"I find myself checking my Twitter and LJ and FB feeds, then compulsively cycling through them again trying to shake another candy out of the bottom of the bag."

Oh, yeah! That's the perfect description.

One difference between you and me is that (I think) your friends and family are pretty dialed into LJ or Twitter. I've got a host that aren't, but are on FB. I don't play any FB apps, but I'm addicted to the people and until/unless the next social networking site comes along (like Myspace -> FB), I'm staying for now.

Loved that article that David pointed to about Farmville: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/content/cultivated-play-farmville

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Loved that article that David pointed to about Farmville: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/content/cultivated-play-farmville

I was really, really frustrated by that article - while Zynga has many things to be legitimately called to account for, and Facebook many more, Liszkiewicz's understanding of games is, as he argues it, shallow at best, and downright offensive at worst. I become extremely suspicious when someone begins to tell me that millions of people who think they are enjoying something are wrong, and they're not actually having fun. Particularly when there really are rafts of things to call Zynga and Facebook to account for.

A much better article, discussing things from the point of view of people who, y'know, actually make and play games, is here: Fear and Loathing in Farmville

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when someone begins to tell me that millions of people who think they are enjoying something are wrong

Well, some types of alleged fun do radiate a joyless, obsessive quality that makes them look pretty unfun to outsiders -- although I'm sure the participants would describe them as fun.

When I go to casinos, for example, I am always struck by how grim and serious everybody looks. People don't tend to look that miserable at their regular jobs.

Which reminds me, anybody remember the tamagotchi?

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I remember kids playing with them in church.

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Yeah, I hear you. Unfortunately for me, there are a small handful of folks on FB whom I would like to keep some level of contact with and whom I am not a good enough correspondent to keep in touch with otherways. So while I don't really post to FB, and don't read it very often, I am loathe to drop it entirely even though FB itself are lower than whatever it is that pond scum reviles as too nasty to contemplate.

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I'm likely to stay on Facebook as long as people I'm interested in keeping up with are posting there. I've been uninterested in Farm and Mafia stuff, and find it easy to ignore.

Oddly, I've pretty much left Twitter. Too many people were using it to retweet market garbage instead of posting news and clever observations.

What I am liking about Facebook is that I can go to a group's page and catch up on what's happening there. For many groups, Facebook provides a webpage they can manage -- instead of having to wait for a graphic designer to charge them a few hundred dollars to update someone's name or contact info. WordPress may soon fill that nice, and allow me to transition away from the Facebook clutter. I look forward to that day!

Kate, I'll keep up with you on LJ.

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Good formulation: "When we use FaceBook, we are the product."

As if you needed any more reasons to worry.

I hate FaceBook because it's a firehose feed of distractions, but doesn't support sustained conversation.

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I gateway LJ to Facebook, so if I put stuff up here, it'll turn up there. And I've been requested to put stuff up here, so in that direction, I've just got to pay attention.

But there's also a community of people over there that I want to stay in contact with, that have little or no idea what LJ is.

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There's a thought.

I have family of different generations, and old friends, and various other non-fannish categories of friends over on FB that I'd never see here. But I do have the pipe thingy set up from here to there.

And Kate, I appreciate the observation that it's really cut into my LJ writing. I am feeling like too many channels are on at once -- but I still have the television on too.

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You know, I don't have patience for the "but normal people only use Facebook and won't use LJ/DW/Twitter/Second Life/Blogs" argument.

I'm findable online, and I'm not interested in catering to the laziness of others to determine what software I use.

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I don't parse it in terms of "normal people," but more as "this is a way to keep up with these people/this set of people, and do I want to do that?" So far, the answer seems to be "maybe": if I have nothing better to do, I will look at Facebook, and I post rarely, and nothing substantive that isn't here and on DW in much more detail.

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I get that, Whumph, but I'm talking about my particular kid, mom, brother, and cousins. Maybe they don't like me that much, or maybe we don't know each other that well, but my mother won't even use the phone, and I guess I'm trying to stay kinda in touch without actually exerting myself too much. My kid IMs me on FB, phones, texts, occasionally emails, sends occasional links on FB, he doesn't have a problem with any of that; and he looks at my exercise blog but never the LJ. My mom lurks everywhere, and occasionally sends me an excessively passive-aggressive email.

I find it very interesting that when Number One Son started college, FB was only for college kids, the rest of us were the hoi polloi to their Ivy League networking, not all that long ago -- and now even my mother and aunt are on it, flinging virtual cups of coffee and bouquets and livestock hither and yon. I can actually see what my younger cousins are up to (they post pictures), which is cool since we don't correspond and never have, but they are all much taller than the last time I saw them.

Maybe by "interesting" I mean overwhelming, which is why this discussion attracted me. I don't get out much lately.

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I have many of the same issues with Facebook that you do. But, I basically enjoy it, use it mostly for chat and don't play games.

I find I'm more introspective and more negative on LiveJournal, probably mostly because I consider it private. OTOH, I tend to be more positive on Facebook as it's more public.

I like Twitter, but that's a whole different ballgame. It's almost more like being in a massive cocktail party where sometimes you catch interesting tidbits...if you're lucky and choose who you follow carefully.

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I'm not leaving Facebook. But I do avoid and kind of dread it. I get notified if people invite me to things or send direct messages, and that's about what I can cope with.

The hard part is training my relatives to stop asking me if I saw such and such on Facebook. I didn't. So stop asking.

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Sometimes - often - people who post on FB think that's enough to stay in touch; no I didn't see it. I'm glad my mother didn't take to it.

Lots of good points in this dicussion; "trying to shake another candy out of the bottom of the bag" expresses the addictive feel....

I've been trying for months (years?) to figure out why LJ doesn't work well for me (dread, lack of hooks in my own writing). Flinging icons around on FB satisfies something in me, but I wish I'd outgrow the games.

Kate, this makes me more inclined to come back to LJ; maybe I have to drop still more contacts who inspire dread.

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I never did find a way of getting FB to show me ALL the posts from ALL of my contacts. Live Feed was a subset, chosen by FB. Looking separately at each of my "lists" jarred loose more, but (a) how tedious is that? and (b) there's no basis for believing the message stream is complete even then.

It felt like relying on a broken answering machine, or one of those crazy postal carriers who goes all hoard-y and stows bagfuls of mail in their basement.

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I've considered it, for all the reasons you mention (the cycling in particular hit a chord, silly, stupid addictive profitless behavior I'm trying to get out of).

Twitter I use as a writing tool. It's practice to cut things down to 140 characters. I find it too much work.

Facebook I'm trying to control. I have non-LJ friends there I want to stay in touch with, with I think is a common thread here. The trick is not becoming obsessive about the back and forth. I'm hoping to improve at it.

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It's there to be used in your own way for your own purposes.
Some people seem not to get that.

I look at my lj "friends" every day, but I only "friend" people who don't post too much, regardless of esteem or intimacy.
I look at fb catch as catch can. It's only essential for my recent taqwa-core friend, who is not known to anyone else I know (afaik).

YMMV

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Late to the party, as usual. But I have opinions nonetheless.

I use lite.facebook.com which doesn't mess with chronology and leaves out lots of useless crap. I've still found I don't read the feed often, but use a separate email account to get notifications that some has DM'ed me or whatever.

LJ can be used in the same annoying way that some here have complained of in their contacts (you know, like bullets don't kill people; people kill people). My first friends to start using LJ (maybe 10 years ago?) still always assume we're up on their doings because they've posted them to LJ.

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I like Facebook because I get a quick overview of what's going on for people that I like. I can skim it for interesting or humorous bits (admittedly, the candy at the bottom of the bag) and then delve more deeply if something catches my eye. For the first few days it was addictive, now I maybe look at it a few times a week and only for a few moments.

Live Journal is better for longer posts, but the reality is that I'll seldom read a longer post unless I'm particularly interested in the topic. With our various talented writer friends, I could happily read longer posts all day and that just isn't practical.

I'd like it if you posted on Live Journal then gave little snippets (a sort of table of contents) on Facebook. Then I'd know when to come over and read the longer pieces, as I did today. (Perhaps David will keep us informed.)

Incidentally, we just started using Facebook for David's fan page. We haven't announced it yet but somehow about 200 people have located him. The page is convenient because it allows fans an actual connection. But the short format keeps it from becoming unmanageable. We can then put longer posts in our standard newsletter. (Perhaps we'll set up a live journal page as well.)

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