Facebook Integration?

[Daryn]

Does anyone here want Facebook Integration features? We could have threads/replies/blogs etc crosspost to facebook. We can also have the Like Button all over. I am pondering this, and if enough folks want it, I'll add the relevant modules to the forums.

[macrorufus]

I would find a facebook integration to be very difficult for accessing this website in future.... D:

[Dusty]

Also, why? What does it really add? Publicity for the site? If I thought my friends would be interested I would have already told them. It also opens holes for privacy issues. We've had problems between members before, having it spill over to Facebook walls could become nasty. Then there is the whole issue of "I don't want my friends to know I'm a furry!" I personally don't hide it but I know plenty who do.

[Daryn]

I would find a facebook integration to be very difficult for accessing this website in future.... D:

How so rufus? It would not be mandatory, it would be an option, not required. Or is it impossible to visit a site that has things from facebook on it where you are? Let me know, it's important info for me.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Noooo, Facebook's terrible, don't do anything that'll encourage them.

(Nice datacentre tho.)

Yeah Rufus's prob worried about the Great Firewall of China, which has been blocking Facebook since 2009. Shouldn't affect you if you're just reposting stuff there, he just won't be able to see it (at least, i assume they're not blacklisting anyone who even links to FB, or has those "Like!" buttons, or they'd be filtering out like half the web).

[SliceOfDog]

I think it's a fair question to ask whether we'd want it or not, but for now I think we're fine without it. I'm not a big fan of Facebook (I do use it, but only by necessity. Feed the beast, and so on) and we're quite a small community anyway. If people 'like' something, they usually have the option to comment and say it in full.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Maybe you could just like make a facebook group pointed at this site, then if it eventually becomes popular take it from there?

If nothing else doing so might get you some free advertising (tho i wouldn't've thought there'd be many furry / scifi fans on Facebook, that site seems very much a mainstream crowd, the whole thing focused on IRL relationships, only recently even allowing you to register using anything other than your True Name for instance (i was really surprised when i got friended by a friend's Groucho Marx sockpuppet, never expected them to allow alt accounts)).

[Rick Canaan]

I would find a facebook integration to be very difficult for accessing this website in future.... D:

Noooo, Facebook's terrible, don't do anything that'll encourage them.

I'm with these guys. Facebook is an absolutely awful mess. Content-wise it might be all right, but from a navigability standpoint, Facebook is a terrible site. I have never encountered a site that I was so utterly unable to use or navigate than Facebook. I don't know who is behind the development of that site, but they obviously care nothing for ease-of-use. Never has there been a bigger mess of unnavigable gobbledegook, in my opinion, than Facebook.

On top of that, after being invited to join it by some of my RL friends, I started immediately getting lots of spam inviting me to join sex sites, and to call these "1-900" over-the-phone-sex phone numbers.

I think, if not already a majority of respondents to this thread had not already stated their displeasure at the idea, I would have to veto the integration. I would just prefer that we do not associate any of our sites with sites that are as poor as Facebook.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

> from a navigability standpoint, Facebook is a terrible site. I have never encountered a site that I was so utterly unable to use or navigate than Facebook

I've wondered about that...

My theory is that it isn't meant to be easily navigable by novices, think of Skinner's rats where if you give them a food pellet every time they push a button they push it when they're hungry, give them food only 50% of the time and they push the button constantly. Inconsistent rewards. It's the same reason slot machines (and gambling in general) are so addictive.

Facebook is so difficult for outsiders to operate that i experience a moment of joy whenever i get it to do what i want.

(But then i never stuck around there long, websites that ask for my birthdate and phone number etc creep me out, i just wanted to make a thing so friends from uni could find me on it.)

Also there's the possibility that they're trying to create an AOL-style "walled garden": it's very popular among the technically clueless so by establishing weird ideas of how things should work they hope to prevent such people from hearing about, let alone even being able to use, other services.

EDIT: last i checked they didn't even offer a hierarchical overview of the whole place and it's features, which is extremely odd imho unless they're like actually literally trying to keep ppl confused at first

[Rick Canaan]

Yeah, that was pretty spot-on with how I feel about Facebook.

But, not only can logging on be a chore, but I have been run around in circles when trying to do most anything on that site. Case in point, I got a notification from one of my friends to participate in this little game where you said your friends would look good like... wearing sunglasses or something.

Well, I did it. Was all right. Nothing overly complicated about it. But then when I tried to read what someone had said about me using the game, it told me that I first needed to answer five questions before I could continue. And... it took me back to the game and made me go through the selections again.

Okay....

So after I did that, I went back to my bulletin board and tried to read the comment again. However, instead of letting me read the comment, it sent me back through the whole process all over again! Right after, I closed Facebook, pulled and binned the bookmark for it, and have not gone back to the site again - telling my friends if they needed to get in touch with me, they knew my phone number and email. Then set Facebook notifications in my email to be preempted by my spam filter.

To me, the whole thing with Facebook is just completely bewildering. I had always heard that Facebook was the who's/who for Internet social networking. Given the kinds of advertisement revenues a reputation like that could bring in, one would think Facebook's developers would be doing everything in their power to make their site the best anywhere. Instead, it is like it is written by groups of high school students, none of the classes working on it communicating with each other as they work.

But then... Facebook won't be the first site to bankrupt from mismanagement. And it won't be the last. But either way, with the way things are with Facebook right now, their days are definitely numbered.

[Daryn]

Hmm, I don't know why, but I never really have any trouble navigating facebook. It makes a degree of sense to me, but maybe it's my engineer's mentality that sees things that way.

Either way, it seems like nobody that's responded here particularly cares for the idea, so I'll leave it at that.

I will however look to adding Google's +1, which is far less intrusive than Facebook's like button.

[Daryn]

Yeah, that was pretty spot-on with how I feel about Facebook.

But, not only can logging on be a chore, but I have been run around in circles when trying to do most anything on that site. Case in point, I got a notification from one of my friends to participate in this little game where you said your friends would look good like... wearing sunglasses or something.

Well, I did it. Was all right. Nothing overly complicated about it. But then when I tried to read what someone had said about me using the game, it told me that I first needed to answer five questions before I could continue. And... it took me back to the game and made me go through the selections again.

Okay....

So after I did that, I went back to my bulletin board and tried to read the comment. However, instead of letting me read the comment, it sent me back through the whole process all over again! Right after, I closed Facebook, pulled and binned the bookmark for it, and have not gone back to the site again - telling my friends if they needed to get in touch with me, they knew my phone number and email. Then set Facebook notifications in my email to be preempted by my spam filter.

To me, the whole thing with Facebook is just completely bewildering. I had always heard that Facebook was the who's/who for Internet social networking. Given the kinds of advertisement revenues a reputation like that could bring in, one would think Facebook's developers would be doing everything in their power to make their site the best anywhere. Instead, it is like it is written by groups of high school students, none of the classes working on it communicating with each other as they work.

But then... Facebook won't be the first site to bankrupt from mismanagement. And it won't be the last. But either way, with the way things are with Facebook right now, their days are definitely numbered.

There are a lot of very poorly written applications like that one you just described. That's not facebook's fault though. They provide the platform and let people build on top of it. Some of the stuff that gets built is great, and some of it barely works. It's hard to tell the difference between a third party app and facebook's own platform. At least for most people it is. I kind of wish they'd exercise some quality control on developers, because their own stuff is excellent.

[Rick Canaan]

There are a lot of very poorly written applications like that one you just described. That's not facebook's fault though. They provide the platform and let people build on top of it. Some of the stuff that gets built is great, and some of it barely works. It's hard to tell the difference between a third party app and facebook's own platform. At least for most people it is. I kind of wish they'd exercise some quality control on developers, because their own stuff is excellent.

Well, be that as it may, it is hurting Facebook nonetheless. Lack of quality control over what end users produce affects the quality of the site just as badly as would poor programming on Facebook's part, itself.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

But most of FB's (fucking incredible number of) users wouldn't know quality if they saw it, and it's to facebook's advantage to keep it that way.

(Also i wouldn't describe third party developers working on the FB platform as "end users" (me = pedant, sorry).)

And since FB is so huge, they can even create their own norms, hence my comment about it being a Walled Garden, tho i more wanted to imply that they're deliberately obfuscating their UI to make their users think computers are harder to use than they in fact are, and that therefore anything outside of Facebook's familiarity will be scary and difficult for them. These are ppl who can't even work an Address Bar FFS -- their ideas about how the online world works are still *hugely* manipulable, and facebook takes advantage of that, it actively works to keep them ignorant...

Hmm, I don't know why, but I never really have any trouble navigating facebook. It makes a degree of sense to me, but maybe it's my engineer's mentality that sees things that way.

I'd say it's exactly your engineer's mentality, which implies an enjoyment of puzzles / problem solving, that lets you learn to navigate Facebook so easily.

If i'm honest that's probably the main reason i'm leery of facebook, quite aside from the massive limitations it imposes on conversation when compared to something like LiveJournal... it seems almost designed to be addictive to certain types of ppl

[macrorufus]

I'm worried mainly about the Firewalls here, I cannot access FB unless in Hong Kong, and I am not sure whether the ban would extend to this website. I do know that I can't see the twitter box on the forums. o.O

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Don't worry RedCat, even if this forum were to try to tie in to Facebook (which it won't) it very probably wouldn't make the site unviewable for you, just like you can right now see everything except the insignificant Twitter bits (which are really nothing important, they're all just like warnings about when the site'll be offline for a few hours due to moving to a new server, or updates about how the latest podcast episode is coming along, or other similar administrivia).

[Daryn]

Don't worry RedCat, even if this forum were to try to tie in to Facebook (which it won't) it very probably wouldn't make the site unviewable for you, just like you can right now see everything except the insignificant Twitter bits (which are really nothing important, they're all just like warnings about when the site'll be offline for a few hours due to moving to a new server, or updates about how the latest podcast episode is coming along, or similar administrivia).

Yes, because nobody really seems to be into facebook that much I won't do any integration with it.

As for the Twitter box, I do know twitter is blocked over there, so I guess that's why it's not showing up. I should probably use that account for more than just updates though.