Don't Poke me!

I can see both why it 'criminal' and generally society going overboard.

What is this world coming to?

What's next? Getting sued becuase someone put a smilie face on a message or said hi?
maybe msn better remove the nudge feature.

ugh,i'm tired and grumpy..too much stress..

Well, if there's a RO on file and you're stupid enough to contact the person then you deserve what you get... It's not going overboard, it's contempt of court. Though, I must say, if you are so angry at someone that you file a RO against them you'd have to be freaking stupid to keep them on your facebook friend list. So basically, IMO they're both idiots.

I can see how it would be unnerving to have someone disrespecting your wishes for them not to contact you. I mean it is pretty clear if someone has gone to the trouble to file an RO.

After an RO in particular being very clear, I would say she was purposely harassing and antagonizing the victim and deserves whatever retribution she receives - just on general principle.

I agree - I do not see anything social about social networking as it is -

It is nothing but a huge ad billboard. It is spam at the 'nth degree.

Nice idea but like email marketing it is overrun with spammers and makes it unusable for anyone else. Even permission based marketers have trouble with email and I would have trouble finding a personal message in Twitter since they are spammed the same way as the general board.

I think it depends on how you use social networking. I know lots of people who connect with the world on facebook and similar sites and use them to make money. I'm sure it's lucrative but ugh, just the thought of it gives me a headache. I get at least 5 invites a day from people asking to connect that I've never met in my life.

However, I do use Facebook to actually connect socially with both old and new friends. I've reconnected with people I haven't seen or talked to in years and it's been great. In fact, just a couple months ago someone I graduated high school with and haven't seen in almost 20 years was coming on vacation to the town in Mexico where I was living. We met up, had dinner and drinks and had a great time catching up on what we've been doing. That never would have happened without connecting on FB.

In the same line, FB allows me to keep in touch with people I meet (or intend to meet) while I'm traveling. For example, before I started my trip I talked to a guy on a travel forum. We connected on FB because we were intending to try to meet up during our travels. The initial meeting didn't happen because of plan changes but we stayed in touch because he's a cool guy and we have a lot in common. I was back in the US in July for family stuff and 2 days before I left to come back to Mexico I saw an SOS from him on FB saying that his laptop had died. I sent him an email and 3 days later we met in Guatemala (he was living in Nicaragua at the time) and I gave him his new laptop. We spent 3 days chilling together in Antigua and had a great time and now, when I finally make it to Nica I have a place to stay.

So, I think social networking can be great but I have no desire to use it for anything other than keeping in touch with friends. That may cost me money in the long run but I need at least one aspect of my online life that doesn't involve business.

My two years old avatar assumes you are right...

Facebook is huge in our family. We have family members spread across the country and world that we haven't seen in years that we are now able to keep in easy contact with through facebook. I personally don't like to spend as much time on there as most, but it is easy to check-up on friends and family. And it's not going anywhere any time soon. It's advertising revenue is expected to soon outpace Google's, if it hasn't already. They have an outstanding program for laser targeted advertising.