Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

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Facebook doesn't let you input enough information to do anything creative. I would never, ever write a blog post on my facebook, then link people to it.

Can you even do that?

I would never, ever post anything other than cellphone snapshots into facebook, their photo UI seems to discourage it as a photograph sharing tool (snapshot sharing yes, but I don't know anybody that would ditch flickr for facebook).

Can you upload music to facebook? I don't...think so?

People are creating things, but facebook has no way of categorizing this stuff, so I don't think people are putting "valuable" things into it, because they know that they'll never be able to find them again.

The fact that greplin is looked at as such an amazingly exciting tool illustrates this, I think.

I have a fair few less tech savvy Facebook friends who do indeed use FB Notes as a "blog" - one that people not logged into FB can't even see.

Yeah you can write a "note". But it sucks, closed to people who don't have FB accounts, and, depending on your settings, possibly closed to people who aren't your friend.

Though, the "Notes" can also be a boon to certain people. EG: myself, I post certain notes for my friends in FB network, which is NOT public (people from work, business, etc.)

I also use it as a dump for future "working" blogs, getting feedback from people I actually know on FB. Their are positives to keeping this "Note" behind the "wall" of FB depending on your needs.

Specific example; I lost ~80 lbs in a year, and used to be a large muscular dude (so I've tweaked my diet pretty heavily throughout 7 or so years). I get random questions frequently from friends and instead of going through every iota of information, I throw it up in a Note.

I think the problem is deeper and more widespread. Facebook, and all of our conceptions of social networks, are inherently restrictive, reductive, and shallow in how they allow people to express themselves.

The underlying assumption is that users are lazy and want the simplest, easiest, least involved ways to communicate possible, but I think the provided tools at the very least contribute to this.

I wrote a blog post about this: http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/3112676038/the-end-of-comment...

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