So I signed up for Twitter because a client of mine has a big following and people are starting to want to pay him to Tweet. I figured I oughta have a clue about what the hell it is and at least read his Tweets.

As a result, I'm in a "**** it" mood about social networks and am considering dropping my long-standing opposition to Facebook. Please to be talking me into or out of this.

You'll instantly be inundated with high school chums (read: people you don't know) crawling out of the woodwork and old flames who are looking you up.


Definitely do it.

Facebook, I believe, is really whatever you make it. A lot of people get annoyed with aspects of it, but I keep my facebook very simple - no apps, hide quizzes, keep my friends list to people I actually care about, and set up friends lists to manage privacy levels. As a result, it's a great tool for me to keep touch with my friends and family all over the place and see pictures, etc.

And if you hate it, you can always quit. You wouldn't be the first.

HOW DOES IT KNOW THAT I KNOW THESE PEOPLE

To echo what people have said- all of these social network tools can be useful if you use them correctly. That said- Facebook can be pretty annoying if your friends are too prone to using ******ed aps and/or have lots of ******ed friends.

This is pretty awesome

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Jgkm...layer_embedded

Most likely because they've uploaded their email contacts to facebook and you're in them.

List of immediate questions:

Picture of son OK as profile pic?

My instinct is to have this either business-contacts only or personal contacts only. Is that unrealistic and should I just accept that I'm going to have some of both?

Cliffnotes of generally preferred privacy settings?

Cliffnotes of generally preferred application settings?

Other general or specific tips?

Should this be a thread?

Right now I'm just going through and turning everything off until I figure out what the hell is going on here.

i love facebook, ive kept in contact pretty well with some of my good highschool friends because of it. there are negative aspects, but there are negative aspects to everything. you don't have to use it. I think a pic of your son is fine, but if someone googles your name and finds your facebook I believe they'll be able to see the thumbnail even if your privacy settings are all the way up

generally I keep my privacy settings pretty low, but afaik most people prefer to keep theirs pretty strict, i.e, only friends can see any info about anything

dont use your son as a profile pic, its tacky and boring

My old duck avatar is my facebook profile pic. If you don't know me, why do you want my pic. If you do know me, you'll find my wife, friend her, and get kid pics out the wazoo.

The only reason I can think of for putting a real pic is if you are single, or doing it strictly for a professional purpose.

Hm, in my experience like 90% of facebook users disagree with you.

I'm 100% definitely not putting a picture of myself, that's for damn sure.

I'm setting this up because professionally people keep talking about using it for stuff. Personally, people keep wanting me to have it so they can see pictures of my kids.

memento,

and you'll notice we make fun of that 90%... a lot.

I have the same questions LFS. I've resisted signing up so far, but I'm getting closer.

LFS - This will help.

It explains friends lists and how you can use them to set what your business contacts can see vs your personal contacts.

Using your son as your profile pic is fine. Especially if it's cookie thief mugshot shop.

Who does? In my experience it is definitely not the norm to have a picture of something other than yourself on your fb page. I've never heard of anyone making fun of this for being weird.

Do you have any pictures of yourself on there, or you're saying you just don't put your pic on your main profile pic that everyone can see?

I tend to think that people that don't have pictures of themselves on facebook are pretty dickcheese. One of the things that's nice about fbook is that it doesn't have all the internet nonsense of screen names and avatars and is just a way for people who know eachother in real life to link together.

My guess would be that from a business perspective, LFS would benefit a lot from twitter- and very little from facebook.

People on facebook spend countless hours talking about trivial things, trying to make little jokes, doing stupid polls, posting funny pics or videos. What a bunch of losers.

I can not name the amount of conversations I have seen about people making fun of other people's avatar pics, saying they are stupid, or lame, or their kid's picture is dumb, or whatever. In general, profile pics seems to always get a lot of hate.

But that's a different conversation. My point was that I don't see a good REASON to make your avatar/profile pic a real one unless you are trolling for dates or need it for a business perspective. I have little doubt that many people use their real picture as an avatar/profile picture with little thought behind it at all. (i.e. they have no reason why they do it, they just think "picture goes here!") And then maybe a small percentage think it will be beneficial for someone to find them if they do this. (True, but I'm an antisocial bastard and don't care if people can find me)

Having pictures in general seems fine. It seems like a useful application of facebook to share pictures with your friends. I'm not disagreeing with that at all.

And for people that wonder about the didshate that comes from so many people, just read this first sentence, and it should be clear. Oh noes, I don't use an avatar dids like, therefore I am dickcheese.

If so many Dids posts didn't essentially boil down to "and this is this post's random insult at many people I don't even know but want to spew insults at," you'd probably see a lot less random didshate from people who don't even know who dids is, but have surely been indirectly insulted by him multiple times after reading OOT for even a week.

It gets really messy if you combine personal/professional stuff. Proceed carefully. You might want to consider setting up two separate profiles.

The fact that post 9's pic was extracted and planted in this thread is solid gold.

Whatever you do, don't play Mafia Wars.

and the fact that was my facebook profile pic for a very long time is cute too

Ray,

Most of the DidsHate comes from people not bright enough to avoid taking things like that personally. I'm not going to change the way I am because some doorknobs on the internet get butthurt.

The overwhelming majority of facebook users have a picture of themselves as their profile picture. When I see somebody who doesn't- it always just seems really coy and silly. Obviously there's some valid reasons for not posting a picture, and once you read the rest of somebody's profile that may become clear. However, it's a snap judgement a lot of people will make- and in terms of providing LFS with the input he's looking for- something he might want to know.