---
title: Facebook
#description: none
author: Issa Rice
creation_date: 2015-01-04
last_major_revision_date: 2015-01-04
language: English
# accepts "notes", "draft", "in progress", or "mostly finished"
status: notes
# accepts "certain", "highly likely", "likely", "possible", "unlikely", "highly unlikely", "remote", "impossible", "log", "emotional", or "fiction"
belief: possible
# accepts "CC0", "CC-BY", or "CC-BY-SA"
license: CC-BY
tags: facebook, social
---

I use **[Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/)** regularly; [connect with me](about-me#social) on Facebook.
See "[Using Facebook effectively](http://info.cognitomentoring.org/wiki/Using_Facebook_effectively)" on the Cognito Mentoring wiki.

To add to that, here is what I wrote for the Quora question "[How has the way Vipul Naik uses Facebook changed the way you think about social media?](https://www.quora.com/How-has-the-way-Vipul-Naik-uses-Facebook-changed-the-way-you-think-about-social-media/answer/Issa-Rice)":

> Vipul's bleg-style posts on Facebook have definitely opened my eyes to what's possible on Facebook. I originally joined Facebook for networking in college (as well as to join a certain discussion group), but honestly wasn't expecting too much out of Facebook (which I had thought of as a place where people post generally inane status updates). Over the six months I've been on Facebook, I've learned that as long as one is willing to curate one's Facebook feed enough, the signal-to-noise ratio can surpass that of Quora, and rival that of sites like Less Wrong. Sebastian Nickel's post praising Vipul comes to mind. To be sure, I realize that Vipul's style of posting isn't unique, but he seems to be one of the better people posting in this style.

Here is a modified version of something I wrote elsewhere:

What I’ve learned from Vipul is that the content is only half of the story.
(I mean, look at all of the criticisms Vipul gets of the inane things he posts—and yet Vipul is still one of the best people at Facebooking.)
The other half is explicitly asking for opinions (accomplished by his “T? \#stl” that everyone likes to make fun of) and tagging people (often followed by facetious “expert on …” phrases to get people to notice the posts).
Creating the atmosphere to get people to comment is just as important as the links you post.

One thing that really made me realize this (and also how his “stupid stuff” is different) was stalking Vipul’s timeline.
Back about two years ago, he was a “regular” Facebook user as well (he posted links, but didn’t use acronyms, didn’t use “T?”, didn’t have \#stl, even posted ridiculous things his students wrote on exams, etc.)—and, frankly, he was a bit boring, at least compared to present-day Vipul.
(By the way, that’s one of the best things about stalking people online—you get to make the same realizations they eventually made.)

# Long-term value

Some thoughts:

- Facebook recently added the ability to search for posts one has access to, which now it's much easier to find posts on a topic or older posts by others (it was always possible to export one's own posts).

- Depending on one's use of features like special friends lists, one can filter people out so that the signal-to-noise ratio becomes very high (much higher than on sites like Quora).

- It's still too easy to delete comments and too cumbersome to backup comments, so Facebook isn't an especially safe place to store discussions.
On a blog, for example, the blog owner controls all the comments, but on Facebook the comment author controls their own comments, meaning parts of the discussion can be destroyed without the original poster knowing/being able to do much about it.

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