Where Facebook Lost Me

At this point, I think it’s safe to say that I’m officially a Twitter convert.  I haven’t logged more than probably  half an hour on Facebook in the last few months, and feel no pull to use it more.  There’s been a lot of news recently regarding where Facebook is headed and what CEO Mark Zuckerberg is thinking,  especially concerning the Twitter-like site redesign that received little positive feedback from users.  In trying to think of why Facebook’s new look isn’t doing well, I brainstormed the moments that led to me being less of a Facebook user, or at least an unhappier Facebook user.  I’ll try to go in chronological order.

When the requests became an onslaught – This wasn’t so bad when there was no such thing as Facebook Apps, when it was just photo sharing, events, and writing back and forth on each others walls (the good old days), but once Apps entered the scene I was soon getting requests to join every group and App imaginable. The volume of these became so great that I eventually just gave up and stopped viewing this part of the site. Not good for Facebook – I should’ve feel the need to completely avoid a part of the site and have no control over the information I receive unsolicited.

When my Inbox was constantly flooded with non-messages – I think being able to privately message others is a necessary feature with any kind of social media site, but since this feature isn’t used very often, I find my Inbox is used primarily to hold messages sent to all invited to a certain event or group. I have no problem with this when I’ve RSVP’d, but when I haven’t, it gets old. Fast.

When I felt I’d lost control of the privacy of my information – It was around the time that a lot of students were first starting to find themselves in front of college Judicial Boards for pictures posted on Facebook that I started to really see Facebook differently. When Facebook opened its doors to the entire world, it slowly felt less and less private. There was something about friends of friends being able to see tagged photos that creeped me out. I know there are ways to set different privacy lists that determine what can be seen by specified people, but I’ve found this tricky to set up and too annoying to bother with — and I consider myself to be the kind of person who loves to play with Preferences.

When I learned that there were tracking applications – The first time I learned there was an application others used to track who had viewed their profile, I quickly Googled it and found out how to make my account not work with the app. That was a long time ago, and I’m sure there are many more versions of this type of application that I’ve not bothered to look into blocking. And again, it just creeps me out a little.

When I graduated – Something about graduating led to me spending a lot less time on Facebook. It definitely could’ve been the changes in lifestyle I underwent shortly after that time, but I think another reason could be because one of the major reasons Facebook is enjoyable is because you’re given a window into the world of people you know, but maybe just vaguely. It’s intersting. But, once you don’t see those people regularly, like after graduating, the context for the updates you get through that window becomes weaker, which, I think, makes the significance of the update weaker, as well.  Although, I’m thinking there’s gotta be some kind of threshold, because after x number of months or years, I’m sure I’d be very fascinated to hear what ever happened to Blank Blank.

I think right now is an intersting time for the history of the Internet.  Facebook, which is clearly the current heavy-weight champion in terms of users and scope, is being challenged by an unconventional competitor who’s rethinking the way social networks should work — and is doing so with far less users. And, though it’s a ways away, I’d argue Facebook will ultimately fall to Twitter as it can do everything that makes Facebook a great social networking site, just better and cleaner.