Goodbye Facebook
Mar 9, 2012, 8:52p - Blog Update
While deactivating my account, it asks why.
I choose "I don't find Facebook useful."
It suggests "You may find Facebook more useful by connecting to more of your friends."
But I already have 716 "friends". The fact is, the more friends I have, the *less* useful I find Facebook, because there's more crap from random people sitting on my wall.
It asks "Please explain further."
The content on Facebook has grown more and more irrelevant as time has gone on. I don't care where someone I met once had dinner. I don't care whether a friend of mine likes something. The signal-to-noise ratio has truly hit rock-bottom.
The worst part about it is, the more my friends post, the less interesting I find my friends to be.
I feel liberated.
I will miss some things though:
1) Having a shared community photo album, which feeds into my Android phone so I see a new photo of myself or Becca every day as my wallpaper. (For now I will use Becca's account)
2) Self-promotion. When I blog I often link to it on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and my Google Chat status. Oh well.
Also, I'm sick of people messaging me on Facebook, or inviting me to events and expecting that I'd seen it on Facebook. I normally look at Facebook only once every few weeks. Is it really so hard to email someone?!
Also, the new Facebook Timeline sucks. 2 columns to view something that's linear (time)? Am I the only one who feels like my eyes are watching a ping-pong game? The big photo at the top is nice though.
Ah well. It's deactivated for now. I'll see how I feel in the morning when I feel less passionate.
I recognize that I may sound like a middle-aged curmudgeon.
On a related note, I deleted my LinkedIn account a few weeks ago, because that thing is certainly even less useful, and I didn't like how it appeared on the first page of search results for my name.
In some ways, the Facebook wall really exemplified the trade-off between quantity and quality, with a large bias to the former.
I still enjoy reading my friends' blogs (the few of them who have ones they update).
Who knew that Facebook would help me end my blogging drought?
Read comments (7) - Comment
Josh
- Mar 10, 2012, 6:17a
Josh Meisel likes this
nikhil
- Mar 10, 2012, 6:51a
Now I feel fulfilled.
Sachin
- Mar 10, 2012, 11:20a
Completely agree about Facebook.
Can't agree about LinkedIn though. If you are in the job market or just generally need to be connected to professional networks, it's great.
omar
- Mar 10, 2012, 3:30p
I too wanted to like tgis post. I deactivated my accoubt for a month a year or so ago. Was fulfilling. I didnt tell many ppl though and so someppl thought i had shunned them. I may give this a go again.
I agree on timeline. Inpossible to read.
For somw reason i dont get spelling correctiob in this textbox.
What is the photo app u refer to?
nikhil
- Mar 10, 2012, 6:38p
Omar,
The photo app is called WallMe Lite. It's a wallpaper app that can loop through a set of photos and set them as your wallpaper. Best part is that you can login with Facebook and then it can show you all the photos where you or one of your friends is tagged. So I set it to show me photos of myself or Becca. You should check it out, it's great. I wanted an app like that for a while. Best part of Facebook for me was the photos, and this app puts them right in my face everyday, so I don't have to even go to Facebook. It's great (though of course it too can be improved).
Sachin,
Yeah, I understand that people on the job circuit get some value out of LinkedIn. I just find it a bit too job-focused for it to interest me. It has also bugged me in several ways:
1) It was one of the top results for me on Google, and I didn't like the impression that gave. I'm not looking for a job.
2) It has bugged me to write 'reviews' for people I've worked with, and then later I learned that these reviews weren't even requested by the person - the requests were auto-generated because *LinkedIn* wanted me to write a review. I'm not too interested in doing free work for companies.
3) I don't like that even though I want data about me to be free, LinkedIn will only give others access to this data if people pay (under certain circumstances). I don't think anyone needs to pay for my data, so I don't like that LinkedIn directly profits from data about me. I realize Facebook also makes money off my data, but it's indirect through advertising rather than charging the user. So access to my data remains free, as I want it to be.
Marlon
- Apr 18, 2012, 8:34p
"Also, the new Facebook Timeline sucks. 2 columns to view something that's linear (time)? Am I the only one who feels like my eyes are watching a ping-pong game? The big photo at the top is nice though."
Yes! Yes! No! I hate the photo at the top. I think Facebook is quickly going away, it used to be a place of hyperactivity, all kinds of relevant discussions from politics to whatever. Now it's all a ruined mush. The photo quality is total crap for sharing photos, there's pretty much no point to FB.
LinkedIn OTOH hasn't helped me get a job in years, but, the groups and discussions there are actually pretty helpful.
Btw, good luck deleting that Facebook account, they don't actually ever delete it, it remains alive indefinitely. Periodically you may get a request to activate it again.
Ashvin
- Oct 24, 2012, 5:13p
Make sure you delete your account, not simply deactivate. The link in here definitely seems like the real deal.
https://ssl.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account
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