Readers' revenge
I'll hand it to all the wisenheimers out there. Guys, you made my day.
Within hours of posting today's Facebook Fetish column on News.com, my Facebook in-box was inundated by a flood of strangers asking me to "befriend" them. Sorry guys, but I'm still playing hard to get. And in case you were wondering, so is Melissa.
I also received a lot of good feedback from readers who sent in their thoughts via e-mail. For all its success, Facebook still has a big selling job ahead--if it wants to really become a tsunami-force in the bigger society, a la Google.
Here's an excerpt from one (I'm leaving names out).
"I'm still fairly underwhelmed, but I have to admit that it is a guilty pleasure and low-effort, voyeuristic time waster. It hasn't gotten me more connected to any of my long lost buddies from high school (actually most of us went down that road via Friendster back in 2003). Quite frankly, I find the 'News Feed' more annoying than interesting: what do I care if 'Kelly is pondering a nose job'? And the thought of some of these folks having 3 friends, let alone 593, defies credibility. Mark Zuckerberg's supposedly multi-billion dollar social utility has ultimately devalued the concept of friendship for the newer crop of Facebook addicts."
Only one reader's opinion, of course. But he struck a note that many other readers repeated. That's not something Facebook can ignore for very long.