Back in September 2007, I wrote “Friends, Acquaintances & Contacts” about the lack of the ability to differentiate between levels of acquaintance we have with people we connect to via Social Media.

It’s been rumored that Facebook is going to add a “Fan” distinction to regular pages. Currently, you’re a “Friend” of someone or you’re not. If they add Fans, that’ll make “Facebook Fan Pages” obsolete, IMO. It will also make people more likely to add other people to their regular page that they don’t consider to be Friends to the degree that they would add them at all.

I think this is a good idea, as it would centralize the database of people that are connected to one person instead of having at least two databases for at least two pages and most of the people being redundant anyway. I have 1492 Friends on my regular page and 109 Fans on my fan page, which are, AFAIK, *ALL* Friends of mine on my regular page. There’s no need for this redundancy, whatsoever.

Also, I would feel more comfortable, personally, adding myself as a Fan to someone’s regular page than as a Fan on their fan page. For some reason, that feels more representative of the facts to me, as it pertains to Social Media. For instance, I’ve Omar Epps & Michael Beach, but I *certainly* don’t qualify as a “Friend” of theirs. OTOH, I would appreciate a distinction that’s ‘more’ than “That’s someone I’ve seen on television and I respect their work”. Similarly, there’s a band that I’m a fan of, and I’ve actually hung out with them several times.. however we don’t have ANYTHING in common, and I’d feel more authentic demoting myself to being a Fan of theirs, assuming Facebook offers you the opportunity to change your relationship to someone when/if they add this Fan status option to their regular pages.

Since this whole thing is about data collection anyway, I think it’s in Facebook’s best interest to add the Fan distinction. They’ve already made groups, and you’re able to assign different qualifications and qualities to each group, however, it still doesn’t allow you to properly define yourself in relation to the people in the groups.

If I raise glasses with Joe C., Jim L. and Rox D. whenever we end up in the same place at the same time, I’d like to be able to mark that down separately from someone whom I saw in a web series that I enjoyed and respected that I’ve Friended and they accepted, but we’re not IRL friends. I’d also like to be able to accept Fan Requests from people whom I’d like to acknowledge for “Following” me on Facebook, but I have no connection to and no reason to add as Friends. Flickr has this capability and so does XFN (“friend, met, colleague”, etc). Arguably, you can create these distinctions using multiple groups, but it would be better to be able to do it off the bat… Better for the users and better for Facebook’s data collection and utilization efforts.

~ Bill Cammack

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Fellaz: It’s All Over! :O

The Game as we know it is about to be turned on its ear! It’s all over. Get ready for the big Going-Out-Of-Business sale. What’s on sale, you ask?

YOU! You’re going out of business! :D

Systematically, male leverage in the dating game has been eroding, or perhaps has been purposely erodED.

Back in the day, it was easy to pull chicks, because they couldn’t do anything on their own. I mean, they were always intelligent enough to, they just weren’t allowed to.

According to the Women’s Rights Movement in the U.S.
Timeline of Key Events in the A…, before August 26, 1920, women didn’t even have the right to vote. There was a bunch of other stuff women were dissuaded from, like having jobs, having their own money, owning land, starting a business…. Add that to the brainwashing girls receive to this very day when they receive baby dolls and toy ovens for Christmas to prepare them for their role as child-bearer, child-raiser, cook, maid, etc and it was a veritable buyer’s market. Oh… don’t forget the Scarlet Letter treatment women still receive to this day if they express themselves sexually and ‘get around’ in the same way that guys do. So… Basically, what you had was a bunch of chicks, sitting around with nothing to do, no money, probably no cars (? horses and buggies? hahaha) hoping that their lives would eventually *BEGIN* when some guy wanted to marry them.

Meanwhile, The Fellaz were living large because they were completely unrestricted in getting money, houses, land, voting, playing the field, etc. All you had to do was be better than the next man who comes a-knocking on a lady’s door as a suitor, and you were guaranteed to bag the chick. Of course, people like Fonzie had multiple chicks, either in parallel or serial, but that’s a different topic. :D

So anyway, in the 1920s, women got the vote. No big deal. However, around the 1940s, World War II kicked off, and all The Fellaz were sent to fight (read: die). In order to maintain American industry, there was no choice except to replace the guys with the chicks that had previously been sitting around at home. *THIS* was a big deal, :D because all of a sudden, “Sistahs were doin’ it for them-SELVES!!!”… Ya HEARD? :D Now, there’s no more sitting at home waiting for you to show up with your money and car, because she has HER money and HER car! :O No waiting for you to take her to Paris or Disney World, because she’s going to go if she wants to, AND hang out with her co-working female friends to boot! hahaha ROAD-TRIIIIP!!! :D

Guys’ leverage down the drain.

Fortunately, not all chicks took advantage of this opportunity to be prosperous. There were still a bunch of lazy chicks left over that wanted to get by on their looks and become “kept women”. There was also the mainstream media who recognized the problem of women doing EXACTLY what they wanted, when they wanted, and did their damnedest to keep images of how women are ‘supposed’ to act all over the newspapers, film reels and televisions.

At some point in the 1960s, “Women’s Lib” popped up to combat myriad injustices towards American females. This movement has done a lot of good for women, however, some chicks got completely carried away with it! :D

In 1968, Valerie Solanas wrote the SCUM Manifesto. I was lucky enough to have been handed a copy of this SCUM Manifesto by a good friend while we were in High School, and found it to be a rather interesting read. Quoting from the wikipedia entry:

“Sex is not part of a relationship: on the contrary, it is a solitary experience, non-creative, a gross waste of time. The female can easily — far more easily than she may think — condition away her sex drive, leaving her completely cool and cerebral and free to pursue truly worthy relationships and activities; but the male, who seems to dig women sexually and who seeks out constantly to arouse them, stimulates the highly sexed female to frenzies of lust, throwing her into a sex bag from which few women ever escape.”

[Side Note: Now you see how it's come to the point in 2008 when bookstore technique is a perfectly valid gameplan. Act like you've evolved as she has instead of "digging her sexually" and "constantly trying to arouse her", and you're "In like Flynn"! :D]
So, SCUM Manifesto advocated taking guys out of the loop, entirely. This brings us to February, 2008 and this article discussing British scientists trying to figure out how to turn women’s bone marrow into sperm. :O

What this means is that the last stronghold of The Fellaz is going down the tubes, and *YOU* are about to be OUT. OF. BUSINESS! :D

Once they figure this out, women will not need you for AN-NY*THING*! :D

Nothing.

This is partially what the movie “Fight Club” was about. Women do not need you to provide:

The only thing she needs *YOU* for is your MIT-graduate genes, complete with orangeish-brown complexion and naturally curly hair, and if they figure out how to extract that from the bone marrow of some chick that has those same features…

It’s A Wrap! :(

DatingGenius

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Facebook launched Facebook Pages today. This makes it easier for businesses, musicians, etc to represent themselves to the Facebook population, and makes it easier for the population to affiliate themselves with or review their favorites.

They have also launched Social Ads, which make use of your self-created affiliations to customize the ads you’re likely to see. This is a good idea, since the latest ads I’ve seen on facebook were for Microsoft Windows (which I don’t use), Harvard Business Online (which was down the street from my school, but I didn’t go there… except for parties! :D), and Elite Online Dating….. Are they trying to TELL me something? :D

I think this is a great move, since a lot of people now use Facebook as their main source for daily information. It’s better to allow people to make business pages inside Facebook than have people search for a link and then go off-site to get the same information.

It’s also a great way for companies to enhance their online presence without spamming people’s friends lists.

PS – In case you can’t find the link to Facebook Pages, go all the way to the bottom of the page and click on Businesses and then you’ll get the options, including Facebook Pages.

Or, just click here. :)

Bill Cammack • New York City • Freelance Video Editor • alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack