Facebook getting creepy.

I have all of my personal FB settings adjusted so that no one can even ask to be my friend, lol. Facebook, to me, is all about branding and promotion (fan pages and group pages). MySpace is a gob of crap that does nothing for the indie anymore. Facebook, however, has been an absolute blessing. You might have to go the extra mile to reach out to your fans individually to get them to comment on your work (or to spread the word), but at least you have a direct line to your fans!

My grandpa was in advertising for most of his life. He would have given his shirt for an engine that provides a half million impressions/350k unique impressions (e.g. branding) at a .33 pullthru for 50 bucks a pop. (The industry standard is .15)

For the indie artist at least, facebook is king.
 
My friend does facebook via his cell phone and yesterday he noticed, the person's Facebook photo now pops up on his phone when he calls the person. It took him a minute to put it all together.

Chamber005 said:
For the indie artist at least, facebook is king.
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I use the ads too. It's pretty sweet. Way better than Google, with better tracking.

-Nate
 
MattinSTL said:
I totally agree with this. I only have about 5 people total that even reply to any messages or comments from me. Sometimes I'm genuinely laughing out loud at some comment I pop on some dude's page and then nothing... ever. It's like a sh*t-ton of affirmation that I know a whole lot of people called friends who don't really give a crap.

I can't see having a facebook account indefinitely... I'll be burned out on it at some point... because all it is so far is a "look at my life"... "No! YOU look at MY life!"... book... with the exception of a few people who really do seem to care to keep in contact.

What really blows my mind is I've had a couple ex GFs try to friend me on there... with no comment... no nothing... just "add friend"... LOL... and I'm thinking "don't you remember all that horrible sh*t between us?" There's no "hey, I was just thinking about you and found you on here... I'd like to catch up." Instead... it's just a friend request... you click their profile... and then see that they gained a hundred pounds and have 5 kids now... Okay... so... nothing personal whatsoever... no message at all... just "here I am... new warts and all".

Yeah... I don't really get facebook.
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Same here now an old girl friend which I was happy to chat with out of no where asked me the last name of my ex-girlfriend .....

I was like what WTF... where do I delete this account !!!
 
Deepfocus88 said:
I hate Facebook. I can't get my real-life friends to watch a 6 minute film I post & leave a quick comment, yeah or neah.

But seems like everyone has all the time in the world to play Mafia Wars & Farmville.

:grin:
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Your friends probably don't care. Everything I post people I don't even know watch.



I like Facebook and never really had any problems. You make friends with the wrong folks and you'll have drama.



ps: I like turtles.



:violin:
 
Batutta said:
More than once its suggested friends to me I couldn't figure out how it knew that I knew them. Today it suggested a DVXUSER, Kholi Hicks, whom I only know through this website. Not only that, but my username here isn't my username on Facebook. Bizarre coincidence, or is Facebook getting more invasive and aggressive about its data collecting?
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Or your friends with a bunch of DVXusers on FB that Kholi is also friends with, so Facebook suggested that you might be friends to. Which is how Facebook has always worked.

Did you have friends in common?
 
Email scraping is where the email provider (eg gmail) searches your email for key words so it can target banner ads to match the topic you are talking about. Yes gmail do this and its in your terms contract at sign up.

Remember lots of sites practice email scraping and other things can be harvested from emails like urls, names etc.

Screen scraping is the practice of scraping thru any text data on web pages to harvest names, urls, email addresses.

Both email scraping and screen scraping are old technology. Similarly message scraping happens on all sorts of social networking sites. Forums which are text based are easy for bots to crawl through.
Other harvesting happens at a secondary level where urls are followed and text there is scraped. All of this falls under data mining. This is how profiles are built on web users.

I'm not trying to be alarmist. I believe it is better to be aware then to be scared or unaware.

BTW - I do not do facebook, I'm a bit wary of their ethics, see their wikipedia link. I have an account there but its empty except for a re-directional url to my site.

1st edit. I notice someone earlier said they were going to delete their facebook account. Got some sad news for you ... AFAIK its not possible. This very 'deleting' issue was a huge internet debate a year or so ago.
2nd edit. hmm maybe tthings have changed after that scandal. I hope so for users sake http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account
 
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MattinSTL said:
Jeez Hudson, every time I think I'm FINALLY going to make some money with my torch and pitchfork business... YOU come along and ruin everything.
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LOL :-)

I closed my myspace account some year ago and my index finger is hovering above the FB kill button since this creepy episode as well...time wasting, like so much on the internet.
 
I find, I'm in the same boat as MattinSTL... what gets me (and I know, it shouldn't) is the popularity contest FB ends up being. Whenever I post something even remotely worthy of comment (for example an article talking about a massive leap in tech that'll benefit everyone on the planet), I can even hear the tumbleweeds and crickets in full song....yet something like, "I just ate piece of toast...It was ok" gets a slew of comments.
For networking and promotion, FB sure has it's uses but in terms of a social site, it's a genuine waste of time for me.:violin:
 
I'll say this for FB. There's a lot of actors and creative types on there. Remember it's a social network not particularly a business network. You have to make it what you want it to be and if you're scare of the technology (and there are some things to be scared of) it won't work for you. I use Facebook mainly to promote, but I've met some fun people, a ton of scream queens have FB accounts which they run themselves and I use it for casting and keeping people in contact. It's much simplier than Myspace and I have my Myspace, Twitter and Facebook connected through Tweetdeck and on Saturday I do movie reviews via Tweetdeck. LOL.

-Nate
 
Set Designers and Art Directors gossip like old women. You can imagine how popular FB is, in Art Departments...
 
Maybe it's because 60% of the people on my facebook are fellow film students and industry filmmakers, but I get a lot of response to my movies.

Plus facebook has helped me connect to old friends I've lost contact with, one of which I've met up with to catch up when he came into town.

Plus facebook has helped me build some contacts and filmmaker friends. I've been on a few sets now thanks to facebook.

Facebook has become one of if not the main comm hub for a lot of people I know, inviting people only through event invites, messaging people for jobs, etc.

I'd like to say this is a fad like Myspace, friendster, etc... but everyone seems to be using facebook as a main hub for communications, so I welcome it. It's not like you can build a network and find other people via facebook.

But hey, maybe it's just here in Montreal.
 
Jon Starr said:
Plus facebook has helped me build some contacts and filmmaker friends. I've been on a few sets now thanks to facebook.

Facebook has become one of if not the main comm hub for a lot of people I know, inviting people only through event invites, messaging people for jobs, etc.
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Well, I'm back in. Thought about it and realized I've landed a few paying gigs thru FB.

BTW, a Facebook account is like a virus*, it never really dies. They keep your account on hold until you're ready to re-activate it.


* A real virus, not a computer virus. :Drogar-Shock(DBG):
 
On OP topic, I was contacted by an old ex about two months ago. We hadn't spoken since 2002. It's been 8 freaking years! None of our friends are the same. None. Facebook kept insisting that she should contact me. Neither of our e-mails are the same as they were back then, either. How did FB know?!
 
MattinSTL said:
What really blows my mind is I've had a couple ex GFs try to friend me on there... with no comment... no nothing... just "add friend"... LOL... and I'm thinking "don't you remember all that horrible sh*t between us?" There's no "hey, I was just thinking about you and found you on here... I'd like to catch up." Instead... it's just a friend request... you click their profile... and then see that they gained a hundred pounds and have 5 kids now... Okay... so... nothing personal whatsoever... no message at all... just "here I am... new warts and all".
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I had been on FB exactly three days when my first out-of-the-blue friend request came in... from an ex-GF--no, make that the ex-GF. (Not as in "the only," but "the major.") She did actually send something personal, and we actually had a "talk" about the horrible sh*t between us, so it was kind of cool on that level... but to have her find me after only three days, almost fifteen years after the breakup, freaked me out to no end. :)

You know, I'm still not sure I've told my wife that we're friends... :D
 
I was 'suggested' an ex-girlfriend as a Facebook contact...since I'd prefer a case of fulminating leprosy to restored contact, I decided to pass...
 
I wouldn't mind chatting with an ex to hear how their life turned out... or hear about some big moments they may have had in the years since I knew them... but if they screwed me over (has happened a few times)... then it's minimal courtesy to contact with SOMETHING personal... something other then an impersonal "click to friend" message.

I would like to chat with a couple of them though... I think they'd be surprised at where our split sent each of us.

It's weird ending up in the place that was unattainable with the person who left you for not being able to get there... or put another way... I couldn't be the person "she" wanted me to be with her in the picture. (now that is poetically stupid right there...)
 
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