I don't much care for them or the formats. Facebook is really annoying because it killed so much variety on the net. People got drawn to it because it does a little of everything but doesn't anything particularly well. Now that it is so cemented and has little competition it's starting to stifle the free exchange. I think net culture took a very wrong direction with these last generations of developments.
Never had (nor do I intend to have) a Twitter account. I always thought of it as perfect for people who don't have more than a 140 character attention span. As for Facebook, I opened an account several years back as it seemed to be the best way to keep in touch with some military buddies who were deployed. I never used it as a social opinion forum. I do still use it to keep up with friends and family, although I have stopped following a fair amount of people who seem only interested in posting photos of what they're eating and drinking.
Tried 'em both. Briefly. I think I lasted a month or so on Facebook but barely looked at Twitter. aM is as social as I need to get, and it has all the people I want to socialise with., Well, most of them. I'd like to attract a couple of others.
I registered at Facebook because I was in a group that had most of their activity there. I discovered that I am related to a lot of people with bad manners and I get tired of seeing their crap every day.
Arrived at the conclusion without touching either in the first place. I had little desire to use FB (before Twitter was invented) anyway then a public lecture by a professor of computer and Internet security explained what FB exists to do, and why he won't touch it.
If it's good enough for the professionals....
Besides, I don't need Facebook, LinkedIn or whatever, and I am not a president...
AM is the nearest I suppose, but I also use a couple of specialist web-sites dedicated to my hobbies; and my clubs and societies have their own web-sites and internal e-posts. (Bl++dy Microsoft! I tried to use F.O.R.A, the proper plural of F.O.R.U.M, there, but Mr. Gates' wonder-boys insist I mean "FOR-space-A" - and think the dot after "Mr." is wrong too!)
MY ISP is BTInternet, and its e-post opener has a 3-stage filter you can set, then "Save and Close". The most restrictive choice is not far off off-line working so might make some web-sites partially inaccessible; the mid-range setting is called "Functional", seems to be the safest for web use and "remembers" what you have in your "shopping basket" (aren't their terms patronising?). The default "allows" you also to link to Facebook and contribute to blogs, and lets BT send your details to advertising agencies allegedly to help you, the user. Not me, guv! The most annoying aspect is that if it saves your setting at all, it does so only for that session, reverting to default next time you turn the computer on. I think they hope I will give up, in their and their commercial clients' favour....
One thing that annoys me a lot is that if I look at something at homedepot.com I get ads for that exact product the next time I check in at Facebook. That is just creepy and makes me want to use an anonymous browser more often.
I had something similar without Facebook, when I bought some clothes on-line.I was not surprised to receive e-mailed offers from the chain, and simply blocked it. Then I started receiving similar messages, all from the same department store, but each with a unique departmental e-mail address so blocking one would not block the others. I think I received and blocked nearly a dozen of these unwanted advertisement messages.
And that without Facebook - I hate to think what it is like for its users.
EP did something slightly similar - I kept seeing ads suspiciously close to me geographically.
I limit my on-line buying to a minimum, and the goods tend to be specialist items from independent companies, so of no interest to major ad agencies and social-media sites.
Baba 