Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Facebook Group Chat and Diaspora

Regarding #Facebook #Group #Chat - I noticed someone's comment that Facebook did not implement group chat rooms. I have created several Facebook groups and been #admin in several others and it is in a Facebook group that GROUP CHAT is possible.  Each group member has the option to ignore group chats. I have only seen chats take place a few times. Some people were annoyed by them and didnt understand how to adjust the settings to ignore them. An individual Facebook account can have no more than 5,000 friends. I have known a few people (in media and politics) who had the max of 5,000.  A GROUP may have as many as one million members. Anyone can create a Facebook group and then add any number of people on their friends list. People notice they have been added when they see a new group at the left of their home page. People are added without their consent but they may then go to the group and click LEAVE group and once they do that they cannot be readded. IF they later want to join they must find the group in a search and apply to join and an admin must approve them. Each new member of a group may add as many from their own friends list as they please. Hence in a group people can communicate with each other who are not actually on each others friend list.  The old style group of 2 years ago was set up to offer new members an INVITE which had to be accepted. The new facebook group just automatically adds a person and it is up to them to LEAVE the group if they dont like it.  So YES there is a group chat feature in Facebook but I have never seen people use it or really like it.  In any kind of chat between two or more people it is REAL TIME so you have to sit at the keyboard, read, and respond quickly.  I think many people prefer threads and wall posts because they can pass by every hour or two, read, and reply. It is kind of like those chess games by MAIL which were more common prior to the 1960s where each person would mail a letter with the next move. I feel that Diaspora contacts who truly desire chat could get by with jabber or IRC or Yahoo, Aim, IRC.  I have participated in chat rooms, IRC, ustream.tv, message boards since 1998.  One thing I noticed in the early days of yahoo chat rooms around 1999 was that people would enter a room and ask "what is the topic" which was silly because even if a topic did start up no one had the attention span or discipline to stay on topic and discuss something deeply for more than 5 minutes. People tend to have short attention spans and seek immediate gratification or diversion by skimming the surface with shallow observations. No one wants to read dig in and discuss something in depth and google for examples. You will see a few threads in my http://williambuell.wordpress.com with examples of long discussions. Religion chat rooms are the one place where people are willing to have long arguments but such people are mostly opinionated and narrow minded and they keep harping on the same points over and over.

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