Have you ever held a non-Facebook people only event (and if so, how do you know who isn't on Facebook without having one yourself)?
Olek:
No, why would I want to distinguish between friends who use facebook and friends who don't? I think the question can be re-phrased to ask "how do you know who to invite to an event if they're not on facebook?" to which I would say email contact lists (address book). I think events are what I would use facebook for if it wasn't facebook, if it was just the events component. Some people may only want to go to events if certain other people are going, and some people may only want to go if certain other people aren't going. This is the sort of thing handled really well by facebook (unless the event admin makes the guest list private). A good idea for a web2.0 app would be to make an event organiser which can interface with facebook but not require it, which would allow for RSVP, and let you invite contacts by twitter name or by email or facebook or openID (without it being shown), and having a common "wall" for the event where people can comment. There may already be an app like this, I haven't checked.
GP:
Off the top of my head, I only know one other person who doesn't have FB, the boyfriend of a friend, and while I get along fine with him, I don't think I'd ever need to hold a party with him alone. He organised a surprise birthday for our mutual contact, and invited everyone, including me, by phone.
I guess I find out during small talk at parties, or over other media. I still frequent forums on the net.
My thoughts: I don't really care about exclusivity either, and I wouldn't be deleting my Facebook for some "OMG, I'm so different, look at me, and how cool I am for not having a Facebook!" reason.
GP's question: Do people (strangers) ever respond negatively when they find out you don't have Facebook? What about your friends?
Olek:
yes, occasionally. My friends mostly know now and seem to accept it even if they don't necessarily agree (i think for them the convenience for events trumps other stuff).
Strangers: Nope, not negatively. Maybe with a vague sense of curiosity. But most of the time not even that. I don't think that many people actually think it's that big a deal, facebook isn't really srs bsns.
GP:
I've never been insulted or attacked by a stranger I'd just met for not having FB. People are usually more stunned and curious than hostile, and in my limited experience, they are happy to hand over phone numbers or email addresses if they want to remain in contact. My friends were (and still are) incredulous over my decision, and often bring it up in exasperation, but have never been particularly negative.
My thoughts: I think these days, it's just a natural assumption that everyone has Facebook. I gave some people my email address at work for the purpose of adding me on Starcraft 2, but instead, they added me on Facebook. I guess it's still fairly new that it doesn't elicit the same response as, for example, finding out someone doesn't own a TV. That always gets me, even though I don't even watch TV anymore!
How do you go about organising an event and inviting people?
Olek:
Email. I get invited to events also by gtalk and sometimes irc and sometimes twitter. But if I was organising an event I just use email.
GP:
Texting. Even plans made face to face are confirmed via text. I usually send a message to one or two close friends, confirming a time and date they're free. If they reply affirmatively, I then send a mass text to all the people I want to invite. I've never organised a massive event, although I was planning a surprise birthday last year (it never came to fruition, damn exams). I was going to use email, which is still better than FB, because I don't know if you can hide an invite (say, a surprise birthday) from an individual friend (say, the birthday person) on FB.
It is possible to invite me to an event over Facebook by inputting my email address somewhere during the event creation. I can then see basic details about the event, such as date and time. I can also be added into private messages, and while I cannot reply, I receive an email update every time someone else replies, meaning I can at least listen to group discussions.
My thoughts: I actually prefer email for organising events - at least email with threaded conversations. I like how easy it is to branch off into smaller conversations to discuss things that don't concern everyone else, but still keep it all in one place for easy reference. I organised almost all of MrMan5.5's surprise party via email, but I had to resort to Facebook for the people who never seem to check their email and SMSes to his mum.
Has your phone bill become more expensive since deleting your Facebook?
Olek:
Ha! No. I barely use my phone. I pre-pay which gives you a month to use the credit, and I'll often get to the end of the month and have used only $10. I sometimes go weeks without buying credit for my phone. Although, I just have a normal phone, not a smartphone/iphone so I don't need a plan so that I can get 3G or whatever. (I don't intend to get an iphone/smartphone, but that's a different story).
GP:
Yes.
Do you find that you are "behind the times", in that your friends seem to know what's going on in each other's lives, and you are always the last one to find out any news?
Olek:
Yes and no. There are certainly times when I find out news about friends after other friends because I'm not on facebook. However, generally I prefer to talk to people in real life about what they've been doing rather than read their facebook walls and status updates. If I haven't heard from someone in a while then there's more to hear about when you do. Besides there's nothing really wrong with hearing things late. If they haven't told you about some big event directly then it's clearly not that important that you know, or they're not such a close friend anyway.
GP:
Surprisingly, no, but I think I'm the exception to this rule. I don't think major news, at least amongst my friends, was/is spread publicly via FB too much, and I was never part of any sort of gossip private message circle when I did have FB. This is an interesting question for me, because I major in Journalism. I ask lots of questions, and people generally enjoy confiding in me, and as such I'm actually usually the first person to find out important news. A close friend recently broke up with his long time girlfriend, and while it was announced on FB soon after, another friend on holiday overseas texted me first to find out what the hell was going on before she started talking on FB, as she knew I'd have all the news first.
My thoughts: I'm not a big fan of gossip. If only I could reach some sort of agreement with everyone I know - if you don't gossip about me, I won't gossip about you. Unfortunately, gossip seems to be such an integral part of social interaction - though it is exciting sometimes! Although most of my gossip seems to come from QC, so I wouldn't really lose that from deleting Facebook.
What is your main method of communication with your friends?
Olek:
I don't really have one main one, I use several depending on which friends I'm communicating with: email, google talk, irc, twitter, sometimes sms.
GP:
SMS. I've never called people much, and oddly my friends don't seem to use email much. I know for a fact that some of my close friends don't actually know my email address.
My thoughts: Who knows people's email addresses these days? They're like phone numbers - store them in your address book, and never look at it again. I really dislike Facebook chat. It's slow, has stupid icons, and any noob on your friends list can message you - which I guess begs the question of why did I added them in the first place....
Do you find that you have more spare time to read things you are interested in, rather than being inundated with the boring minutiae of the lives of people you may barely know, or just more spare time in general?
Olek:
Erm, I use twitter alot (too much), so I still get my fair share of timewastiness. Twitter does tend to be more relevant and interesting than facebook though. When facebook changed so that it was more like twitter with the status updates, it didn't really replicate twitter. The feel is very different. Not many people talk about what they've been doing ("got coffeee, had a shower"), it's often tweeting about important stuff (or atleast what's in the media) and insights into things they might've seen (like during the QLD floods people posting videos/photos of the situation). It feels sometimes a little like a massive irc channel, but with celebrities and stuff posting links to funny things they're interested in too.
GP:
Unfortunately, I still spend the same amount of time on the computer. It's funny, now I don't spend time on Facebook, I spend more time reading news sites and catching up on current affairs. Essentially, I've traded the minutiae of about 100 people for the minutiae of almost 7 billion.
My thoughts: I don't think the reduce time-wasting purpose of getting rid of Facebook applies to me. Like Olek and GP, I'd probably just spend more time online doing something else.
Do you find that you want to spend more time with your friends just to
catch-up now that you're not on Facebook?
Olek:
No. I never thought of Facebook as a way to catchup with friends anyway, so not having it hasn't really changed anything. I don't find the communication it facilitates to be rich enough for me to want to use it like that. I prefer real life (or atleast voice).
GP:
Yes. I don't really distinguish a status update from an SMS, and now that I only have SMS, I've realised how impersonal, cold and emotionless a text is. I'm not a fan of moving our entire social lives over to the internet, as so much nuance, so much complexity, is lost in translation. I'm generally an anti-social person, but I've definitely found I want to spend more time with friends in real-life. Being able to share their stories, experiencing every emotion and memory together with them; it is so much more fulfilling than clicking a link to a YouTube video over Facebook. I worry that our ability to truly connect with another person will be lost in the future due to the banality of social media.
My thoughts: I'm not a big fan of catch-ups in the first place. While there are a few people I like to meet up with every now and again because I haven't seen them in so long, in general, I usually only like to meet up with people if I really enjoy spending time with them. I don't know... sometimes I find it a bit of a hassle when someone wants to meet up for coffee out of the blue to "catch up", when we really weren't all that close to begin with. It's a bit like the small talk you make with people you have just met. I find that the people I spend a lot of time with are the people I tend to click really well with, and being with them is fairly easy. As opposed to some friendships where I still value them as a friend, but they're not the kind of friend I could chat with for two or three hours and wonder where the time went.
Although, I guess it's important to catch-up with people, as otherwise you will lose friendships, and it also might mean you miss out on finding out something important about someone - something that completely changes how you think about them. I should really get out of my comfort zone a lot more often. =(
And that concludes the 2-part series on leaving Facebook! I have been given quite a lot of food fodder for thought, thank you Olek and GP. =)
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