This article from the New York Times was not as interesting of a read as I had expected it to be. The whole article talks about how one man, Hal Niedzviecki, invites 700 of his facebook friends to a party because he believes that it would be fun to socialize in person with all these people he is supposedly friends with. He wants to actually meet them.
I think that this article was focused around an idea that was a little unrealistic. These days it’s hard enough to get your close circle of friends together. Therefore, to me anyway, it seems impossible for someone to be able to get 700 people they don’t know to come to a party with 699 other people they don’t know well. In the end, only one person ended up showing up to the party and the conversation with her was forced and boring.
However, I agree with a few ideas that were presented. One was the idea that when you grow up people lose contact with their personal lives. I wish that this article would have focused more on Hal trying to get his close friends together rather than trying to figure out how popular he was by inviting all 700 “friends”. I think more people might have come if it was a more personal group of people that had known each other previously.
I also think that Hal was right about the fact that when you make a facebook event most of the time, people that say they are coming will maybe show up and if they say maybe they will most likely not show up.
From this article I think that Facebook overall is a good tool to maintain contact with people that live far away from you but it shouldn’t be used to see how many friends you have because most people that are your “friends” really are people you might not even know or met once and will never see again.
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There was no link to the article, but from what you said, I don't see this as being a realistic thing. Did they quote more people than just the one guy? What made him even come up with this idea? Was he lonely? Was he bored? Is he just that crazy? He has to realize that the chances of all of these people showing up are slim.
Facebook seems to be taking over everything now. Your potential employers can look up your profile while considering hiring you. Parents can keep track of their children. Old friends can re-connect. It's crazy how much Facebook has come into our lives. I even hear people saying, "Oh I facebooked him." We've even made it a verb! This article shows just how crazy the Facebook trend is becoming.
What do you think about how technology is covered? The Facebook party is one way -- anecdotal. The Wii story is another -- numbers and products. Are you developing a sense for how you'd cover the technology beat?
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