I made the conscious effort before leaving Facebook to trade phone numbers, addresses and birthday dates from the people I wanted to really wanted stay in touch with, and put them in my phone. This was all within the last three years.

I’ve sent birthday gifts in the mail, and I’ve gotten gifts in mail from these very people.

Sometimes, when I wonder where the convenience that gets talked about in the context of Facebook and “staying in touch” ends and a more delicate form of “you’re probably not as close to some of the people on your friends list as you think” (which was absolutely the case for me) begins.

It took really minimal effort on my part to find other ways of staying in touch, but I think maybe the key is you have to WANT to stay in touch with people?

Just a shower thought.

I'm doing this too and it has been great for me in general.

I looked at my fb friends and thought to myself which people I really liked and would like to reconnect with. I messaged "facebook friends" I have not talked to in a while and told them it may seem weird but I really would like to reconnect. I have never done anything like this, as I am extremely prone to losing touch with people.

I ended up reconnecting with a few people in real life and it has been great. I also plan on sending cards and stuff.

I do send postcards and people like it so much they ask me not to stop.

Big fan of this. I also print and mail memes and photoshops I make to people. It's nice getting something in the mail that's not a bill.

The art of deliberately staying in touch has been lost, and taking the time and effort to do so makes one stand out.

Same. I've been pretty happy with Clay (https://clay.earth). They just rolled out a Facebook birthdays integration and between that and Linkedin / iMessage it has most of the people I care about seeing.

This is a really good point. It explains why I didn't actually lose touch with anyone I didn't want to lose touch with after I left Facebook.

In fact, my bonds with them actually strengthened.

It hasn't collapsed because everyone with a half-baked idea feels they need to purchase ads to syndicate across Facebook or Instagram

and some of the fully baked ideas with a budget do it too

its the crux of most modern online marketing strategies, its always an overhead cost, recurring

Users of FB have migrated to Instagram and WhatsApp (all owned by Meta) ... FB is now for old people / those who don't like new tech.

Instagram and Facebook don't have the functionality that Facebook has, that's the problem.

Instagram is for photo sharing. Hell, it's not even for that... it's a dating app for women, that doesn't advertise itself as a dating app for women.

WhatsApp is just another telephone and messaging app, there's not much special about it as far as I can tell. It's ICQ on a smartphone and I guess, maybe, a better interface.

I was more connected back in the email / ICQ / Skype / forums age than I am in the so-called "social" media age.

in what respect is Instagram a dating app for women or anyone? Because it's a social media site primarily used by younger-ish people? by that metric any site that features young people is just an over-glorified dating platform. (not to say that this is a negative implication, dating websites are great to some extent)

Do you believe that young people are capable of using social media platforms for things other than base urges or is that something only middle aged people are able to accomplish?

This wasn't meant for you, but the other guy deleted his question, so here we go.

Instagram is a photo-sharing application at it's core.

So when you share photos, you're sharing your lifestyle. You're advertising. This is especially prevalent down here in Miami. So much so that people oftentimes at clubs don't exchange phone numbers; they exchange Instagrams. The women can see by your Instagram posts what kind of life you live and whether or not they're interested. You can see by their Instagram who and what they are. If you go to it and you're inundated with a ton of booty pics in string bikinis and a little string barely covering her titties, hanging on for dear life, you know she's advertising, "I am a hoe and I do hoe things." If you go to her Instagram and you see a lot of landscape photos, ancient monuments, etc., you know she's advertising, "I like to travel and have a genuine interest in culture."

If you go to a man's Instagram and he's got photos of himself stepping off a private jet, photos of him on a sailboat or a yacht smoking a cigar with a label that clearly reads Arturo Fuente Opus X and holding a glass of amber liquid with a bottle that says Louis XIII on it, photos of himself in a sharp suit leaned up against his Aston Martin DB11, he's advertising, "I am a successful, wealthy man who lives a life of luxury." If you go a man's Instagram and there's pictures of his woodshop, some photos of a new chest of drawers he crafted, a picture of him sitting by the lake with his trusty Labrador retriever lovingly sitting by his side, he's advertising, "I'm a down-to-Earth craftsman who enjoys the serenity of nature."

And then all these people go sliding into one another's DMs, as the cool kids say...

If you don't believe that, start listening to the podcast Blocked and Reported with Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal. I've been listening since episode 29. They're on episode 131. They report on Internet ridiculousness and culture-at-large. A shocking amount of stories eventually have the phrase "slid into the DMs" in them.

It's clear to me that Instagram is being used as a dating platform as much as it is a storytelling or photo-sharing platform. And I don't think Meta should do anything about that at all. It's a dating platform on the down-low. I think that might be a good thing.

In addition to that, it's pretty common on other dating platforms to say something along the lines of "don't use this much, it's better to reach me on instagram".

Part of that is looking for new followers, part of that is using IG as the primary social portal for their lives.

I can see your argument, and it's certainly an interesting way of looking at it, but this just explains the "dating app" part of your assertion ("... it's a dating app for women,"). It's missing the explanation on why it's a "dating app for women".

Because even now in our so-called "sexually liberated" world, men make the overwhelming amount of approaches that indicate sexual interest. Put simply, "Men make the first move."

In a way, Instagram is the digital / technological pinnacle of the "Personals" ads from newspapers of yesteryear.

I wonder if Rupert Holmes will update "Escape" with the line, "There was this post that I saw... on my Instagram feed..."

WhatsApp is huge in some countries (even bigger than some telecom companies in the number of users it has).