Facebook is shit.

2 weeks ago, at a Rotary Club meeting, fellow Rotarian James Martin convinced me that social networking had a place for all businesses. So, over the last 2 days, I revisited facebook with a view to maintaining a presence there for my dental practice. Here are my thoughts (the title is a synopsis).

• IRC is better for casual social banter with like minded people.
• twitter is better and less intrusive for knowing what folks are up to.
• A self-published website is much better for fine control over your web presence, if you can't be bothered with the amount of work, something like blogger provides a very good alternative.
• For video and photo hosting, many better alternatives again.
• Old school Newsgroups and mailing lists are better for the argumentative type of discussion.

So what's so bad about Facebook?

I can't avoid it.
It is second rate in all of the above, but makes all this useable by totally non-techie types, some of whom I actually quite like. Worse though, is the "app extensions" where noise from outside (such as my daughter's school feed) which puts non-authored, non referenced, and simply PLAIN WRONG opinions out as if they are hers. I can't stand it when someone is WRONG on the internet and I can't personally flame them. Damn my OCD.