Social networking

Both the Xbox and Playstation 3 now (or soon will) have link ups to social networking services like Facebook and Twitter. When these features become available, will you be using either of them? Do you think it is a good thing that the consoles are incorporating these existing networking services or would it be better if each had their own, independent method of linking up users?

I think it's great! I'm not a Facebook junkie but I do enjoy going on there and posting, reading other posts, ect. Plus it's nice to see it on my 42" TV rather than on my phone

For me, it's not a big deal. I have a Facebook and have a number of people I'm connected to on it, but I really don't visit it that much.

Personally, I could do without such integration on the consoles.

I think it's stupid. Right now I could tell you just about anything you wanted to know about people I've known through the years just by hitting up their MySpace, FaceBook, ect... I really think people give out far to much information about themselves online, and social networking sites just encourage them to devulge all their is to know. Defeats the purpose getting to know someone if you already know everything about them.

Tweeg wrote:

I think it's stupid. Right now I could tell you just about anything you wanted to know about people I've known through the years just by hitting up their MySpace, FaceBook, ect... I really think people give out far to much information about themselves online, and social networking sites just encourage them to devulge all their is to know. Defeats the purpose getting to know someone if you already know everything about them.

True

Oh, yeah. And to prove that point. Some "anonymous" member of Freecycle (a regional e-mail newsgroup) said some very negative things about the store I work just a few weeks ago. My mom printed out a copy of the e-mail chain it was in and I gave it to my boss. Not five minutes later he'd found this guy's MySpace and FaceBook just by doing a web search for this fellows e-mail adress. Which then after another three minutes led to the dicovery of his full name, home phone number, physical address, and a satellite picture of his house. And yes, with his phone number we were able to check our own company customer database and discover that he had been a problematic one-time customer of our store back in the summer.

Seems he checked in a physically damaged, non-functional laptop, for repair. And due to the age of the laptop neither the manufacturer nor any of the authorized replacement parts suppliers had anything other than overpriced "refurbished" parts available. Said customer was informed of the cost it would be to repair his old laptop and advised that it would be in his best interests from an economic standpoint to go buy himself a new laptop. Customer apparently wasn't happy with the price quoted him to repair it nor the advisement to buy a new laptop and never set foot in our establishment again.

So needless to say he went on a multi-paragraph rant in this newsgroup about how our company pushes used parts on people and then charges new part prices for them.

What a story.

This is why if you use such sites, you try to be SMART about it by not giving out every bit of information you can and not complaining about work/school all the time on it, because such things are going to get around. And if you're a prospective worker or intern, don't post pictures of yourself at a drunk party. I find Facebook by far the easiest way to keep in touch with my college friends who haven't graduated yet, my brother, and it's very useful to do the same with my Pitt classmates since we're all grad students and can't live on campus, so we're spread all over the city. I keep my profile pretty minimal, I know what not to give out, and my information only visible to certain people. But it's also one of those things that stupid people are going to, unfortunately, misuse.

Caged Wolf wrote:

This is why if you use such sites, you try to be SMART about it by not giving out every bit of information you can and not complaining about work/school all the time on it, because such things are going to get around. And if you're a prospective worker or intern, don't post pictures of yourself at a drunk party. I find Facebook by far the easiest way to keep in touch with my college friends who haven't graduated yet, my brother, and it's very useful to do the same with my Pitt classmates since we're all grad students and can't live on campus, so we're spread all over the city. I keep my profile pretty minimal, I know what not to give out, and my information only visible to certain people. But it's also one of those things that stupid people are going to, unfortunately, misuse.

Well said, CW, but I think there's more to it.

You have a valid point, R_W, but bear in mind that all our information is being tracked regardless if you're on a social networking site or not. At least we're not so bad off that we're in a similar situation that the poor Chinese Internet population are.