Facebook Versus Any Cat Site

Why do people spend hours on Facebook discussing cats and their lives? Answer: because there are millions of other people doing the same thing. Because it is ubiquitous.

Yet, Sir Andre Geim, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics (2010) said that he regarded most social media platforms as “utterly time wasting”. He also says:

“I see the social purpose of Facebook and Twitter but if you look at the stuff on there it’s 10 per cent important and 90 per cent rubbish”.

I understand that. I wouldn’t be that harsh but there is truth in what he says. Most of Facebook and Twitter is waffle, over the garden fence chat. That is not bad in itself. We need some of that but how much do we need?

People should realise that Facebook is one of the world’s biggest businesses. It is publicly owned. This means it is owned by shareholders. Shareholders need to make money from their shares. That is why they bought the shares. The directors of FB know this. They find ways to satisfy their shareholders. The best way is to make lots of money. The best way to make lots of money from FB is to use the information that FB users input into the website. At a simplistic level this means that adverts are well directed. When you see an advert on Facebook, it is not the same advert than another person saw. The ads are tailored to you.

Information about people = money making opportunities. Google are the same. Confuse, use and abuse is the motto of big internet companies. When these companies know what a visitor likes you can feed them with adverts and stuff they like. Information about people and their habits is worth billions of dollars and FB has collected it.

When you read the instructions about removing information do you understand it? Do you even think about it? Do you care? You should care because we should care about our privacy and about big business using private information about us.

You can’t blame FB because it is free. They have about 4,000 engineers alone. Although you can’t find the figure on the internet. It probably costs hundreds of millions dollars a year to run FB. I don’t know what the figure is but it will be in that order. They have to pay that and make a profit. They make about $1.5 billion per year revenue it seems but figures are not easy to come by.

PoC is probably the only truly independent cat website. Catster.com is company owned and CatChannel.com is too. Nobody is stealing your private information on PoC. It is a genuine website. There are no shareholders, no money worries. Nothing like that. You write something and share. You only share with the people who view what you say and comment on it. There are no secret programs stealing information. What you see is what you get.

My impression of FB is that they abuse though confusion. Has anyone figured out where they are on FB? Navigation on FB is bizarrre.

You can post something on FB and get maybe ten comments etc. Well, you can get that on PoC and help cats at the same time with donations and with no spying and stealing of information.

Please comment here using either Facebook or WordPress (when available).

I know a lot of people Facebook their pets. I don’t mind multiple accounts in that instance, because they are creating material which is entertaining and draws people to Facebook and causes them to spend more time of Facebook. I have friends though who have like four or five accounts, all with the same name and they want me to friend every one of those. I don’t do it. To me that is just stupid and I wish they would get caught. They don’t even post much on any account, they play the Facebook games and having multiple accounts helps them cheat at the games, I guess. I don’t have time to play those games. Jeff was doing Farmville on his phone while he waited for his truck to be unloaded at stops during the day, but he quit doing it because the game added so much to it that it just became unmanageable. You’d have to sit there and do it all day.

I know of people who literally do sit and play on their computers all day and don’t work. They get benefits so they don’t have to work. They are the ones with the multiple accounts. Whatever it is in life they seem to just want to take more if they can get it for free. It can be hard to be friends with people like that, because you do one nice thing for them and then they are bugging you constantly to drive them places and do things for them. It can just be a burden. I try to be a good influence and show how friendship goes both ways and that other people don’t exist just to serve them, but usually I end up giving up and just breaking it off entirely when I can’t handle their demands anymore. Maybe that’s selfish of me. I was “friends” with a lady a few years ago who would call me up and ask me to go the store for her to buy her soda and bring it to her house. I did it a few times. Then I asked her to come with me for moral support the first time I played organ at a friend’s church and I was nervous about it. She refused and after that I just avoided her until she stopped calling.

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Comments

Facebook Versus Any Cat Site — 8 Comments

Ruth aka Kattaddorra on July 23, 2013 at 6:14 am said:
I didn’t really want to join face book but one of our nieces persuaded me 5/6 years ago that it would be a good idea to spread the word about the cruelty of declawing by starting a group. This is how ‘The International Coalition Against Declawing’ group came about and now has a lot of members from all over the world.
I’ve met lots of cat lovers on face book and have lots of like minded ‘friends’ now and have joined all the anti declaw groups where I post links to articles here on PoC, I think quite a few come and read them but don’t comment. I don’t know why?
But apart from that I’ve found face book good in that our brothers and their children and grandchildren post comments and photos Babz and I would never see otherwise. It’s sad I know but that seems to be the way many families share their news now.
But also some relatives in Essex are there too, we hadn’t heard from for years, they found us and asked to be ‘friends’
So face book does have its uses, but I do prefer PoC because of it being our ‘cat family’ 🙂
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Rudolph.A.Furtado on July 23, 2013 at 5:30 am said:
As a prolific blogger and traveller i am glued to many sites including “Facebook” & “P.O.C”. I personally feel that ever social website has a specific purpose.”Thanks to “Facebook” i at least get to know the “Gossip” amongst friends and acquaintances, some of whom i may never ever meet in my life-time, just “Facebook friends”.As a trekker and traveller i have found excellent “travel groups” through facebook and in recent months all my ‘Trek Tours” have been through “facebook Contacts”.Hence “Facebook” is not only about idle gossip or internet addiction but definitely a very useful website for commercial as well as social purposes.”P.O.C” is an excellent website and its hard to believe that a single individual Mr Michael.Broad of London manages and owns the entire website.Excellent cat information and relevant cat topics helped by a healthy on-line comments column by cat owners makes “P.O.C” one of the best sites on cats on the internet. “P.O.C” is more Western oriented in its topics with very less Asian or African cat owners contributing topics as per my observation over the years.Since all “Cat Clubs” and “Dog Clubs” originated from the Western World so also its appropriate for “P.O.C” to be more Western oriented in its topics on cats.Cats all over the world, irrespective of Country or continent are identical in various breeds and hence “P.O.C” is very relevant in its topics even to Asian and African cat owners and fanciers.
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Ruth (Monty's Mom) on July 22, 2013 at 10:38 pm said:
I enjoy both Facebook and PoC. I like that PoC doesn’t sell information gleaned from guests comments. But on the other hand, I’m not that concerned about loss of privacy with Facebook. They use the information to send advertisements to you that are for things you might actually be interested in. That’s a lot better than tv and radio advertising. I get so sick of tv and radio ads about the latest treatment for BPH. I don’t even have a prostate, so I could just really care less. I have actually found information I can use from Facebook ads, because they are trying only to send me things I might actually be interested in. But I realize that that is really what the site exists for. To sell targeted advertising. I have friends who have multiple Facebook accounts because they have more than one email account. They play Facebook games so by having multiple accounts they can friend themselves and send themselves stuff through the game. I refuse to friend somebody who already is on my list. I think the multiple accounts are like stealing because Facebook gains no additional information and advertisers gain no additional customers through the multiple accounts owned by one person.
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- Michael on July 23, 2013 at 4:40 am said:
  I appreciate FB does have its attractions. There is one other aspect of FB I am not keen on. They are very big and they push out smaller sites. It is a bit like a small town somewhere with nice shops and restaurants owned by individuals and along comes a supermarket and takes away all the business and charm. I see FB a bit like that. Very corporate and with one thing on their mind. I tend to favour the smaller organisations and websites. Pinterest is another big site that grew rapidly but all on the back of copyright violations and they get away with it. Google does not care about these things. Not really.
  Google should be rewarding smaller sites that are genuinely good and behaving in a more moral way. Google still list pornography sites with a disregard for who is searching for it. And they don’t pay corporate taxes properly. The avoid them with extreme techniques.
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  - Marc on July 23, 2013 at 9:29 am said:
    I like Facebook, but I am not on it everyday – once a week or so, sometimes more and sometimes less. For me at that rate it’s just fine.
    I also give false information – for example they think I am a girl or some age called Lilli (I have another FB account for me) so I get a bunch of ads aimed at girls. If they catch you doing this they close your account but they haven’t caught me yet.
    I am happy to give them false info – I don’t like people making money out of selling my private details so I think it’s fair game to tell them something I’m not in order to screw up their system in some small way – many people do so they can’t be right often times. I feel sorry for people who are addicted to it in a bad way. But it’s also good for declaw networking and saving animals on death row – things like that are important and useful so I can’t easily make an outright judgement – it’s more like a very big thing which can be used and taken in many ways – just try to keep it healthy and it will be ok – apart from the selling of your info that is – that’s not really very nice. I don’t mind targeted ads but I do mind getting an email spam from a comapny I never heard of who bought my email from some shameless email selling bastard. Can’t be perfect though can it.
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    - Ruth (Monty's Mom) on July 24, 2013 at 6:41 pm said:
      I know a lot of people Facebook their pets. I don’t mind multiple accounts in that instance, because they are creating material which is entertaining and draws people to Facebook and causes them to spend more time of Facebook. I have friends though who have like four or five accounts, all with the same name and they want me to friend every one of those. I don’t do it. To me that is just stupid and I wish they would get caught. They don’t even post much on any account, they play the Facebook games and having multiple accounts helps them cheat at the games, I guess. I don’t have time to play those games. Jeff was doing Farmville on his phone while he waited for his truck to be unloaded at stops during the day, but he quit doing it because the game added so much to it that it just became unmanageable. You’d have to sit there and do it all day.
      I know of people who literally do sit and play on their computers all day and don’t work. They get benefits so they don’t have to work. They are the ones with the multiple accounts. Whatever it is in life they seem to just want to take more if they can get it for free. It can be hard to be friends with people like that, because you do one nice thing for them and then they are bugging you constantly to drive them places and do things for them. It can just be a burden. I try to be a good influence and show how friendship goes both ways and that other people don’t exist just to serve them, but usually I end up giving up and just breaking it off entirely when I can’t handle their demands anymore. Maybe that’s selfish of me. I was “friends” with a lady a few years ago who would call me up and ask me to go the store for her to buy her soda and bring it to her house. I did it a few times. Then I asked her to come with me for moral support the first time I played organ at a friend’s church and I was nervous about it. She refused and after that I just avoided her until she stopped calling.
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Dan in Tempe on July 22, 2013 at 8:27 pm said:
I think my Facebook wall is basically useless, past the few people I subscribe to and family members who appear at the top. If I want info I can go to the persons profile page or to the Facebook page of the people I’m interested in. So for me the point is basically moot, I just work around it.
I think the Facebook wall does provide a service for people that feel they need to be heard. I know some of the lamest posts are made by some of the shiest, introverted people I know in real life. It kind of makes me feel good inside. They have no idea what to say. It is charming in its own way.
The rest I don’t have enough information to decide on either way. I know that most have no idea what they are doing. They are just posting because it is exciting. They thrill at every like. They feel like people care about what they post, so they start to post more and more of it. Kids and teens posting crap doesn’t help.
So I’m with you, it is rubbish. I just ignore them.
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- Michael on July 23, 2013 at 4:45 am said:
  I wonder about the usefulness of FB. If is just millions of hours of idle chatter, what use is that? It represents millions of hours of people’s time doing nothing useful. It is no wonder the planet is going down the toilet. I am not saying it is all useless. Some of it is useful but not much. There are also known downsides to using FB especially for young people. Bullying, competition, addiction to it etc.
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