Comments on: Follow-up: Facebook Chat is pretty lame

By: Cassi

Cassi — Sat, 24 May 2008 23:14:27 +0000

I like Facebook chat because then I can have chats with Dan Deacon while he’s touring in London.

By: Shayden

Shayden — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:00:36 +0000

… and gchat lets you talk with literally anyone you’ve ever emailed with a gmail account? sure, you can choose who appears on your quick contacts, but you don’t have to. and anyone you’ve emailed will show up if you search them. i agree with the kid up there, just because you could chat with someone awkward doesn’t mean you will.

and leaving facebook open is pretty much the same as leaving gmail open - you don’t NEED to have your email open every waking minute, since you can and many do, as you said about facebook, check it for 10 minutes and minimize it. but people do leave gmail open. and people leave facebook open. i don’t really see what makes leaving gmail open so much more acceptable than leaving facebook open?

just as much useless shit comes through email as it does through facebook, so i’d say these points are middling at best. don’t hate the book, man.

By: Ryan Reeh

Ryan Reeh — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:08:47 +0000

I realize I’m one of those people in the Stone Age who still uses Yahoo! Mail for my personal stuff and NU’s original Webmail for my NU stuff, and while I agree on most of your points that FB chat is lame, I give it props for a modest attempt to be something it isn’t, which is more than I can say for Google (not-so-modest attempts), poised to quickly brand it’s name on everything. One thing FB chat has on Gchat: it’s slightly more ubiquitous. To my knowledge, more people use FB than any Google product (I do concede to you the original search engine and maybe Google Maps). So…awkward convos with people you haven’t talked to in a while are a possibility. In my experience with FB chat, these people are no more likely to talk to you in this new medium than say, running into them randomly on the street.

Also, apparently political journalists use AIM to talk to sources:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0508/Welcome_to_high_school.html#comments
I sincerely hope no one from our generation mistakes Gchat/FB chat/AIM to replace actual face-to-face interviews and reporting.