Facebook gets a lot of press these days.  It’s greatest claim to fame, as far as I can tell, is that it was one of the first (if not the first) social networking site that opened up it’s system to outsiders, allowing them to build applications that are run within Facebook itself. The ability to add applications was a big hit among developers because it gave them a chance to fool around and make something fun (like vampire games, book clubs, and “slave” markets).  It also gave entrepreneurs a means of bringing in some cashola.  The techie-love drove the blog coverage, the blog coverage pushed the media coverage, and the media coverage has pushed more of my old friends to join this social network than any other I’ve ever joined.  

In other words, Facebook works.  It’s hooked me up with people that I never thought I’d hear from again.  But now that we’re “all in a room together,” Facebook’s flaws stand out in neon colors.  They had always been pretty plain in my mind ever since I joined in September 2006.  But back then, I didn’t care because the only other people on Facebook that I knew were my two college aged cousins and I could just as easily chat with them via email.  But now that I’m hooked up to more friends on the site, I want to kick back, put my feet up, and have some good hang out time with them.  And of all the social networking sites online these days, I think Facebook is one of the worst possible places to do that.

In my opinion , Facebook sucks in two main areas: communication and privacy.  


There are several ways to communicate with others on Facebook, and pretty much all of them are feature poor, if not downright conversation stoppers.

First you have your wall.  It’s like a bulletin board on your page where contacts can send you a quick note.  It’s not a place for having a conversation (especially not with more than one person at a time) because:

1. Though you can click the wall-to-wall link to see your ongoing conversation with one other person, if there’s a third person that you want in the loop, you’re only option is to profile hop to leave separate messages on each wall.
2. There’s no way to break off a conversation and start a new one in a new location.  This would be handy if you want to chat on different topics.  Instead, multiple topics with multiple people get aggregated into one long thread (though you only see half the conversation since your own comments are all located on their walls, not yours).
3. To get to someone’s wall, you generally have to scroll past a whole lot of crap on their page to find it.  The organization of the profile page makes it clear that communication is but a minuscule piece of what’s going on on Facebook.  What the site is really all about is the apps, and the apps that you have to scroll past to get to the wall include such meaningful and friendship building items as: a list of the people your contact owns, friends they have for sale, a name analyzer, their pirates vs. ninjas score, and virtual gifts or bumper stickers that their friends have sent them.

So you may choose to send a message to someone instead of writing on their wall.  There are definite benefits to this, such as being able to read through your past conversation without clicking on the wall-to-wall link.  But no one else can join in on that conversation, nor can they even see it to know that it’s something they might be interested in.  The message system is essentially like an email system without the ability to add in more than one person, without the ability to search through the messages to find the one you’re looking for, and with the ability to only customize the message in one way at a time: add a link, add a picture, add a video, or add a virtual gift.

But if you want to communicate with more than one friend at a time, you have to create a group.  Each group has a discussion board where you can start multiple topics of discussion.  It’s a very basic system, essentially a feature poor version of discussion groups that you might have seen back in the mid-90’s.  There’s no way to quote a person so they know what you’re replying to.  There’s no alert system telling you which threads have new replies.  (Though you can, at least, get an email alert if someone replies to a discussion you started.) You can’t add audio, video or photo. And as far as I can tell, you can’t add links or any other html either.  Feature poor might actually be too gracious considering the utter lack of features in the groups.  Feature barren might be more appropriate.

Facebook is a great place to poke, fight, buy or sell, or send virtual goodies to your friends.  But it’s not a good place to have a conversation.


There have been many articles regarding privacy on Facebook. from Steven Mansour’s rant on how hard it is to get Facebook to remove your data from their servers to a general outcry over Beacon’s use of your contact list to sell advertised products.  But what bugs me most about Facebook, is that they hide the innocuous data in your profile (like what your favorite movie is) so that only your direct contacts can see it.   But the site shares information with friends of friends that you might never have intended to be passed on (like the somewhat compromising pictures you posted that show up on a contact’s contacts news feed – “Ack!  I didn’t realize that a co-worker had added our boss as a contact!”).  In other words, Facebook gives the impression of privacy while at the same time sharing your data with others behind your back.  

There’s also no way to customize which of your friends can see which of your data.  So if you post pictures of your kids, though there's a privacy setting to keep non-contacts from seeing the pics, every one of your contacts can.  There’s no way to customize this and say that family members can see the picture but co-workers can’t.

And I have to admit, it does bug me that Facebook tries to use my friends to sell me on a product.  I wonder how many times my headshot has been paired with some product on a friend’s newsfeed and I have no idea that it’s happening.  I can’t even confirm or deny that it’s a product I’ve used or would recommend.  It’s one thing to put ads on an otherwise free site in order to pay the bills.  It’s something else entirely when you’re making it look like I’m the one recommending the product.

Though the applications add interest to the site, they also are a privacy concern.  In order to add any application within Facebook, you have to allow the app. writers access to some of your personal information.  There’s no rating or security system in place that helps you to know whether or not the app. writers are reliable people that you can trust with your info.  


Myspace, Multiply, and Xanga, among many others, allow users to customize their pages, adding images and colors that help to personalize their profiles or sites.  Facebook has nothing of the sort.  If you’re not a fan of blue on white, tough beans, because that’s all there is.

The ability to customize what information goes out to who, and what information comes in from who, is also limited.  There are sliders to set the preferences on your news feed, for example, but it’s a minimal level of granularity in my opinion.  I can have more or less profile information come into my news feed, but I can’t set it to tell me what people have added to their profile without cluttering up my page with what they’ve removed as well. (Why would I even want to know what they’ve removed?!!  If they’ve removed it, doesn’t that mean they don’t want it visible anymore?  So why plaster it on my news feed?!)


I’ve tried out many social networking sites.  I love connecting with people, sharing photos and videos, and having solid conversations.  But of all the sites I’ve tried, only Multiply has is a dynamic environment that’s highly customizable, has understandable and easy to use privacy settings, and that enables conversation in a way that no other social networking site does.

Facebook describes itself as “a social utility that connects you with the people around you.”  That’s exactly what it does.  And that’s pretty much all it does, as far as I can tell. Once you’re connected, you can throw sheep at each other, or have your vampire attack their zombie, but conversation is hard to come by and privacy is ethereal.  Now that I see all these other people in the room with me, the only way I can have a good conversation with them, is to drag them all over to a better social networking site, like Multiply.

Other posts comparing Multiply to Facebook:
For regular guys like me, Multiply is it.
Multiply is better than Facebook in some important ways.

Today's theme for Multiply Appreciation Week is My "Ah Ha!" Moment on Multiply -- The day when I realized that I really love this place.

I came to Multply from Orkut after being invited to make the switch by Cindy, who I'd met in the INTJ group over there.  Orkut is a group-centric site run by Google (without any of the sophistication, penash, or insight that characterizes most of Google's product line). At the time (I don't know if it's still this way), the site was by invitation only -- which promised to make it a safer online venue to hang out with friends and make new ones.

After having been on Orkut for a year or so, I grew to have a loved/hate relationship with the place.  I loved the conversations that I had been able to get into with people when I first joined, but I grew to hate the trolls, the silly "Bad server.  No donut for you!" messages, and the increasingly discussionless discussions.  What? Discussionless discussions.  That's what I said.

I found that when everyone joins a group because they believe "A", then when a conversation is started, generally the first person posts something along the lines of "I believe 'A'."  Everyone else agrees, "Yeah, so do I."  "I do too."  "A huh."  Since we'd clustered ourselves along lines of agreement, there simply wasn't much to discuss.  We could share information, but that never went far.  After awhile, the conversations got more interesting, but only because the trolls started most of them.  "I believe B."  "Well, I don't.  What are you doing in this group anyway?  Go away."  There'd be a brief pause and the troll would chime in again with, "I believe B."  It wasn't a conversation.  It was more like a game of, "How long can you stand the troll?"

So when I moved to Multiply, I was a little thrown by the whole personal site thing.  Since I was used to moving around in a group-centric world, I gravitated towards the groups.  But, despite the fact that Multiply has groups, the focal point of all activity tends to still be the personal pages.  So I started experimenting, adding a bit here and a picture there.  Before I knew it, I was in several great conversations with the likes of D and J, who *gasp* didn't always agree with me.  It was a breath of fresh air to finally discuss things with people who thought differently because we hadn't aligned with each other according to affinities.  (I should add that the Inbox (then called the Explore page) was also instrumental in being able to keep up with conversations.  Orkut had something vaguely similar, but no where near as powerful.)

Not only was I finally having the discussions that I had longed for on Orkut, but Multiply had none of the troll issues that Orkut had.  Because the conversations take place on personal sites, and the "owners" of those sites can control who is involved in the conversations (by setting privacy controls), trolls simply didn't have an inch to squeeze a big toe into.

It took several months before this finally all jelled in my brain, leading me eventually to post the New Users Guide to Using Multiply (the pictures appear to have disappeared), which in turn led me to start the New to Multiply group.  Though I've readily jumped into many new social networking sites to see how they compare, I have yet to find one that I believe is as well put together as this one.

Yesterday was the first day of Multiply Appreciation Week, in which people from all over Multiply wrote on what they appreciated most about the site.  Here's links to several of those posts:

Bindra	Missingbits	Psychotic2	Philsgal7759
dojnd	Megwithsocks	Mft39	Revelations and Fables
Debbims	Laura1may	Ullangoo	Seanymph3
Onlymissy	Hanzrobin	Dantcer	Xchips
Epistling	Everdred	Tina34	Debmom
Heathercheryl	Ginsing7	Afterinfo	Shearoc
Ladyharley	Cinnamonburns	Siscee	Imacountrygirl
Guest4second	Acrafty1	Jenny3jellybean	Eidsbox
Brendainmad	Westofeden	Missthemed (made a theme)	Sumaxmail
jnamakulit	naomykairos	Gelictagu

As Multiply Appreciation Week continues, you can still write about what you like most here at Multiply, but Dantcer and I got in a little huddle last night and decided that it might be fun to have themed posts for every day of this week.  So if you want to join in on the fun, feel free to post something for any of the following themes:

Friday (18 January 2008): The beginning of Multiply Appreciation Week, this day has also been called Bandwidth Friday.  Many people posted their thoughts on what they like about Multiply.
Saturday (19 January 2008): The coolest/best thing that's ever happened to me because of Multiply.
Sunday (20 Jan 08): The weirdest thing that's ever happened to me because of Multiply.
Monday (21 Jan 08): (Like Monday's... only different.) The weirdest thing I've ever seen/heard/encountered because of Multiply.
Tuesday (22 Jan 08): My "Ah Ha!" Moment on Multiply -- The day when I realized that I really love this place.
Wednesday (22 Jan 08): My friends on Multiply. (How you met them. Or what you love about them. etc.)
Thursday (22 Jan 08): Without Multiply I would be... (How has Multiply changed your life?)"

As Dantcer cautioned me, please don't say that a certain person is the weirdest thing you've seen on Multiply because that would just be rude.  Appreciation isn't about being rude, but about being thankful. Let's share some of the things that we have enjoyed that we might well not have ever come across without Multiply.

To share your posts with others, add a link to them in the replies section under this post.

To add your appreciation post to the list that dantcer's collecting, click here.

Start:	Jan 18, '08 09:00a
End:	Jan 25, '08

There have been some recent squabbles on Multiply regarding changes made to the music function. As a result, some people called for a boycott of Multiply on January 18th (today). I replied to the idea of a boycott in another thread, saying:

Capital Records, among others, are upset because people are downloading copyrighted music via Multiply and other music sharing sites. I don't get the point of boycotting Multiply when it's the record companies people should be boycotting.

So Linda came up with the idea to have a Multiply Appreciation Day (which quickly turned into a week) in which people can post what they appreciate about Multiply. The links will be collected and forwarded to the staff.

If you would like to write an appreciation to be forwarded, post the lnk here.

I've written my own appreciation here. Why on another account? Because as part of Multiply appreciation day, we're trying to gather as many page views as we can (to show our support) and perhaps even some ad click throughs. My gold account status is grandfathered in, so I don't have ads on this account. I'll be spending a fair part of my day refreshing some pages over in my side account.

Another way to show your support for Multiply is to download the Alexa Toolbar. It sits on the bottom of the page in the space where greasemonkey, and several other firefox add-ons sit. (Alexa also works for browsers other than firefox, but I don't know where the toolbar resides on those browsers.) It's very low impact on your page.

Feld’s recent post on The Dark Matter of the Blogosphere has gotten me to thinking about replies again.  It’s not something I’ve thought much about since joining Multiply and meeting up with a bunch of folks who love having good discussions.  Multiply provides an excellent platform for solid dialogue, and my contacts, for the most part, are people who want to build relationships.  But Feld’s post reminded me that this isn’t always the case in the wider world of the social-net. 

I find that I’m not intrigued so much by the matters that Feld brought up though: authentication and identity. I feel that Multiply addresses those issues remarkably well -- for the most part, either I know my contacts personally, in “real life,” or I know that they know each other, which self-authenticates them. What I find far more intriguing is the flow of replies that accompany blog posts -- the structure and style of the replies.  I’ve decided that there’s essentially 3 sorts of “reply streams”:  author-centric, discussion-centric, and plain old empty.

Empty Reply Streams

An empty reply stream is one that has either been turned off completely, as Mark Andreeson has done, or one that is so overtaken with trolls or spam that they’re essentially pointless. Trolls and spam are the plaque of the internet.  They clog up the works just as plaque in the brain leads to various forms of dementia.  They corrupt the free flow of information.  (Among the many reasons I left Orkut was the overwhelming number of trolls that made discussion practically impossible.)

Author-Centric Reply Streams

Author-centric reply streams seem to be the most common form found on the internet.  Replies tend to be agreeable and positive, like a pat on the back.  The worst consist of inane contributions such as, "Thanks for sharing!" or "I agree." They result in a nearly-but-not-quite empty reply stream. The best author-centric reply streams add additional information or complementary ideas to the original post, but don't instigate discussion.  The "power" remains with the author.  The author's thoughts generally aren't questioned (or at least not strongly) and there's no back-and-forthing of dialogue that might shift the power away from the author. (More on this shift in power below.)

I would guess that since this seems to be the most prevalent type of reply stream, it's either the one that most people prefer or the one that people default to because the blogging platforms that they use don't facilitate discussion-centric streams.  Authors often rely upon trackbacks to trace the trail of discussion since discussion-centric replies aren't made as replies at all but as blog posts in their own right, where another author can maintain control on their corner of the discussion. (Trackbacks also offer that heart-warming pat on the back that's indicative of this kind of reply stream as authors are gratified to see that their posts are being linked to from other sites.)

Social-platforms, such as Blogger, Multiply, or Facebook also maintain a strong influence upon what sort of reply stream a blog will induce.  Though most platforms include some sort of alert system for the author of the blog post, letting them know when a reply has been made, far fewer include an alert system for respondents, letting them know that there's a new reply following their own. Without this second level of alerts, checking back into a blog to see if a discussion has broken out is tedious and, quite frankly, not worth the time.  It becomes far easier to  reply with a note to the author, maybe make a small nod toward another reply or two, and walk away.  If someone wants to reply to your reply, well, they'll just have to send you a personal message.

Author-centric replies work well for blogs with a huge reader-ship.  A discussion between 1000 people gets unwieldy quickly.  An author-centric reply also makes sense when you really do only want to respond to the author and you just don't give a hoot what anyone else thinks about the topic. But these sorts of reply streams don't lend themselves quite as readily to building relationships or trust between individuals. Relationship and trust requires a bit of give and take, something that's best developed in discussion-centric reply streams.

Discussion-Centric Reply Streams

I love Multiply.  I moved here from Orkut back in 2004, when I started to notice that the trolls were making meatier comments than the rest of the group members.  It was love at first discussion as I found a community of people who didn't just pat each other on the back, but who enjoyed dialogue in all it's varieties.  Intense, playful, informational or angry, the conversations weren't blog-offs in which authors responded to each other from the safety of their own blog.  Rather, the replies were hearty, plentiful, and directed almost as often at other respondents as at the original author's post.

Occasionally such discussion-centric reply streams can get a little unsettling as the author realizes that the conversation is veering off into a major tangent, or that an argument has erupted, or that "*gasp* not everyone agrees with my post!"  The discussion has taken on a life of its own, controlled by the group rather than by the promulgator of the original post.  The power swings away from the author and rotates around those with the biggest mouths, the strongest emotional response, or the wittiest come-backs. Granted, most social sites include tools that an author can use to check a conversation that's unwanted or utterly out of control.  But an author that does that consistently will eventually end up with author-centric reply streams again as respondents realize what sort of author they're dealing with.  However, author's who allow the free flow of discussion, with only an occasional moderating action, will often find themselves in the midst of a close-knit (even if it's only online) group in which the members have learned quite a bit about each other, and most importantly, they've built a strong level of trust with each other.  Feld's concerns about authentication and identity become a moot point in such a community.

Most of my day-to-day interaction with blogs takes place solely on Multiply.  The platform's privacy controls, the network that extends through my contacts, and the messages page that alerts me not only to new posts but to new replies as well, all lend themselves to a hassle-free, safe and relational blogging environment.  Replies may be the dark matter of the blogosphere, but they aren't the dark matter of Multiply; rather they're the life blood, facilitating relationship and trust.

In our house, we're all such big fans of the Apple ads that every once in awhile we'll all gather around the computer and watch all the latest as well as a few oldies but goodies.

My girls are also total and complete goofs and love to ham it up for the camera.

About a month ago, we got to talking and somehow came up with the idea of making an Apple-like ad of our own. Only, our ad would be comparing Multiply and MySpace (as opposed to Mac and PC).

We had some time today (and seeing as it was over 80 degrees outside) we decided that doing a project like this in the nice cool basement might be a great idea. So kick back and enjoy our Multiply ad. ;-)

OK, so you can't really Tell that this is a video 'cause my feet don't DO a whole lot.

Since the deadline is tomorrow I thought I'd at least post something. If I have time tomorrow maybe I'll fiddle with it some and add something that actually moves... like a finger clicking a button or something. ;-)

Oh, and I went 9 seconds over the outer limit. Maybe I'll crop the edges.