Slashdot Mirror
More Users Are Shunning Facebook
Hugh Pickens writes "Blake Snow writes that evidence suggests that a small but increasing number of users — at least in North America, where Facebook use is especially saturated — may be shunning the site with Facebook losing nearly 6 million users, falling from 155.2 million at the start of May to 149.4 million at the end of the month, the first time the US has lost users in the past year. Some users complain they're spending so much time on Facebook that they're short-changing the rest of their lives. 'I figured out that I wouldn't look back as an old man and wish I had spent more time on Facebook,' says David Cole, an IT manager from Boston, adding that he believes the popular social-networking site is a useful tool, but not a replacement for what he calls 'realbook' experiences. Kip Krieger, a college student from Virginia, says Facebook has become predictable. 'It's really gotten to a point where I know pretty much what my friends are going to post. They usually just write the same thing over and over again, and I am getting sick of that.' Still there are a lot more satisfied customers of Facebook than disgruntled ones, so are Facebook shunners a tiny minority or part of a growing trend? 'Having that connection with others is a very powerful thing,' says Toby Bushman who felt so much pressure that she decided to rejoin Facebook, and is glad she did. 'It makes me feel like I'm a part of something bigger and more grand than just my life as a stay-at-home mother.'"
Seriously, what are they expecting? That their friends are there to entertain them 24/7? I don't expect MSN Messenger to entertain me all the time either, why would I expect Facebook to do so. It's a communication tool. I've found it really useful, especially since I'm living in different sides of the world every half a year and having friends, wife and a family in both. But I don't expect it to stop hunger or give world peace.
Seems to be chock full of stalkers, spammers and generally maladjusted people talking to themselves via status updates. The only use I have for it now is keeping in touch with *old* friends and retrieving news feeds from various sites & services. Facesuck.
"Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Have a Facebook Account"
Kip Krieger, a college student from Virginia, says Facebook has become predictable.
Most people are just like you. Boring.
Facebook is going to make money by exploiting and mining the data they have (and ads). Losing some customers is to be expected. The interesting thing is that they reached a saturation point already.
But it doesn't seem like these folks are going to go to another social networking site.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Sure, having a "life" is all well and good for my friends. But have they paused for even a moment and thought about what will become of my farm?!?!?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
In before the horde of "I'm not Facebook" posts.
Facebook only got what it deserved !
And I have not looked back... For me, I got tired of changing my privacy options all the time to keep what I wanted private, private. They kept changing them so that I would have to reconfigure things, for the same level of privacy.
My blog on how to leave Facebook and keep some of the interesting information: bryanquigley.com/uncategorized/leaving-facebook
I bet the loss in users is nothing compared to the proportion of users who keep their accounts but don't use the site, or view without ever posting. The site is an unpleasant minefield of tiny little areas you never want to click on. If users are declining when so many people have more than one account, I bet they're tanking more than they'll ever want to admit.
IMHO, the people who are leaving Facebook have realized that it's not just another blog where they can post semi-anonymous inflammatory political rhetoric. Their Facebook friends will come down on their bogus opinions hard and people don't like to be told that they're full of sh*t by people they know. Just one aspect, IMHO. For me, living far away from most of my long-time friends, it's nice to be able to passively catch up with them. If you disagree with me, then you are a heartless bastard. ;-)
"It's really gotten to a point where I know pretty much what my friends are going to post."
Newsflash: your friends are just as predictable in real life.
Then again, maybe they're not losing users at all - maybe they're just cracking down on fake accounts.
My young daughter and her friends have recently left Facebook. The reason? Because everyone's parents now use Facebook.
Those skilled in the internet have known Facebook will not last forever. The media, having hyped the living shite out of it for the past few years, are about to jump on the "Facebook is a sinking ship" hype, and I'm happy to help.
Good riddance to bad websites.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
So its user base decreased around 3%, so what? I'm not a big facebook user but I find it funny how these little fluctuations always give rise to these sort of news saying that users are angry and whatnot.
I'd expand on that, but, uuuuurh. Wresting is on.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I have personally not dropped my facebook page but I visit a lot less often now. I've closed my blog page and I have returned to writing letters. I'm an IT admin so its a little difficult relearning to "write" with a pen so that others can read it. But a lot of my friends world-wide like the letter with the clipped photos and other things I send. There is something more personable in a letter that someone actually wrote and handled. i also got a custom wax stamp so i send them out with wax seals like they used to 100 years ago.
You're telling me no one is leaving the site due to worries over personal privacy?
Turn off the TV, shut down the computer, and go interact with other people, or go do something with your hands. You'd be amazed how many calories you burn by puttering around in the garage or in the yard, or by meeting friends out in public. You should especially do this kind of stuff in the years between 18 and getting married. Don't worry about updating your status, use that smartphone to assist being out and about, not as a replacement for it.
Life is short, don't squander it.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
So, people get on Facebook. The use it for awhile. They decide they don't like it. The get off of it. Quelle surprise.
Proverbs 21:19
I'm not going to say this is the start of the end, but it certainly shows that people are no longer "excited" about the social network world.
People are noticing real-world consequences to the privacy issues, reducing the amount of interesting stuff that people will post. I've run into employer issues, I've had relatives with relationship issues, and I've read enough about legal issues to be wary about what I post. Add in the number of businesses embracing Facebook, and you start to see why "social networks" have reached a saturation point.
It still has its uses. It is more personal than email (great for keeping your family updated on life events). It is easier to control reoccurring events, such as birthday parties and pick-up games in the park. It is also easier to ignore people on Facebook than through email. I will continue to use it about as regularly as I use my email, but that doesn't mean I like it.
Damnit. Now I'm constantly envisioning Zuckerberg cowering before some Terminal, uttering "They stole it from us!"
I dumped Facebook a few months back, because I got tired of having to constantly tweak the privacy settings, and I was drowning in Zynga spam from other users.
I had one for a (short) while, but I got sick and tired of having to go back in and turn stuff off every time they "improved" their "privacy" settings. It was like nailing jello to a wall. The only "payoff" was being contacted by asshats from high school that I didn't want to talk to anyway.So I nuked it, then rooted my phone and deleted the app from there too. Done.
Facebook is following the same trajectory of all social networking sites from the dawn of the Internet ... people pile in, then eventually take a harder look at the product they are becoming and start to pull away, starting a long bleeding decline. What's astonishing is that once again, a company appeared which honestly seemed to think they were different, that they weren't subject to the same pattern of free-growth and decay-on-monitization.
As far as I am concerned, this has more to do with how Facebook (and others) are used against people in the work place, at school, by insurance companies, by lawyers and even during pre-employment screenings. As it has been legally supported by court rulings that it's okay to use that information for those purposes (despite the fact that it hinders certain constitutional amendments, the separation of personal and professional life and more), it comes down to the users having two choices: participate or not participate.
I saw this LONG long ago and I decided not to participate as the best option. I think others are beginning to see it as well.
Because I can use third-party clients for Facebook chat I don't need to visit the actual FB site any more. For me, it's always just been the latest (and most awkward from my point of view) IM service in a line stretching back through MSN all the way back to ICQ.
I left Facebook because my wife became emotionally involved with one of my friends on it! And I've heard about twenty stories of people who have wound up hooking up with an old flame, often cheating on their wives or husbands this way.
I enjoyed social networking and really didn't want to leave, but the fact is that it turns out that some people I have known in the past and was trying to keep in my present are simply dangerous!
If you aren't rising, you are falling. The public loves a good riches to rags story just as much as they like a rags to riches. So total active users dropped 6 million out of 700 million total. Big deal. In terms of a subscriber base it doesn't really matter. There are still tons of accounts ripe for data mining. Maybe those accounts were false accounts. Maybe they were expired accounts from people who got their old Facebook account hacked and created a brand new one and the old one finally lapsed. Maybe some people died.
Maybe FB is plateauing. It happens to every huge company, they have stop growing sometime. Maybe they drop 1% and their gains/losses level off. But thanks to the 24 hr news cycle we have "oh noes! FB is ded because a few people went outside! Film at 11!"
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
divorce rate in the US: about 48% (depending on what stats you use)
Number of lawyers that advise clients to delete their Facebook accounts the second they file for divorce: rising significantly.
Or hey, maybe everyone is quitting and installing their own Diaspora node. Yup, that HAS to be it!
a college student from Virginia, says Facebook has become predictable. "It's really gotten to a point where I know pretty much what my friends are going to post. They usually just write the same thing over and over again...
This is the other side of the bar that the Turing Test seeks to hurdle. Many real human beings, it turns out, after a while, become highly predictable.
What would Turing say about this phenomenon?
i got banned from facebook without any explanation whatsoever. They must think they're pretty fucking special they can go around doing that to people. Well f-them - my life improved dramatically after that due to actually attending to my life as opposed to wasting time on their garbage so they actually did me a favour.
Having my parents join completely changed my use of FB, and to some extent real life. as now every possible drunken shenanigans picture might get a comment from my mom.
Now I can have my overbearing over protective mom follow me and judge me all the time? Brilliant!
Oh and don't dare not friend them, or unfriendly them. That just makes it worse.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I only wish it were possible to sterilize them all ...
via their computer screens
If only...
these usage rates will continue to drop as more and more people realize that facebook isn't really that useful once you're already connected to people.
i hope beyond hope that they IPO as soon as possible so that lots of idiotic investors can see what can happen to an internet service company in the matter of a year or so when they are no longer the goto place.
Just like MySpace, LiveJournal, etc before it. Nobody's gotten the social formula perfect enough to even survive the evolution of their own customer base, let alone long term internet social structure trends. I'm one of many who has deleted my own facebook account in the past 6 months, but I'm atypical to begin with (I only grudgingly made an account, and hardly ever posted anything, and it always made me uncomfortable - my tipping point was all their privacy bullshit recently).
Privacy concerns by the paranoid like myself aside, the major problem with facebook for the masses is this:
People are realizing that with how well-connected the social graph is in Facebook, there truly is no way to compartmentalize your life there. If you decide to live on Facebook and post your real life there, you can't filter that stream of data/opinion/image the way most people do in real life. Most people have several different versions of themselves: the one they present to their parents, the one they present to close friends, to associates, to potential dating/marriage partners, to religious friends, to potential and current employers, etc, etc.
There is no strategy that can accomplish this on Facebook while still making Facebook useful. Even if you use a pseudonym account, if you link with your friends, and they link their families and jobs, etc... one way or another the social network corrects itself and you will end up indirectly telling your grandmother, your ex-girlfriend, and your boss about what happened the morning after you took that slut home from that shady singles bar.
From TFA: Facebook officials say their service is good for people. "Facebook can be like broccoli," [Facebook spokesman] Schnitt says. "Everyone can benefit from it but not everyone will want to."
That's very unflattering. Is that really how Facebook is perceived by the people who work there?
Building Better Software
To be come a part of something bigger and more grand than just my life at some job while someone else raises her kids?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I always figured a big portion of this was;
a.) mafia wars/farmville/anyville dupe users who make fake users to play and support there game. Who fnially realize it's a life waster.
b.) myspace users who moved over and created the standard alter ego then realized that's not really a facebook thing.
I had lived in Houston for over 5 years and not really made any friends. I hooked up with the EFNET #houston IRC channel and within weeks was going out to clubs with people I had met in the channel. We even got reserved seating for a few movie premiers because of the group. `Lumpy`
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
More and more people are passing that point where everything on Facebook is indistinguishable from crap.
Now, to me that seems pretty odd, why so many, why May?
Final exams and sunshine? I guess they have those in Canada too. Maybe they just failed to correct for a decline in Internet usage overall. FaceBook is big enough and popular enough that its use pattern should parallel the Internet.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Eventually all of these sites will lose users. Why? Because eventually people wake up and realize what a time waster it is. Let's face it, do people really think you're that interesting such that they will follow your exploits day in and day out? It's all a fad and that's what all the paparazzi shows are for on TV for people who are truly interesting, or well at least have "celebrity" status. For those who need their constant Kim Kardashian fix, they can get it daily and there will be media outlets that will supply that need. Can you ever get enough of Kim Kardashian? That's another topic.
Yes, you can use the truly social aspects of these sites to reconnect with old friends and catch up. But in reality, after a while, you then realize suddenly that there was a reason you lost touch with those old friends. They're boring or they pissed you off a long time ago or they stole your significant other from you. Unfortunately for you, now you've "friended" them. This creates a new social paradox. How do you unfriend a friend and still be able to look them in the eye at that high school reunion? You can't but you can Tweet Dr. Phil and ask him what you should do.
Facebook will eventually dwindle down to a smaller subset of what it is today. People will give up on the Farmvilles and will turn on to other things. Like "Angry Birds" which I predict will have a $200B IPO next year because we value the latest fad, not what's substantial.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I think Betty White said it best when she said "It seems like a tremendous waste of time".
Nothing in the statistics comes even close to say people are 'shunning' face book. All the statistics point to is that some people are using it less, or have stopped using it. I still see people I know join up, and no one I know that uses face book regularly has dropped it (anecdotal evidence .. not post it as an overall Facebook trend.)
I check it at least twice a day (morning and evening), and sometimes at work if time permits. My wife only checks hers every day or so. Different people have different ways they use it. I rarely post anything, some seem to post every random thought that come into their heads. Some have learned how to use the 'ignore post by' button, others haven't and some drop it because of all the noise.
I've added a motorcycle group that I lead that uses Meetup.com as it's primary communication point. Since adding the Facebook page, there has seen a significant increase in activity in the group. My guess is that since Facebook is 'real time', people can communicate better than when using a normal blog or email. I can't prove Facebook is the reason, I can only correlate the activity.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Facebook is like that kinda hot girl you dated, but quickly realized she was..not so much. I consider her a big fat w**re that blabs everything I say all over the internet. She steals, smokes, and has chronic gas. So now I only lie to her, feed her garbage info and randomly change my profile. I dumped cable over a year ago and have been lying to the bookFace as well. I consider it a fairly annoying inbox, little more.
World of Facecraft - people are getting facade maintenance fatigue.....trying desperately to maintain their false images in real and digital life is too much....or the stark realization that they and everyone they know is BORING....
"You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do."
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Facebook is just the Evercrack for the masses, ie nongeeks
But you will remember EVERY minute you did NOT spend with your parents, loved ones, and friends. They are here such a short time, and you are wasting it on Facebook and devices. Drop that shit and go spend real time with them.
Actually, I find in an extremely useful tool for managing groups.
IT's a hell of a lot easier to manage then email groups, Especially temporary groups. Like my sons baseball team. A whole bunch of families, friends and what not need to be informed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Maybe the drop in account numbers is facebook purging fake accounts - accounts that are second or third or fourth, etc, accounts for the same person and used for playing games (i.e. cheating), etc.
After downloading all my content from FB (and another blog site, and a personal page at the university where I used to work, and personal pages where I now work), I uploaded a bunch to a blog, gave my friends the URL to it, deleted my account (which had a persistent error anyway), then set up a new account with tight security and far fewer friends (mainly family) where I just post links to interesting things on my blog, and a public page where I post a subset of those links.
Why? Well, people are gonna see ads wherever they see my content, but on the blog, they see fewer ads and any ad revenue goes to me, not FB.
I'll happily use FB or any other social networking site to send traffic to my own site.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
"...felt so much pressure that she decided to rejoin Facebook, and is glad she did. "It makes me feel like I'm a part of something bigger and more grand than just my life as a stay-at-home mother."
And there's the root of the problem right there, what I like to call "Hollywood Syndrome". Sure, there's probably another word or term for it, but it basically stems around the popularity of such things as Facebook, Twitter, Warcraft, MMORPGs in general, and all that fake bullshit we see on TV that is so popular these days. Don't disillusion yourself people. American Idol has NOTHING to do with singing or finding talent. MTVs the "real" world is anything but.
Of course, the illusion of living a life well beyond your own is nothing new. Soap Operas have been doing it for the last half-century. My question to the general masses who feel the undying need and urge to cling onto someone or something else to feel "part of something bigger" is...what the hell is wrong with going out and doing something by yourself, FOR yourself? There is no replacement for real-life experiences, especially ones that you do for no one but yourself. Being a stay-at-home mother is nothing to be ashamed or feel shallow about. The fruits of your labor will hopefully be seen when one of the most precious assets in the world grows up. If molding the future is not a part of "something bigger", I really don't know what is.
...but I truly believe that the honeymoon period is over now. From the friends in my list of Facebook, I can see that all of those annoying apps (Farmville, Mafia wars etc.) have started to really fall off now, and I don't see any of those updates anymore. I think that smartphones may have something to do with it. If you can play Angry Birds on your phone, then you don't need to log into Facebook to do a similar thing. Also, I feel that people are starting to get burned by the OTT information that they spew out in their status updates, and are realising that you can't spout inflammatory nonsense without people picking up on it. One of my female friends hates her mother-in-law (and sisters-in-law) with a vengeance. However, they are all still "friends" on Facebook, as it is in that stupid political zone where you can't unfriend with without them noticing and having a go at you for doing such a thing. However, she posted an off-the-cuff comment taking the piss out of them, and all hell broke loose - Phone calls, threats, tears.... all from a throwaway comment that EVERYONE could see. As this starts to happen to more and more people, I think that they'll either: a) Bail out of Facebook or b) Drastically reduce their friend list to all of 5 people. Don't get me wrong. I still like Facebook and do think it's a useful tool, but it's beginning to backfire on people now and that could be a problem for Facebook.
I was shunning Facebook before it was hip to shun Facebook.
Nope. Nothing to do with any of those.
Agreed.
It also lets you pick up a few new facebook friends, some of whom get leveraged into real friends or industry connections.
In terms of the story, everyone seems to be making a big deal out of the fact that its numbers went down by six million--My guess is most of that's the school crowd, who normally are on facebook in class, while doing schoolwork, etc...; summer jobs aren't the kind of environment where people do that. Growth may be flattening, but the decrease likely isn't sustained.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
C'mon folks, get a clue! Facebook, twitter, myspace etc... only exist so corporations can get your personal data for targeting you for advertising! Don't believe that? Read the user agreement you had to agree to to use any of these types of sites. You will see that the site owns any data, messages etc that you post there. What? You thought that these sites provided you with free services out of the godness of there hearts?! THINK AGAIN!!
Used it for a while..
As time went on, I used it less and less each day
Haven't looked at it for months now
Guess I'm just not that social...and I have lots of other things to do
As someone who never had a MySpace or FaceBook account, I'll be the first to say that I should have.
Back in college when MySpace was huge, I was constantly pestered by friends for my "MySpace", so that they could friend me. My canned response was, "I don't use MySpace, but if you want to find me you can just type my name into Google and my professional website is the first result." Well, guess who didn't get invited to the cool parties because the invite went out over MySpace? It still happens today with friends who use Facebook to send out invitations. You can tell people to use your e-mail, text you, or call you, but it's just not something that people think to do anymore. Facebook has become the preferred means of communication. I've even had a relationship fail out of the gate because the girl preferred Facebook flirting and I refused to indulge her. Just last week I got a call on my office phone from some friends from long ago who'd been looking for me. Since I wasn't on Facebook, it literally didn't occur to them that they could try entering my name in Google and find my contact information at the first result. Instead, by some circuitous route they managed to find a phone number I didn't even know--my office phone--since I just use my cell phone!
So, here's the moral of the story. To the masses, Facebook is the new phone book, post office and phone. If your address and number is unlisted, you may as well be living in a shack in the vast wilderness, because unless they're exceptionally close to you then your friends aren't going to find you, aren't going to contact you, and might even find it easier not to be your friend at all.
Somehow, I still decline to use Facebook. I'd rather go through my list of contacts on a rotating basis and send them a text to let them know that I still care. It is kind of funny to meet friends of my girlfriend and have them say, "Oh, you're that guy that's not on Facebook!"
So, maybe not being on Facebook makes me more memorable after all.
"It makes me feel like I'm a part of something bigger and more grand than just my life as a stay-at-home mother."
regret having children much?
So let me get this straight. We are all ragging on FB about what a time waster it is yet we all seem to have found the time to read and comment on slashdot. On the other hand discovering that all my fellow slashdotters value their time so much explains why no one ever reads the articles slashdot posts are refer to.
Actually, I rather suspect that most people leaving Facebook are doing so because of the unilateral changes the site has made that are often unpopular. The past two years alone changes have been made to profiles, fan pages, groups, and so on. Right now Facebook is testing a "Happening Now" feature that pretty much does the same thing the Most Recent filter does, but not as well. Sadly, I am one of the victims of the testing. My Most Recent and other filters are gone and my news feed is a mess. It's because of this sort of thing that people are leaving Facebook!
The same study suggests 1.5million Canadians also quit in a single month, that's 5% of Canada's entire population quitting Facebook in May. Now, to me that seems pretty odd, why so many, why May? For this to be realistic there'd almost certainly have to have been some good reason why so many chose that specific month to all leave together but I'm not aware of any event that would've caused such a mass exodus.
Well duh, the spring thaw came a little late and they woke up and left their dens to start foraging for roots and berries. Doesn't this kind of thing happen every year?
During the workday I need to work on projects, answer e-mails and such. I'll have downtime for social networking here and there but not much. When I get home, I need to make dinner, get the kids ready for bed and then do various things (household chores, blog posts, watch TV shows I like watching, spend time with my wife, etc). I can do social networking here as well, but my time is limited. I already have a blog and am on Twitter. Going on Facebook would only spread me too thin. If I want to post something for the world to see that's longer than 140 characters, I'll blog about it. If I want to let people know about it privately, I'll e-mail them. There are only maybe a handful of people from my past that I wonder "what are they doing now." The others? Don't really care. As it stands, I'm constantly trying to rise above my past. I don't need people from my past constantly popping into my present life and judging my current life with comments or "likes".
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Before people jump on me, let me make it clear, I am no technophobe, I am mostly on the bleeding edge of technology ... HW or SW
So ... I could never figure out what facebook achieved that we could do in a email with cc and bcc, seriously. Given that the founder apparently stole the "idea" (which is worthless IMHO) controversy, I was feeling pretty sad that this is what the vaunted Si valley could come up with lately. Classic example is my wife who was a stay at home mom till about a year ago, when she was at home with plenty of spare time, she was a facebook power user, but now that she is back in the IT workforce (she does chip level design) she barely looks at FB and now is on email for most of her communication with friends (personal and professional) and family.
I know several hundred million people could not be wrong, I for once could not figure out the usefulness or the value of FB (or twitter).
I like and use facebook, but the apps drive me nuts. I reject all app requests and remove automated posts to my wall from friend's apps. Wish there was a way to remove all apps.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Web usage always goes down when school ends, the kids are home, and vacations happen. It's been this way for years now.
Nobody uses Facebook anymore. It is too crowded.
I think for most users the novelty of Facebook has worn off. I noticed this myself as well. When you first join, you start getting friended by all kinds of folks you used to know. Your curiosity is very high, and it's entertaining for a while. Then the months pass. Eventually you are rarely friended by anyone new. Most friends that will join and find you already have. And you've already reached out to most you know. Then it's just an endless stream to the same old friends posting about the same old things.
Still can be useful, but the novelty has worn off.
I think Facebook's greatest flaw (and Twitter's greatest strength) is that once you hit the roof on your friend list, there are few surprises. Whereas Twitter allows serendipitous exchanges precisely because it is public. Privacy is good - but it won't challenge you as much as openness. And that may get boring.
Everyone that I want to talk to has my email. Those that I don't want to talk to can still contact me easily through my website, which is the first result in most search engines if you search for my name. (Yes, I have the luxury of a unique name.)
I simply have different email accounts for each family I keep in each area of the world.
I have a lot of friends who deactivate their Facebook. Either they deactivate it for a week or a few days and then come right back, only to deactivate it again a couple weeks later, or they deactivate permanently.
What I see people like this doing is blaming their personal problems on Facebook. I don't study enough for my classes? It's because of Facebook. I don't spend enough time with my family? Facebook. And so on and so forth.
The problem is that Facebook happens to be an extremely useful communications tool. In some circles I belong to, it has practically replaced e-mail. I belong to organizations that use Facebook to schedule events, hold online meetings via groupchat, and discuss/share important information on group pages. Nothing is more frustrating when you're trying to get legitimate work done, and one of your members decides to go neurotic and deactivate their Facebook because they have a personal problem. Whenever this happens and ask them why they deactivated their Facebook, I usually get some kind of whiny response, to which I inevitably ask, "Why don't you just not log in during the times you don't wish to use Facebook?" Then it's always, "Boo hoo, I can't resist!" Seriously, get a grip.
The question is, why Facebook? I don't see people "deactivating" their e-mail because they check it too often or spend too much time writing e-mails. I don't see these same people, who will spend hours a day on AIM, deleting their AIM account. Facebook is just a scapegoat because it's new technology for most people, therefore it must be the source of much evil.
I shunned facebook before it was cool...
Recently, I deactivated my Facebook--it wasn't the privacy issues that got to me, but the people. I felt like was becoming obsessed to be a part of something, trying to find a meaningful friendship with another person, but I couldn't get it. To me, that was far more frustrating than the predictable post my friends made or the embarrassing comments that would sometimes come up. I didn't think I was any better than my friends--I just couldn't be meaningful so I said fuck it. It's my fault for believing I could change that. I'll be with people who give a damn.
there's a slight value proposition for FB users. They can connect easily with people they've lost touch with. That was fun at first, but I quickly found that the people I've lost touch with I also grew apart from. There's always the "So...what are you up to now?" conversation that iterates twice, three times at most. Then, silence. It's like a high school reunion split up into hundreds of mini interactions and stretched out over years, and it's just as awkward.
As a sociological study and advertising behavioral resource, it's a gold mine. That's why Goldman Sachs and the usual evil suspects are all over it.
But in the end, FB and all its peers and predecessors implode because they bring nothing of lasting value to the user. It's just another way to waste time. Invent something that makes me a better mathematician or improves my golf swing or earns me money or teaches me how to lay out a circuit board while I do it, and at the same time have it be entertaining and not bore the hell out of me like a standard text book does, and then you'll be onto something lasting.
Add a serious level to entertainment or an entertaining level to something serious that taps into that level of absorption, of total focus, and it will be huge for humanity. And no, serious games aren't there yet.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I thought I had deleted my account but signed back in a month later and it was still there.
Seems it's YOU that never really leave facebook. I deleted all my stuff and never logged in again. I know it's gone because those 'real' friends that I see face to face tell me they can no longer see the pictures or the conversations.
If you are going to leave..LEAVE.
sheesh.
Is there prove of this or is it something that someone wishes to be true ? How do we know if it is true or not as facebook has denied this ?
Think of Facebook as a sort of Turing test.
If you're active on Facebook, you just failed the test.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I've been shunning Facebook since before it was cool to shun Facebook. Am I cool now?
your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
Why use facebook when their is /.?
Seriously, who else does not have, and never created a facebook account?
Turns out there isn't any single "correct" form for letters. To think Palmer or D'Nealian Script is "Cursive" with a capital c or to think it is "The Script" for cursive writing is to have a limited perspective. Even within the Palmer method you had variation on letters.
Find a nice script you like or make your own. Use it carefully when you write. Do it enough with intention and it'll become easy to write and read.
I think ease or difficulty of reading is what you're referring to when you say "it has always sucked"?
Never used LiveJournal, but I was on another similar website that allowed long-form entries - I miss that. It seems like there must be a market for a bloggier version of Facebook.
There's a bunch of useful account security tools that can be used for this. I put people in to groups on Facebook that I can then limit from being able to see posts I make. So I can provide them with the placebo of having added them, but they won't see 90% of the posts I make, so I have no interaction.
So put up all your pictures from your visit to the local art museum for all to see, and put up your drunken binge photos restricted to just your friends. Problem solved.
The only reason I opened a facebook account was to try to find my son Jonathan (who never responded) that there is no law in place to force them to delete all of your personal data is the main reason why I stay away for ever after.
My Facebook wall has degenerated into a massive list of page likes. Hardy anyone posts content anymore.
I wonder who makes those "Like if you remember XYZ" and "The awkward moment when..." pages and why.
I originally used my Facebook as intended, i listed my music, books and movies and even filled in a typical "About Me" but I've removed all that now because no one looks at it (Some even treat it with philistine suspicion) and I've reached a point where i only check facebook out of a morbid voyeuristic curiosity.
On the other hand I've taken a personal interest in the Middle-East "uprising" and i'm surprised at how much facebook has become a household word. I know people in the ME who have a rudimentary understanding of English and no household internet who have an active FB account
Disporia* will open soon to the public it will be the most secure and Google profiles might be okay until Disporia* opens
I found FB really great at first, it brought folks back into my life whom I'd always liked but lost contact with for whatever reason.
But after the first 2 years I realized that I was about the only one in my "friend" group who was posting/generating original content (photos, video, short stories, etc.), and everyone else was just commenting, complaining, linking to music and/or political videos, etc., nothing original from them at all, just ... noise to my signal .
It became too banal, even what my own son was posting (I love titties and beer), and I haven't been back for at least 6 months, and am considering deleting all my data.
I now post all my "output" on my own website/domain, and if anyone from FB wants to come see it they're welcome to, but I'm not expecting many to make the jump, so really in my eyes, FB was/is a passing fad that will be replaced by the next big thing in about, oh, an Internet second.
Facebook would have been useful if it had at least tried to make people meet for whatever reason, and I'm not talking about just recreational friendly stuff like parties and dates and whatever stupid "event". The software and database facebook possesses could allow people to find jobs easily, to share cars, to share a dinner between neighbors, to share tedious chores, and to match services when it requires to, etc.
:p
I really thought about that recently, that those kinds of social software could change the world we live in currently, with the crisis and all this things.
I'm not sharing more views on those things, even if "ideas are cheap"
I got a FB account because my siblings wanted me to keep up on what my nieces and nephews are up to, 1500 miles away. But, I used a pseudonym (and I'm sure they thought me weird, but I've always kept my real name off the internets), and the only 'friends' I have are my immediate family and their kids.
My profile contains the books/movies, etc. that I like, but it doesn't contain any personal information, including location/work/school, etc.
I use FB purity to block most of the bullshit, too.
I'm a 'fan' of many pages, though--mostly entertainment and retail-related. I've won a whole lot of freebies and books from random drawings, etc. from vendors and blogs that are in my feed. I get discounts and coupons before they are released to the public or even newsletter subscribers. I have no desire to keep up with people I haven't seen in years, especially those from 'back home.'
People have not learned anything from the history of the internet, and keep trying to build new generations of the same old walled gardens people abandoned long ago.
"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
Too many people are spending too much time on their computer!