Comment by shortformblog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shortformblog | Hacker News Reader

I have his original list, which I think he switched out:

1) I'm not relevant.

2) I don't want to understand the most popular site on the internet, which my publication writes about regularly.

3) Despite my position at a publication that relies on technology and social media as both a promotion tool and main subject, I want to annoy my PR contacts and writers by forcing them to use other techniques to contact me.

4) It's the hip thing to do for the ahead-of-the-ahead-of-the-curve trendsetting techies like Jason Calacanis and I want to show that I have something in common with that guy.

5) I use privacy as a crutch to shield my real reason for not using Facebook (below).

6) I want to be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. And as a side effect of that, I'm choosing to no longer be relevant in my field of technology.

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I do not understand how someone in his position can do his job and recuse himself of Facebook. You don't have privacy: You're the editor of a major publication that covers technology.

Got a problem with that? Don't overshare. Make a fan page so people can worship at your altar, and turn on your privacy settings so nobody else can see your data. Use your head.

But you edit the U.K. edition of Wired, one of the most popular technology publications in the world. And you don't use Facebook. It's like wearing a giant sign around the office that says "I don't deserve my job."

I don't really get some of you points.

1) I'm not relevant.

You then go on to explain how relevant he is with Wired.

3) Despite my position at a publication that relies on technology and social media as both a promotion tool and main subject, I want to annoy my PR contacts and writers by forcing them to use other techniques to contact me.

Is FB the primary way to contact people professionally? Apparently it must be as potential contacts would be 'forced' to use another method. If it essentially was the only way of contact, wouldn't that prove his points about privacy and running everything through a questionably motivated company?

Got a problem with that (privacy)? Don't overshare. Make a fan page so people can worship at your altar, and turn on your privacy settings so nobody else can see your data. Use your head.

Then what's the point? If he's not using it as a way to communicate anything of significance (your point #3), then why bother? How would a fan page make him understand and be connected (wired, if you will) to the world?

6) I want to be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. And as a side effect of that, I'm choosing to no longer be relevant in my field of technology.

Or, perhaps he believes that there is nothing technically amazing about FB other then it gained critical mass to build a huge user base. Are the uses of ajax and some clean UIs really bleeding edge? In my mind FB is similar to what YouTube was before it was bought by Google for 1.6B. A nicely implemented site (nothing technologically jaw-dropping) with a massive user base. Essentially: decent app, excellent domain name, and superior name recognition.

Pretty much all of the items (written as a sarcastic response to the article) were attempts at suggesting he's creating his own obsolescence by ditching Facebook. In the very first paragraph of the story, he's chided by a Silicon Valley CEO for not being a part of the site. Clearly people want to have him as a friend on Facebook. But he's not having it.

My problem is the gap he's creating for his magazine's journalism by doing this. It's the equivalent of covering the Washington Redskins when you have no real interest in football. It's like being a food columnist when all you eat is Taco Bell. It's like being a TV critic when you don't own a TV. It's like covering a city hall beat but deciding that you hate meetings. As an editor of Wired, he better get on Facebook, fast, because it's his job. That article isn't going to convince people to stop using it.

Professional TV critics get the shows sent to them before broadcast so their stories go live at the same time as the show airs, they could probably live somewhere remote without traditional cable or broadcast access and do fine.

I'd imagine being an editor of Wired means you don't need to go trawling Facebook for the latest breaking tech stories either.

Try playing devil's advocate with the football example because you completely missed my point, buddy.

The idea isn't that he's using Facebook for the latest tech stories. It doesn't have anything to do with WHAT he reads on it. The idea is that he's intentionally making it harder to "get" the piece of culture that he's chosen to cover in his career.

It has nothing to do with HOW he uses the service; it has everything to do with blocking oneself off a key piece of popular culture on the Web. It's one thing if it's an up-and-coming service. It's another when 90+ percent of your readership uses it and turns to you for information about it.

I do not understand why my original point got downvoted because he's not doing his job as a journalist by not using one of the key pieces of technology people expect him to know about. And as readers, that should be of huge concern.

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