My Eulogy to Facebook

I never was a huge fan of Facebook. I jumped on the bandwagon about 18 months ago. By that time it was already the huge “social networking” sensation. Today I bid you farewell Facebook, and so that you may create a better user experiment, er experience for your remaining members I don’t have a problem with telling you why.

I have been typing/working on one type of computer or another since my first Packard Bell 486 with a whopping 4MB of RAM (later upgraded to 8MB for a mere $250) since the mid 1980s. Although not considered an expert I know my way around one and have been asked to assist people with both hardware and software (including pop-ups 😉 ) issues more than a few times. That being said I never could fully understand the settings and preferences of Facebook. A home page, a wall, a newsfeed that includes not only top news (whatever the hell makes it “top” I don’t know), and most recent news greet you when you log in.

Now all sites/applications need to have settings. I am not sure I would call them settings with Facebook but more like mass confusion. But for the sake of argument since Facebook calls them settings than so shall I. Clicking on “Account” gives you the following settings:

• Edit Friends – This is the easiest one to get through although it takes a few more clicks and menus to actually “edit” your friends list.  Although Facebook can help one find that “long lost friend”, it can easily become more of a problem than a pleasantry. It is also rather creepy how Facebook found that person you went to high school with 20 years ago in a week when you have been looking for them since you lost contact the summer after graduation.
  
• There are three different types of settings. I have a total of 151 decisions to make. If I need to make 151 decisions I am going to need some Bacardi 151.
  

  Your mileage may vary and will probably be more because I only have added two applications in addition to the default ones.
  

  • Account 9 (only settings – notifications to follow below)
    
  • Privacy 51
    
  • Applications 91
    

The one I like the best is what they call the “Instant Personalization Pilot Program”. Where I have the choice on whether sites can use my personal information. Of course the box is selected to allow this, but I can’t recall checking that box. Hmmmm, must be too much Bacardi.

Then we have the massive of amount of notifications. Once again you get to “choose” what e-mails you receive about what. OF course a new member on Facebook will soon have a full inbox because as usual everything is turned on by default. After all, we have to know ASAP whenever Sam fertilized his crops in Farmville. WTF?

Alright, rant over. Between the new privacy policy introduced at the f8 developers’ conference a couple of weeks ago and the chat security issue last week, there are plenty of other rants to read. Besides being an all around pain in the ass, it is also dangerous in regards to your security and identity protection.

So please accept my apologies in advance for not caring about your crops, who you have killed in Mafia Wars, or any other of the rather idiotic things attached to applications inside of Facebook that are only after one thing; Your identity and habits to sell to advertisers.

I just told my wife I loved her and guess what? I didn’t need to do it on Facebook!