Thing 11

I have been a Facebook user for a long time now.  There, I have said it.  It has been roughly 6 years.  In that time I have enjoyed keeping in touch with my scattered family and keeping up with old friends.  I have spent time searching for old school friends and marvelled at how the intervening years have transformed them.  I have been privileged to allow to see my children's post ('Friend') and also my nephews.  I have even been added as a Friend by my daughter's best friends so I can keep an eye on things at a distance and enjoy their banter.  I have played games on Facebook and owned farms.  It has been a real pleasure, and for that I award them my highest accolade of salted caramel chocolate, who cares what make - they are all so damned good



HOWEVER.  For me, and certainly for many young people - it is a 'social network' - a way to keep up with friends.  I do not want to look at the Library site when I am on Facebook, and nor do many others.  Sorry, but it is true - you would go to the website for that surely.  Similarly, I object to Tesco popping into my feed all the time just because I entered a competition.  Why do I want to know what Tesco is doing?  For heavens' sake, these large corporate beings have web sites, they are not my friends.  It feels like everyone is jumping on the bandwagon, whether it is appropriate or not, it is deemed to be 'cool'.

Another problem is that if you go to your 'Friend's' website - you enter in on their timeline - a complete patchwork scrapbook of unrelated bits everywhere which I do find annoying - I tend to stick to looking at the Feed only on my page.  So when I dutifully visit our Library page, and others - it is just a confusing mish mash of info and rubbish posted by recruitment agencies, current students complaining about the heating and old students reminiscing. The information is much much clearer on the official website.  I did prefer Southampton's page because of the lovely large snow picture, but is this a good enough reason to look at it?  Not for me that is certain, but we cannot all be the same.