I get your argument here, and I can understand how Facebook would become nothing more than a timesuck. Actually, that’s all it’s ever been for me… but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever quit it. And I could confidently say the same for 90% of my 400+ friends.

If enough of your “real life” friends are on Facebook, or any social network, there is absolutely a value in social interaction purely for social interaction sake. No end result needed. I get your point about the need to market yourself or organize your life, but can you really value these things above personal relationships? I find that hard to believe.

Facebook has become the place to stay in touch with my closes friends, long lost acquaintances, and even family, who might now live across the country, and feel apart of each others lives.

I don’t know if later adopters will ever get this same “value” out of Facebook, but I don’t think it will ever lose its core user base. A few anoying application or quiz requests everyday is a small price to pay for what this network gives us… but I’m sure the same can’t be said for everyone, so I commend you on your decision to give it up if the investment isn’t worth the return.

Anyway. Useful social media?

Interesting concept, oh wait, I’ve been saying for a while now that the value of social media is far beyond simple.
Social media, to me, represents a transitionary (this is a word, no? is now) phase in the evolution and development of the human species.
As our population continues to explode, and our globe continues to effectively “shrink,” humans are developing “apps,” as the socnet geeks say, which aid us in learning to effectively communicate.
Effective communication is the foundation for civility and justice, and gives us many useful tools, such as journalism, Marketing, Legal process, the Constitution, and twitter (if we choose this to be so, that is), etcetera.

I applaud you in not only seeking to highlight the importance, the larger scale importance, of social media and human interaction, but also to critique a growing trend which does tend to distort what is, IMhumbleO, a necessary tool for the advancement of our species.

A bit off topic, but at a recent convention, I mentioned a desire to build a “shopping mall” on the moon. Similar to the real benefit of social media, and like the masses who use facebook, “shopping mall” in a metaphorical sense, escaped my audience.

Nonetheless, we can “shop” on the moon. I fully expect this to happen near the end of my lifetime, if not sooner.
Interestingly, folks scoffed, and refused to see this as a viable and necessary goal. My response returned those skeptics and non-believers to the wisdom of a great chemist, humanist and communicator, as well as a not-half-bad science fiction writer (the guy coined the phrase, robotics).

This man, an active member of the US Navy during the ’40′s, and involved in the proliferation of Nuclear Energy, said that in order to better understand ourselves and survive at an optimum level, we must colonize the moon. His point is that in so doing, we will learn to effectively manage an economy of scale, in a very strict and harsh environment, and that the knowledge gained in so doing will allow us to sustain life on Earth, given the strain our increasing population puts on the Earth, with both our increasing numbers and mobility.

Humans are intrinsically inclined to participate in social activity, but some interesting phenomena occurs in this regard. Studies of network news show a trend which demonstrates a need people seem to have to connect to people they aren’t actually interacting with. For example, people humanize and identify with their network news anchors, and often call them by first name, become outraged at changes, write in regarding new haircuts, etc…this phenom is noticeable in elderly populations, especially, and in those that just “don’t get out much…” so to speak. But yet, it also occurs widely enough to be of interest.

Further, other research shows that while online interaction is widely used, it is not a direct substitute for actual socializing, as it uses few of the whole gamuts of processes we have at our disposal for socializing. We get something from online interaction, but it seems unlikely to ever replace actual human interaction, which occurs in face-to-face settings, and not ViaCMC. In some ways, the facebook noise seems to be a way of attempting to make computerized interaction/social networking a more valid way of replacing actual human interaction. Somehow, as you’ve noted, those attempts seem to fall short, and create only noise.

While you may not have intended to reach the levity of “survival of humankind” with your post, it gave me a forum for preaching my optimized evolutionary advancement rhetoric.
Thank you.
@jesatiu
Oh and ps, if you leave me a commnent on facebook, likely I’ll get it in a couple weeks, as I log in on a regular (ahem, not) monthly basis…if not even longer…
However, I will respond to your tweets, typically instantly, but at least, within 8 hours, as I prefer the lack of “apps,” and the increase in actual knowledge, sans clutter and “noise.”

@Vinnie – I’ll shorten them up just for you. :)

Beyond that… shouldn’t you also consider your criteria? Facebook was launched years ago as a way to interact with your real-life friends online. For many that holds true… 99% of the people I am friends I have some other relationship with, be it friend, family, co-worker. So Facebook still holds real value to me.

With all the other SM tools you use, couldn’t you also agree? If you’re following thousands, doesn’t it become essentially useless? If you have so many contacts in Flickr, doesn’t is just a stream of random photos?

I’m not going to urge you to reconsider. I was never Facebook friends with you anyways :-(

As far as events go, I use that with fbCal and couldn’t be happier.

Unsolicited video pointers: don’t slouch on the couch and try to apply twitter brevity to your videos. It’s hard I know, I constantly do both too :)

Yeah, I am surprised when I check in at FB every few weeks and do find some value.

thank god I’m not the only one who think like that. It is sometimes really annoying with what they come up with. In the beginning it was very good and much better than myspace. Clean and simple. But now everybody dumps everything on their page and it looks cluttered as it does on myspace. And I get requests for apps I really don’t care for. Like, what is your favorite toilet paper?

Poke you later, sweetums ;-).

In the larger picture, do you think that as social media developers, specialization will be more and more important?