The mighty KoW is now on Facebook, thanks to some technical wizardry from Thomas, our in-house Alan Turing. He tells me that Facebook is a popular ‘social network’, available on The Internet.
Anyway, if you want to be in our gang – click here. What next? I’m thinking we need a talk radio station…
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What next?
Change your facebook page name to “Kings-of-War”…. as seen here:
http://www.facebook.com/AugenGeradeaus
Well, you need more than 25 fans to do that. That happened pretty quickly though: http://www.facebook.com/kingsofwar
Yeah – it’s coming Thomas – we have to wait a bit for Facebook to catch up…
I was thinking on a larger scale though. What about our own private militia?
A distributed network of swarming academic attack-pods?
Howitzers are the way to go.
“our in-house Alan Turing”
The best compliment I have ever seen on the internet…
What next?
Twitter!
We’re already there!
http://twitter.com/KingsofWar
Oops… and thanks for the link
“He tells me that Facebook is a popular ’social network’, available on The Internet.”
Hilarious.
Ah, the question of whether or not to Facebook – or use other social networking tools – while practicing certain types of professions! From the New England Journal of Medicine:
“In my second week of medical internship, I received a “friend request” on Facebook, the popular social-networking Web site. The name of the requester was familiar: Erica Baxter. Three years earlier, as a medical student, I had participated in the delivery of Ms. Baxter’s baby. Now, apparently, she wanted to be back in touch.
Despite certain reservations, I clicked “confirm,” and Ms. Baxter joined my list of Facebook “friends.” I was curious to hear about the progress of her baby girl, but I wondered about the appropriateness of this interaction. Was Ms. Baxter simply a grateful patient interested in sharing news about her child — as a follow-up to our professional interaction — or did she have other motives that weren’t apparent to me? In confirming this patient as my “friend” on Facebook, I was merging my professional and personal lives. From my Facebook page, Ms. Baxter could identify and reach anyone in my network of friends, view an extensive collection of personal photographs, read my personal blog, and review notations that others had left on my “wall.” The anxiety I felt about crossing boundaries is an old problem in clinical medicine, but it has taken a different shape as it has migrated to this new medium.”
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/361/7/649
Of course, you can always streamline content to include only that which pertains to work, which is the nature of professional Facebook sites I suppose.
At any rate, I refuse to Facebook. Just don’t wanna.
Ah Madhu – come on – you’re in the KoW clan – get with the programme. Come on in for the big win.
I remain unsure about the doctor-patient scenario mentioned above (I know of a few mildly negative professor-student Facebook interactions, too), and also, I have a tendency to “over share.”
All of this points to one conclusion: stay away from FB.
I understand where you’re coming from, Madhu. I feel a bit of the same anxiety about FB for the same reasons. I think many people, certainly I, tend to compartmentalize friends according to the various aspects of my identity. It seems to me that FB makes it harder to maintain the pretense of having a totally integrated singular personality. I think on balance this is probably a good thing. I must say also that being able to ‘see’ some of the readers of this blog is kind of interesting. It feels less like having a conversation with a computer screen.
I agree with Madhu! No facebook for me. The relationship algorithm is too sophisticated, and there’s no incentive to spend several hours a day adjusting privacy settings.
But you should actually–not in fun–think about doing something on BlogTalkRadio. I’d listen!
I assume (somewhat selfishly and not completely with confidence) that these references to FB as a rather dodgy medium, are aimed at the other FB and not moi-meme. Or I am wrong?
BTW, no FB for this FB, either, not as my alias or in real life. Just too weird.
as for what’s next — would love a weekly podcast!
I would be very interested in a podcast too. FB is now ubiquitous, a powerful communications tool and unavoidable – those that don’t engage are likely to be left in the margins..