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Are Facebook and Twitter good?


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My opinion is that they are probably not as no distinction can be made between the idiot and the intelligent person. Of course I do have a suspicion really intelligent people do not use either :)

Anyway what brought it up:

On Wednesday, a NMS employee with access to the Chrysler brand's Twitter account issued the following tweet using the f-bomb to some 8,000 followers:

"I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f****** drive," the tweet said.

It was quickly deleted and replaced with an apology. "Our account was compromised," Chrysler retweeted.

The unidentified agency employee was dismissed by New Media Strategies on Wednesday, Chrysler said.

"New Media Strategies regrets this unfortunate incident. It certainly doesn't accurately reflect the overall high-quality work we have produced for Chrysler," Pete Snyder, founder and president of the agency, said in a statement today. "We respect their decision and will work with them to ensure an effective transition of this business going forward."

The agency, based in Arlington, Va., has handled social media duties for the Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram Truck and Fiat brands since February 2010.

Following reports of the tweet, numerous social media sites and blogs expressed dismay that someone would lose their job over the error and that Chrysler responded in an overly heavy-handed, corporate manner.

So the question is derived from the last paragraph - are they bluidy insane!

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I see people trying to use FB for marketing but I don't tweet, follow tweets or any of that nonsense. Why would Chrysler have a twitter account? Who would follow it? 8,000 followers? I could carve a banana into the likeness of Che Guevera and get more than 8,000 followers.

Corporate America trying to get in social media is doomed to fail. Mostly due to the fact the reason follow these social media outlets is because they are a)topical, B) whimsical, c) edgy or d) some combination of the 3....all things corporate America is not.

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Yes it's good because I get to stay in communication with my friends in Egypt, France, Morocco, Belgium, Spain, NYC, California, and Virginia. I mean, damn, I'm still talking to a kid I was in 1st grade with.

And I mean actual friends, i.e. people I've known for 5+ years. (went to an international middle+HS)

Now, instead of having to email them, I just post on there and half of them have it on their phones and we're talking over skype within minutes.

Twitter though seems pretty retarded. Useful for political talking heads, megalomaniacs, and celebrities I guess though.

Anyways, anyone here over 30 won't really get it (though I'm actually still in touch with 2 of my favorite HS teachers). Just how your parents thought Led Zeppelin was the devil's music XD. Nothing changes.

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Given a finite number of minutes per day and time to interact with fellow-humans is it best to ignore those people you are in physical proximity with and only talk to old acquaintances?

Having sat at at meal with both my neice and nephew playing with their phones it did occur to me that social graces are going, and also the idea that you can learn something from new people. I call us new as we see and speak to them 6 monthlyish.

I love meeting new people and do not particularly feel that there is an inherent virtue in being in contact with your school mates from Grade 1 through 12.

Facebook has though thrown up a storm of troubles - notably the number of divorces attributed to it. Also lax secutriy and the commercialisation of the information. But then if you make something glitzy enough and it apprently fills a need the majority of people do not see the downsides.

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Given a finite number of minutes per day and time to interact with fellow-humans is it best to ignore those people you are in physical proximity with and only talk to old acquaintances?

Having sat at at meal with both my neice and nephew playing with their phones it did occur to me that social graces are going, and also the idea that you can learn something from new people. I call us new as we see and speak to them 6 monthlyish.

I love meeting new people and do not particularly feel that there is an inherent virtue in being in contact with your school mates from Grade 1 through 12.

Facebook has though thrown up a storm of troubles - notably the number of divorces attributed to it. Also lax secutriy and the commercialisation of the information. But then if you make something glitzy enough and it apprently fills a need the majority of people do not see the downsides.

Who said I spend all day on facebook or that I don't meet new people? . Like I said earlier, most people have it on their phones now, so they just do it while they're going about their jobs, at the house, shopping, etc.

As for keeping in touch with very old friends... well I guess we're got different kinds of friends from high school and earlier. I'd take a bullet (literally) for many of them. Part of that comes from my high school having ~150 people and before that all my schools had fairly low numbers as well. Never above 500. My circle of friends were closer than brothers.

And ya commercialization of private info is bad, but hey, people have complete control over how much information about themselves they want to post.

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Given a finite number of minutes per day and time to interact with fellow-humans is it best to ignore those people you are in physical proximity with and only talk to old acquaintances?

Having sat at at meal with both my neice and nephew playing with their phones it did occur to me that social graces are going, and also the idea that you can learn something from new people. I call us new as we see and speak to them 6 monthlyish.

I love meeting new people and do not particularly feel that there is an inherent virtue in being in contact with your school mates from Grade 1 through 12.

Facebook has though thrown up a storm of troubles - notably the number of divorces attributed to it. Also lax secutriy and the commercialisation of the information. But then if you make something glitzy enough and it apprently fills a need the majority of people do not see the downsides.

In respect to your niece and nephew: as with anything, moderation is the key.

My dad and step-mom feel similarly as you do about facebook; only bad things to say about something they've never tried. Maybe it's the folks who spout their opinions on something they know very little about who are the idiots, eh?

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And ya commercialization of private info is bad, but hey, people have complete control over how much information about themselves they want to post.

I'm convinced that this point is completely lost on people who haven't tried facebook. You don't have to give any real info on that site if you don't want to. Although users are encouraged to use their real names, I've seen plenty of users who have obviously-fake names. And I never use my real birth date when I sign up for anything online - facebook included. It's not like we're slaves to the site just because we want to be on it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to check my wall for new posts.

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Given a finite number of minutes per day and time to interact with fellow-humans is it best to ignore those people you are in physical proximity with and only talk to old acquaintances?

Having sat at at meal with both my neice and nephew playing with their phones it did occur to me that social graces are going, and also the idea that you can learn something from new people. I call us new as we see and speak to them 6 monthlyish.

I love meeting new people and do not particularly feel that there is an inherent virtue in being in contact with your school mates from Grade 1 through 12.

Facebook has though thrown up a storm of troubles - notably the number of divorces attributed to it. Also lax secutriy and the commercialisation of the information. But then if you make something glitzy enough and it apprently fills a need the majority of people do not see the downsides.

If they weren't on their phones they'd have to find another way to ignore you. Don't you ever remember having lunch with an old uncle (anyone over 30) and being bored out of your mind? Now instead of wishing they were somewhere else, they can be doing stuff that interests them while eating with you.

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OM : )

Ignoring older relatives is of course a tradition. I was thinking more of offices etc , or villages, whatever where the possibilities of new friendships with physical people become redundant as one retains friends from your youth.

Still the more insidious part is that you are capable of being tracked in great detail if you make heavy use of it. Come the revolution "they" will know who all your friends are : )

And as the unwise majority show:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-blamed-for-1-in-5-divorces-in-the-us/359

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8274601/Facebook-increasingly-implicated-in-divorce.html

Obviously the excuses are in the article. And rather like a gun, or a cigarette, or alcohol, it rquires human nature to take a hand. The more available something is the more likely it is to get used/abused.

I am sure humans are animals, and pretty simple ones. So the question is does everything that becomes available actually work to mankinds benefit. Excluding things that help health and development to narrow the field lets see what is what.

Cigarettes, cheap meant more smoking and cancer. Cheap alcohol leads to drunkenness increasing and in the UK it is a cultural problem. Cheap and convenient food has lead to an obesity epidemic.

Does this this cheap and easy equate back to using a FB and Twitter. Yes becuase humans are lazy in thought and deed. FB obviously has its downsides in terms of privacy that the user needs to consider. And feeding in murder and Facebook to Google reveals it being used for arranging gang fights, murders from strangers, and couples.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2803864/Cops-probe-first-Twitter-murder.html

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I think, Diesel, that sometimes, if people use it for what it is not meant for, it can be a problem...FB, etc, were never meant to be a substitute for real daily lives. People should still go out, enjoy the sun, spread their horizons,etc..

But things like FB were meant to add to that, not take away from it. When I have been overseas, dropping a note on FB was a great way to tell many individual family members, etc, what was going on, without using up very rare and very expensive phone calls to each concerned. Also reconnected with many old friends through it, and yes, it is good to do that...it does not mean that you are not "making new friends" but frankly, I would not choose to be friends with someone who so casually would drop the friendship the moment it became inconvenient to keep it....so nearly all of my friends have stayed my friend, some for many years, and new ones added occasionally, all met "in the real world" but kept in touch with,primarily, "online" with facebook.

Twitter, on the other hand...seems stupid to me...posting a quick sentence about whatever mundane thing you may be doing at the moment, seems to require quite an ego, to assume that everyone may actually care whether you are "waking up" or whatever else is so often posted in those tweets.

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Diesel, I apologize for my earlier post about "idiots". Although I'd edited it to sound 'less mean', it still makes me cringe when I read it.

On an up-beat: my dad seems to be softening in his opinion of facebook. The other day, he asked me to use the site to find out how his brother's eye surgery went (which I did), explaining that he didn't have his email address or phone number as a result of recent events. In conversation, I'd mentioned that he'd be on facebook someday because the grandkids will tell him and his wife to go there to look at the photos they've posted. Instead of responding with his usual scoff, he told me that two of the grandkids are already on facebook. I know it's just a matter of time before my dad and step-mom have an account there. =)

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Bugged - I had not really felt I had been insulted. On these forums everybody occasionally words something badly, or in the heat of the moment actually says what they mean : ).

FB can be good. My children have FB pages. I have a feeling they are originally for friends and I want them to feel that anythng posted there is safe from parental scutiny.

I have access but do not look. If it is important they will tell me. However perhaps I am strange in that our family only talks to each other when we feel like it. Unlike some who live in each others pockets, or where there is a regular calling schedule.

I was at a chippie [fish and chip shop] yesterday evening and as is my wont [long felt - trad. English] I chatted to the owner and we had fun discussing Hodja Nasreddin stories. And also found out he is a Turkish Kurd marrried to a Siberian Russian and they met in Estonia. I wondered to myself if I were the type to Twitter or FB would I have ever bothered to chat to someone I have no real kindredship with ... apart from we are humans. And humans tied to there fry-pans on a quiet night probably get bored.

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