Facebook flop

I've been told that Facebook is THE killer application at the moment. NOBODY uses e-mail any more. NOBODY does AIM. NOBODY reads blogs (which makes this an incredibly private exercise here).

So I caved in a few months ago and got an account. It wasn't exactly the hottest experience of my life. There was something like a 25-word limit on posts, so people would say things like "I'm eating popcorn and relaxing." Then the reply "I like this."

Deep, man!

Well I gave up on it for a while. Then today I finally had some time and went back. I read a few posts and tried to post one myself. Well the reading part went OK, but apparently there's a trick or two I don't know when it comes to posting things. My comment disappeared altogether.

I'll keep trying, though I don't think I'll buy Facebook for Dummies. If 100 million of the nation's dimmest citizens can figure out how to say, "I'm drinking Pepsi now," I'm sure I can eventually figure it out too.

And I'll probably follow the strategy I used recently with a friend. I had something to say to him, so I sent an e-mail. Then when I talked with him on the phone, I told him that I'd sent the email and that he should read it.

Late-breaking news

I've had a few extra hours, so I think I finally figured out 80% of Facebook. Their problem, obviously, is that they hired the same guy who designed the Windows desktop—the one who decided that the best way to shut off your computer is to click "Start". It doesn't help, either, that the software has several nearly-identical areas to post in (and the posts sometimes copy between them—and sometimes don't) or that the names of these sub-areas change from time to time. Thus:

• They used to call it "The Wall" but now it's "Profile" and if you post a comment there, it will appear elsewhere, but other people's comments there are not visible elsewhere.
• "Home" has a "News Feed" and a "Live Feed" but they are apparently the same. They seem to have a lot of the same content as the Wall (aka Profile)
• "Status Updates" seems to pick up comments other people put on their Wall, but it doesn't pick up anything I wrote.
• The Mansfield, Ohio group seems to pick up things that local people in my friends group have put in their Wall.

It's all incredibly complicated and redundant. I can't imagine why this Byzantine piece of software has taken the world by storm. Maybe the weirdness is the reason Twitter is so popular.