Is Facebook getting too big?

[Dayna]

http://www.aolnews.com/discuss/2011/02/ ... eUrlAnchor

[Adam Blake]

Yes - is the short answer. Except it's not getting too big, it's got too big. And, in tune with the zeitgeist as it is (in many ways, it IS the zeitgeist), there is no accountability. None at all.

[Dayna]

I became aware of this last night when I had heard of a guy on the news who was kicked off Facebook. I didn't hear why he was kicked off, but I started reading things online about people who have been kicked off, and apparently, it can happen to anyone.
I've enjoyed it for keeping in touch with people but I don't like this lack of accountability.

I lost all the pictures from my computer twice now because it crashed on me so all my pictures are on Facebook and Myspace. I'm trying to recopy them, especially the ones of my cat when she was a baby, and print them out just in case this happens with my computer or get kicked off.

[Jonathan E.]

I suggest buying a cheap external hard drive and keeping a back up of all your photos, etc. on that so that if your computer goes kerblonk you still have the stuff that's difficult to replace. Much easier than copying everything back and probably better quality. Alternatively you might try sticking everything up on Flikr or other photo hosting service — lots of cloud-based backup now also, although ultimately they may have the same drawbacks of Facebook/MySpace and I can't recommend any in particular.

I have taken a vow to be the last person to open an account on Facebook! It's not my fault if it's getting too big.

[Hugh Weldon]

It's not clear exactly what the guy who wrote the piece did, but inviting strangers to be 'friends' seems to be inviting trouble. Why didn't he focus on the multifarious music groups they have and join some of them?,that seems to be a more profitable route for networking.

I used to do that with myspace (remember myspace?) and found myself 'befriended' by multitudes of worthy but dull singer-songwriters, I only followed up one of them. He turned out to be a nice guy but when we met he seemed rather reluctant to let me hear any of his songs, I think we ended up listening to Charlie's Honky Tonk compilation over a few beers, and I ended up playing a couple of mine somehow.

The accountability point is the big one though. That they have the power of millions of people at their disposal to sell to advertisers, but have what appears to be no forum for customer comeback at all is almost beyond belief. However, social networking has gone too far to stop now, maybe in time something even bigger and better will come along, but not just yet.

[Martin Owen]

There is a spurious stat that says that

"if facebook was a country- it would be the third largest in the world"....
Clearly it would be corporate fascist state.... but ho hum.... it does let me snoop on my off-springs' movements.

Other stats in the way we are:
http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/02/golden ... ology.html