "useless". I have already lost two friends due to them finding out about my radical political beliefs and been able to facilitate a break up by "un friending" my girlfriend. Also, I've been able to share the site "Hitler Cats" (cats that look like Hitler) with many of my friends.
ReplyDeleteJust sayin...
Good point, Blaze. I wish that (1) all intelligent people would use social networking in more creative ways, if only to balance out the stupid to smart ratio, and (2) that intelligent people would get paid for providing their content rather than giving it away to corporations who do not provide the content, but profit from the drop-down ads that are so ubiquitous, without giving a percentage to the actual providers like yourself. I guess I misspoke when I used the word "useless" because I totally agree with you than many people have made good use of Facebook, twitter, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut my point was that we already have the media at our disposal without those. By using email and our personal blogs or websites, we can create our own custom-made social networks without those cookie-cutter profiles that lock our personalities into social networking stereotypes. We shouldn't have to be defined by a narrow menu of gender/hobby/music/single status. And we should get paid for providing the content.