[Milsurplus] Some thoughts about Facebook

[Hubert Miller]

I joined Facebook so I could have access to some groups. I joined 5 groups focused on military or ham radio. 
Another thing that pushed me past my reservations was I found a group for aficionados of a particular South
American song style. After I joined up, I also did a search and looked at the page of an ex, and I was very 
pleased to see that things turned out well for her.
Anyway, to Facebook. I am actually quite disappointed. I thought, FBs designers and engineers became 
multimillionaires and billionaires, and they couldn't do better than this? You the customer, do get a "poor
man's webpage", with minimal effort on your part. You get a simplistic service matched to personalities 
types that are young and uncomplicated. You can enter, for your "about" data, that your hobbies are 
"making electronics", that's as precise as it gets. And I assume, maybe the hobby of cat photos, or photos
of your meals. On the groups, the area for actual posting is squeezed down to a portion of the screen. I 
don't get that. I posted some of this comment on the FB page for one military radio group, and I expected
to be flamed for it. Instead, I see a couple comments more or less agreeing with me. "It's all we have".  I 
also mentioned my opinions to Takashi Doi, who recently started a FB group on "Japanese Military Radios",
and he agrees, and replies, "It's not for us, it's for young people". Maybe so. 

I don't totally reject FB, though. I think it actually may be useful as a recruiting tool. We all want to recruit
the new generation to our swell hobbies. FB is not ideal, but it's out there; it's what they like to use, are 
used to using. FB may get these swell hobbies out there in front  of their eyes. 
-Hue Miller 
Newport, Oregon