Tipping Point
I am glad that I seem to be catching up with the networking generation on the web with Facebook. As a virtual platform for people to get connected and do funny things to each other, without the need to say (write) too much all the time, as one needed to fill up pages of letter writing in the seemingly bygone era of manual correspondence, there is simply no more reason for friends who have hooked up to lose touch, even over a life time, save for any unforeseeable circumstances of course. I really envy the young boys and gals nowadays and wish that all the gadgets from this digital age would have dawned earlier. But I am content with living up to the contemporary media opportunites and playing the catching up game, even look forward to ages further ahead when I'll enjoy many things together with, and learn from, my now five years old daughter.
If life could be lived for as a process of adding value, and if value is about happiness, and also if building friendship contributes to one's happiness, something like Facebook is clearly adding value for many people, though to what extent it really does as a business model is more of a mystery. Other than the hype and the value investors place on it out of speculation, it's hard to understand where does and will the real money actually come in.
That of course is far from the slightest concern and consideration, if any, of any of its millions of users around the globe, many of whom may instead be more interested in making use and managing the countless numbers of fun applications that could be allowed to proliferate on one's profile page. For a superlative minority of well-connected users having thousands of friends hooked up already, they even seem to have reached the tipping point of diminishing return of disutility, and start to hate it! Read this blog from the FT.
If life could be lived for as a process of adding value, and if value is about happiness, and also if building friendship contributes to one's happiness, something like Facebook is clearly adding value for many people, though to what extent it really does as a business model is more of a mystery. Other than the hype and the value investors place on it out of speculation, it's hard to understand where does and will the real money actually come in.
That of course is far from the slightest concern and consideration, if any, of any of its millions of users around the globe, many of whom may instead be more interested in making use and managing the countless numbers of fun applications that could be allowed to proliferate on one's profile page. For a superlative minority of well-connected users having thousands of friends hooked up already, they even seem to have reached the tipping point of diminishing return of disutility, and start to hate it! Read this blog from the FT.
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