I barely have time for e-mails and forums and my ideal of a social life is watching bees socialize in my garden.

Ok here is what I think the world needs. Something akin to a blue tooth that responds to voice commands that could access and read your e-mails and allow you to dictate and send a response all hands free. It could also access your forums, give you a summary of a post to see if you want to listen to it and of course allow you to dictate and post a response. The deluxe edition would have a hologram generator to display pictures just like the little robot in Star Wars except it would be in HD .

AND it should costs $99.99 and not require a separate subcription it just feeds off your home computer!

A machine that talks to you? No thanks, I'm married already!

I just saw this and I guess my "like" isn't needed any longer since they met their goal already.

I disagree, Millet, it's not just a "kids" thing. I don't like the way FB keeps messing around with their format, especially with this new timeline, but I've found it useful to share information with friends. Sometimes trivial and sometimes less so. I've met friends of friends (i.e., others who sponsor children in Nicaragua through CFCA) and have become close with them. With my Android phone it's easy to upload photos to my Facebook page to show fun things such as my freeze damaged bananas, my son's and my tomato project (300 plants of 32 varieties), etc. When visiting our children in Nicaragua last month (our oldest child celebrated her quinceanera), I took photos with my phone and uploaded it to Facebook when I had a WiFi signal which even existed in a fairly remote town. I was chatting with a fellow sponsor friend in ND who mentioned he had a family he sponsored in the same town. Since I had a couple of extra hours at the time, I asked the social workers there to lead us to their house and I took photos and gave hugs as requested by my friend. None of this would have happened without my Facebook account. Now, my niece who posts photos of how cute her and her friends are looking at a particular moment or to let everyone know what they're eating....okay, it's for kids too!

Oh, and a friend of mine (relative of a relative...) posted to day that much to his family's surprise, they found out from doctor's today that his mom appears to be cancer free although she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer a few months ago. That sort of good news isn't just for kids either.

Although I'm not as active as I was here at one time (got more interested in other hobbies, I guess), I have made friendships here and I don't see it much different in that regard than FB.

I have personally found that FB is a great way to communicate with friends and its also a handy tool for business. I can post something on FB about a sale Im having and get good results from my friends who are on FB with me. With that being said.. Go to McKenzie Farms and "like" or just send me a friend request... Stan McKenzie.. Profile pic of a man in a white shirt with 3 grandkids! LOL... I enjoy hearing from other Citrus and plant people and if some of my political beliefs gets under your skin.. Just delete me as a friend.. Its as simple as that!

Other than Anna, I have gone to Face Book and clicked the "like" tab for just one person. That persont was a member of this forum, who invited me to like them. After that quickly I started getting a lot of unwanted E-mails, by the "friend", and also from Face Book itself bothering me. I have been asked by quite a few people since then to go to their Face Book page and "like" them, I always decline. Face book is a constant big E-mail bother. All the teeny-boppers can keep it busy. - Millet

Millet, I'm not trying to change your mind on this, but it sounds like you experienced problems that don't exist to the same extent today. Previously, I'd get an email anytime a friend posted something on Facebook. Facebook discontinued that as being the default setting sometime last year. I've further gone into my administrative settings and changed email preferences. The only time I receive an email is when someone mentions my name (links me to their comments) or I get a new friend request (maybe a few times a month, on average). I've posted about 20 or so things on Facebook in the past week and have had dozens of replies/likes but I only get notified about those replies/likes by visiting Facebook.

My biggest activity lately has been posting photos of the tomatoes I'm growing with my son. We planted about 150 plants, 18"-24" tall, on Saturday and have about 150 more to go. I figure if he might consider going to CUA he needs to have a summer enterprise to help start saving more money (we've got enough for about 3 years worth at current costs). Family and friends from throughout the country, including a cousin in ND, have got a big kick out of it.

In Millets defense -

I only joined FB to help Anna and since that time I have had around twenty e-mails advising me friends were looking for me. I can assure you there are no friends looking for me. I am not lost and I am quite easy to find. I haven't changed my name and still live where I have lived* since 1966.

So I can understand Millet's point of view. I also have a 16 year old daughter that I will not let use FB and after I explained why to her she was OK with my decision.

* I did briefly live in Houston !979 - 1983 but still had the property here.

Thanks Darkman, evidently Face Book (FB) has not changed their policy as Harvey thought. I got a lot of E-mails from FB also. The last one read: " Your friend (name withheld) has added additional friends to his page that you might also know. I am going to just cancel my FB account, and that should take care of it. - Millet (286 BO-)

Millet, Facebook has indeed changed their policy. They sent an email out beforehand to let folks know they would be getting fewer notifications and that they could go in and change it if they really missed all of those.

Apparently since my email address is on my web site (?) I get a lot of spam messages to this email account which is the same as the one I used for my FB account. My web hosting comping has spam detection software but it did not do very well so I forward all of my emails from this account to Gmail. Gmail does a fantastic job in catching spam messages. Yes, I would get a lot of messages claiming to come from Facebook letting me know a friend was looking for me, etc. However, these messages did not originated from FB and closing your account will have no impact on the frequency of such spam messages. I used to get spam messages from PayPal very regularly but those have really been reduced from their peak. One friend of mine still hates PayPal because he thinks they are somehow responsible for these spam messages and that they could stop them if they really wanted. That is not logical. Anybody can claim to be whoever they want. I could start signing all of my messages "Millet", but I don't think very many would be fooled, just confused.

My "friend" Millet, since you haven't accepted my FB friend request from a few days ago you missed out on my absolutely stunning photo of a hike I went on with my son today. Okay, I'm sure you got by just fine not knowing about it but it probably would have given you an added smile.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101111155244AAzOKbn

I almost gave up on FB for the same reason. e-mails telling me about every little post... honestly Patty got me started. I kept refusing till she asked me... I was about to quit then was explained to turn off the e-mail notifications.. Honestly with the new time line BS I would give up if I had a better place to share info with friends and family... I do get caught up in the cute posts to forward but am more interested in knowing what is going on with friends and family. I do't care what game so and so is playing I don't have the time or care to play the online games that might hide hacking or virus etc... it is a great place to find out what cousin X is doing or friend in Germany is up to.. and not have to send out a bunch of e-mails saying the same info...
I did like the original post and "shared" it on my page..
Sorry you had such a bad time on FB Millet. 90% of my only 100 ppl are family.. so it is some time the only way I find out news.. Like Just found out my cousin just became a daddy and another cousin is in Egypt! coulda floored me with both info that I would not have found out otherwise.. Anyway... my $.05 on FB topic... the time line is driving me nutz though..
Gina *BabyBlue*

Gina, I'm with you on this silly timeline stuff but it doesn't seem to have too much of an impact on interaction with friends, it just seems messy looking if we go to someone's wall. I don't do any apps, period! Lots of folks get stuff posting on their wall that they didn't do themselves (i.e., I know what Yahoo articles Benny reads) because they've activated an app. I guess I did activate an app for the Bing search engine but that's benign. Like you, Gina, I enjoy hearing from family. My mom was the youngest of 10 children born in North Dakota and I have older cousins there. I regularly hear from two of them in Christmas letters but now hear from one of them and one other older cousin about their gardening (or lack thereof) back in ND and it makes me feel a bit better being here in California (also plenty of reasons why I'd be happier there, though!).

My Godparents' daughter's maiden name is the same as my last name and her dad was my dad's best friend. She lives three hours away from here now and I love getting updates on the organic farm she and her husband are running which caters to regular customers, farmers' markets, etc. My dad gets a kick out of it (he's 87.5) seeing how well she is doing with her farm and jokes how she's a better farm than her father ever was. Things like that make it worthwhile. Millet, most of the Catholic apostolates also have daily or frequent messages that are useful to me which I think you might appreciate (understand).