h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When I keep seeing interest groups or organisations advertising their presence on these two places, I wonder if I'm missing out by not being there too.

On the other hand, I waste enough time as it is on various message boards, reading comments to news articles & the like, do i really want to get sucked in elsewhere?

Nah. I know plenty of people - real people, that I actually talk to and everything - that aren't on either.

Facebook is handy for keeping up with people you were at school with, or 'used to know' for whatever reason, and would otherwise only be in touch with at Christmas. So, if you are not that fussed about seeing photos of their children throughout the year, it's one to miss.

I only signed up for Twitter to get the real time WW2 updates (which I now get on FB anyway, sigh). I don't follow celebs etc and don't really 'get' it. But it's dead useful for monitoring what mood my daughter's in.

Mol

I am on Facebook but not Twitter. There are some plus points as well as the minus, which you'd find anywhere. I don't consider it wasted time. I have met some lovely people on FB plus got back in touch with old schoolfriends and 3 first cousins, I like having re-established those relationships. I was able to take my mother to visit her remaining brother thanks to that contact.

GB

Are you still holding out in that jungle in the Philippines? It's over, believe me!

http://history1900s.about.com/od/worldwarii/a/soldiersurr.htm

I'm not on either but I do look at Twitter trends and search for topics, so I don't feel I'm missing out. I have an app on my phone called the Butterfly Effect that I find useful for searching.

Facebook never appealed to me, I like my privacy. If people I know want to contact me they will always find a way, and if they have to make a bit of an effort then I know it's something worth hearing.

Sorry to say this folks but I would much rather do without hootoo than without Twitter.

Facebook I can take or leave, I am on it, but not particularly fond. Twitter though I love. I think it is fun but also and actually useful tool.

FB

At least with Twitter you can read tweets without having to join.

I was interested because looking at the 'advantages' of upgrading to ios6 an awful lot of it seemed aimed at linking with Facebook. Nothing I wanted to be able to do. Which is just as well as I can't actually upgrade on my ipad2.

I'm still not connected to either one. I never say never, though. Maybe someday I'll take the plunge. of course, with my track record, my joining will mean that they're about to fold.

Facetwit is like candy.
Addictive and unhealthy for the growing mind.

Not to mention the spam and privacy exposure
and ad clutter FB brings or the compulsive
knee jerk distractions and dumbing down of
txt spk for Twits.

But hey, I'd an old dog and I avoid new tricks.
Hell, I'm still running a Yahoo group.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/n2g2/

~jwf~

I used to have a FB a/c but due to the number of issues relating to how they deal/treat personal data I decided it wasn't for me. There have been numerous high profile security blips with some of the stuff that FB themselves do as well as some very dodgy apps and stuff by third party vendors.
Lo and behold, just today there's this in the news:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20180229

The headline is:- Facebook flaw bypasses password protections

It seems never ending with them tbh.

I was dragged kicking and screaming onto Facebook (OK, I got 20 invites in 24 hours, and I caved). I mostly use it to keep up with family (that I got reconnected with via Facebook), folks that were family (ditto), old friends (see above), and elvised h2g2ers (and again). I do have some current folks on there, but they're vastly outnumbered I don't do Twitter.

Facebook and Twitter are extremely useful for small businesses and not-for-profit organizations and arts organizations and musicians and writers, etc. One can get information out to interested parties at virtually no expense, unlike in the old days when one had to send out postcards, flyers, etc.

Essentially, both are marketing tools. Most individuals who use them use them for fairly dull self-promotion, but for the sorts of individuals/organizations I mention above who use twitter and facebook well, they are wonderfully useful tools.

Are you missing out? Yes, you're missing out on some things, just as I'm missing out on some things by not watching television or having a daily newspaper delivered to my home. We make choices.

Also, Twitter can be excellent for communication within your local real-world community: up to the minute road conditions, news from people on the scene, unscheduled restaurant closures. . .

This is something H2G2 has never been good at for non-British users.

Do educate me - how would one find these things on Twitter & know if there's something new reported?

One "follows" the organization/individual one is interested in and when they tweet it shows up on your feed. For example, I follow a number of local and national arts organizations. They tweet links to calls for submissions or info about exhibitions. I check the links and make gallery visits or put together proposals according to my interests or abilities.

I also "follow" a number of writers, artists, galleries, publishers, charitable organizations, politicians and their parties, the local police service, a few news organizations, a number of local businesses.

An interesting thing is that a number of them follow me as well, so if I tweet something about an exhibition I have my work in, or about a review of something I've posted to my blog, my tweet will often be retweeted to all the followers of a gallery or an artist or an arts organization, etc. A network of multi-direction communication like this would be very difficult to construct off-line. With twitter it is very simple if one wants it. I have a couple of writer/ludite friend/neighbours who have been asking me to help them get an online presence. One of them has madly plunged into twitter, facebook and blogging over the last week or so.

anha

That's pretty much the only reason I'm on Facebook plus one other thing I need it for...you can always use a false name and have no picture.

I follow my son on Twitter & I've seen re-tweeting in action. It's a good scheme.

The trouble is that once once subscribes to a few groups/blogs/whatever, one can easily spend all the time checking out what they are saying instead of getting on with life!

You don't NEED them. They are yet another form of communication in an increasingly noisy environment.

I find them both handy for certain things - Facebook is great for keeping in touch with my student-aged children, and for some ongoing jokes with friends. And Scrabble. And arranging nights out with friends.

Twitter is a good way to while a spare 5-10 minutes. Plus I always check it before I leave the house/ office for up to date travel info. And retweeting an item you want to promote, or a photo, or a joke, is a means of getting it to a wider audience who are not on your own contacts list.

I find Twitter incredibly useful for a lot of things. Traffic, weather, local events, news updates on things I should know about, community issues, work-related matters - it's a simple way to get and give information about all that kind of stuff.

I don't really use it to 'socialise', though, or have discussions, or debates. It wouldn't be great for that, but I don't think that's its job - there are other places for that.

Icy - sorry - that didn't really make sense, did it? What I'm actually following is a series of tweets which are WW2 as it happened, but (does quick calculation) 62 years later. It is *absolutely fascinating*. I really hadn't appreciated just how close to the wire things were for Britain in 1940. And it gives a very good sense of how the war spread geograhically.

Mol