In five words, I am tired of Facebook.
I am tired reading that John is now friends with Cindy and James. I am tired reading that Suzanne likes this band or that company. I am tired reading that Andrea is going to an event in two weeks. I am tired reading that Bruce is planting a garden.
As much as I am tired reading some status messages that my friends write and every automatic message that appear whenever they click yes for this or a like button for that, I have no choice but to see these messages.
Maybe I’m jaded.
I joined the social networking site in early 2005 as a graduate student, when it was only available to users with .edu email addresses.
I’ve witnessed many changes over the years, not the least of which involved nearly everyone I know and their mothers joining the bandwagon. I remember synchronizing my email account’s contacts with Facebook’s universe of users and finding a handful of common users — usually, students from another college or a tech-savvy acquaintance who joined once Facebook allowed the world to join in 2006. I sync the accounts today, and it’s odd to find someone not a Facebook user.
My love-hate relationship with Facebook has reached a peak and I really want to delete my account but there are two reasons why I won’t.
First, I created and manage three Facebook pages which people constantly join and participate in; and my understanding is they’d cease to exist if the page creator ceases. Why stop the value for others just because I want to stop?
Second, even if I successfully delete myself, Facebook retains user data and mines it to advertisers. Why make it easier for the company to own me?
I’m not announcing that Facebook sucks, but I’ve had enough.
(Un)fortunately, I’m not disappearing from the Facebook roster anytime soon. I’m merely prioritizing my time on the site. I’ll continue managing the three aforelinked pages and that’s about it.
You? Where do you stand on the movement of people wanting to delete their Facebook accounts?
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{ 37 comments }
Twitter: kikolani
May 11, 2010 at 5:58 PM
Have you tried Friend’s Lists so you can just view the updates by the people you want to catch up with the most. I have some lists for family, people I “know” in real life, bloggers, coworkers, etc. that way I can bypass certain people when I’m just looking for others (like work updates, blogs, etc.).
.-= From Kristi@Blogging Tips to you: Pet Friendly Social Media and Internet Marketing =-.
Yes, I use friend lists but that doesn’t solve anything. The problem is Facebook is assuming I want to see content when I don’t. Every time I see John likes X or John is attending X or John joined the X group or John blah blah blah — I don’t care for these automatic messages.
Show me a status update that John wrote and I’ll smile. Show me the rest of the junk and, at the level I’m seeing it, I’m tired.
It’s not that simple, though.
Twitter: kikolani
May 11, 2010 at 6:26 PM
Ah, gotcha. That’s a fault of Facebook’s last change over. I remember specifically shutting those updates off to where the only thing that was shared on the news feed were my direct updates. There’s no control over those updates anymore, that I’m aware of. I end up deleting a lot of those things off my profile because it’s just ridiculous. I think the only thing you know that someone is actually entering through their Facebook profile anymore are the attached links – everything else can pretty much be automated.
.-= From Kristi@Blogging Tips to you: Pet Friendly Social Media and Internet Marketing =-.
You can avoid for the “John likes X” type of updates. Click the “friends” link on the left, then choose “Status Updates,” and voila! All you see are status updates. Sounds like just what you want.
Wow, I just read, I have some lists for family, people I “know” in real life, bloggers, cowboys, etc.
I may need to slow down a bit, thought you’d wanna know. lol
.-= From Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing to you: Warning: 8 Posts Coming Back to Back =-.
I admit, I am not tired or completely bothered by Facebook, yet. Of course, I am one of those late to join the bandwagon people who just opened an account within the past four months. I admit, it is nice to hear what my high school friends are up too. But personally I wish people would respond to me like I do to them….it’s annoying. Then, again, as in high school, I was usually invisible, so the fact no one responds to my status changes should not surprise me, now. I do understand getting tired of seeing people’s games updates. I wish I could stop anyone who is not my “neighbor” in a game from posting on my home page what they are doing in their worlds/games.
You can hide Farmville and other applications from appearing in your news feed.
As far as your other point about seeking reciprocation of people commenting to you if you comment to them, welcome to life. It’s the same everywhere else.
Thanks for the boing boing link – I was just wondering if your data was really deleted when you deleted your account – I was kind of guessing that it wasn’t.
I tend to be bothered by certain people on Facebook more than certain updates and I hide those people. Some things people like interest me and I find out about groups or events that I’m also interested in.
I also skim – I don’t have time to keep up with everything all the time.
.-= From Kim Woodbridge to you: Page Speed Will Affect Google Page Rank – How to Test Your Page Speed =-.
I used to appreciate Facebook more than Twitter and its ilk for the uniqueness of 1-to-1 mutuality. Nowadays, I wish I could follow a person on Facebook (like
followingliking a page) without required reciprocity.While I can “hide” applications from the news feed, I can’t hide automatic notifications. It’s not the users’ fault, but it adds to my frustration.
i have a facebook account but i only use it for my business purpose as it is a networking site yes i can see some wired stuff on it..ppl liking some wired stuff and comments to..i dont want to delete my account as it is business related as it gets me some valuable traffic
Just wanted to check in.
Don’t you wonder what Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the other social streams will look like in 10 years. Bet many of the problems you raised will be worked out. I don’t have any clue to the solution. I hide the comments of some people, and I’ll look into the “Friends List” that Kristi talked about.
The word “Friend” is twirling on its semantic lexicon.
My hunch is there won’t be any competing “social networking site” in a decade, for the concept may be as ubiquitous as visiting a website or emailing a friend. There may be different providers with different services but without looking under the hood, one may never know.
Hey sometimes by getting annoyed of those games even I feel like deleting my facebook account. Actually there are a lot of games which I get addicted to on facebook and during exam times I just can’t control myself from playing those. So, this thought of deleting account comes to my mind also.
You can hide games from appearing in your news feed. Games are applications.
I have been feeling funny because I have spent less and less time on facebook. Like you I am kind of tired of it. I don’t like the ever changing policies, looks, and feels of the site, either. But from what I can tell it is all the rage since more than 350 million are now on facebook. That is why I feel like such an oddball. So, thanks for writing this post! Should I befriend you now on facebook?
You’re welcome to like this blog on Facebook.
Twitter: 1to1discovery
May 12, 2010 at 11:13 AM
Ari, I agree with you. I used to check/update Facebook every day. Now I’m lucky if I check once a week. I’m liking Twitter so much better. It’s easier to RT on Twitter. Posting links on Twitter is so much faster. I detest that when I “like” something, I get endless notifications on my phone when someone else responds. I’m probably going to delete my Facebook app on my phone and just keep up with Facebook in Tweetdeck. But like you I hesitate to delete my account. There are several people who read my business page for blog updates. I hate to shut them off because of an annoyance I certainly can manage on my own.
But I’m glad to see I’m not alone in being less-than-thrilled with Facebook.
.-= From Juli Monroe @All About Networking to you: No Blogging This Week =-.
You send Facebook notifications outside of FB? I stopped that eons ago!
Facebook is just a tool, like many social media tools. I only reluctantly joined Facebook because of the social expectations to “see and be seen.” I rarely use it. Functionally, I can see Facebook meeting the needs of various populations, but for me, I’d rather network on sites that have more clearly defined mission statements and authentic activity that are in alignment with my goals and purposes, i.e. Linked In Groups on policy, strategy and analysis. If I may be so bold as to modernize Thoreau’s famous observation, “Choose your tools wisely, for you become the tools of your tools.”
I’m fond of saying a tool is a tactic. The key for me these days is the strategy. Tools are not strategies.
I’m with ya. I deleted last year after much non-use due to my own ignorance and busy schedule.
I joined for business. By the time I got around to actually wanting to use it, I was hit with soooo much crap from real life friends at first glance, I couldn’t take it.
.-= From Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing to you: Warning: 8 Posts Coming Back to Back =-.
…though now you’re using Twitter, you may be back to Facebook?
Never say never I suppose. lol
.-= From Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing to you: Web Income Experiments DotCom Wins Hands-Down! =-.
I, like you, got tired and deleted my Facebook account today (wrote about it on my blog as well). And I am also reclaiming the definition of friendship — I’d like to be actually friends with people and not just use them as a counter on a social networking site. Thanks for this post.
.-= From Mansi Bhatia to you: Bye bye, Facebook =-.
I’m not sure I’m understanding your complaints….I just ignore or skim stuff….I don’t actually take the time to read every single thing posted! And for those “friends” that post constantly and I truly could care less, I just click the little “x” button that says “see less about ____”. FB has been great for me to reconnect with folks I would not normally have reconnected with, mostly high school friends, but I see its limits–and just accept that as part of what it is….does that make sense? In my mind, there is no perfect solution to FB’s issues and if some other site were to come along and try and mimic it, there would soon be similar issues, I’m sure. I like FB for what it is and don’t expect too much from it other than to stay in touch, share pix, etc. I don’t like all the applications (Farmville, gardens, etc) so I just don’t participate…it is what it is.
.-= From LTP to you: Just go away….. =-.
When I wish to not use a service anymore I feel I should be able to DELETE my account. Right now the only way to sort of get rid of your Facebook account is to manually remove ALL content and then deactivate it. This is ridiculous. The service should have one big red ‘DELETE PROFILE’ button which wipes out the entire profile and all associated content. Other services have this feature so why doesn’t Facebook? You tell me.
So here it is. I don’t like Facebook. And thats the reason.
Twitter: udegbunamchuks
May 16, 2010 at 11:04 AM
I LOVE Facebook. My life would be boring without it cos a handful of my friends over there make it as FUN as hell with their never-ending jokes, comments etc. It works for some and doesn’t for others. I’ve been through Hi5, Myspace and now Facebook and I’m sticking with Facebook
What sounded like a good idea at first has turned into a nightmare. Facebook applications. I don’t feel the love really. And the spam these things generate is flat out annoying. And the commercial world has jumped on this to spam the hell out of us all in a ‘marketing effort’ to sell us stuff we don’t need.
It is not only you Ari, lots of people and me fill the same way. I learn that Matt Cutts has announced his Facebook deactivation with a post to Twitter, but I don’t know if it is true or not because I have not read this myself.
I understand your woes better. The real problem starts when facebook starts to suggest things. Their insights based on wrong analytics cater inappropriate things to people. I even tried to restrict the status updates by having a list, but over a period of time it ended in vain. Thanks to the new facebook layout. I just want to use it for marketing purposes and share my works with friends and family. I dont expect a thing more from it. How do i let them know about this?
.-= From Haran@Wellington Wedding Photographer to you: Johanna and Matthew =-.
What REALLY bothers me is the sneaky way in which Facebook tries to screw over it’s users. Privacy invading ‘beacons’ and the recent TOS change are two examples. Of course, the really bad things got reversed after the userbase threw a mass-fit but that doesn’t make things good all of a sudden. The sheer fact that Facebook tries to implement things that clearly invade user privacy and rights to their content in a stealthy way, hoping the users won’t notice completely sucks. It shows me they have absolutely no respect for their users.
There are times when everyone would like to delete their Facebook account, as well as any number of extra website accounts bogging you down. Does everyone still have their MySpace account? Even if some people do still have one, I doubt everyone still uses their MySpace accounts. I think anyone that is connected with family members that don’t live nearby through Facebook would certainly hate to delete their account and hear from loved ones even less often than with Facebook. That’s what it boils down to, most people are on Facebook to see what family and friends are doing. The rest of the people are there for business, research, and marketing purposes which are also difficult to play down.
Even I think I’m tired of facebook no one says anything but EVERYONE has stupid shit to give. What a waste of internet space. You log on and all you got is someone doing some farmville, won the magic lottery, or whatever. SHEESH. 5 pages before you actually get a comment from someone.
Facebook jumped the shark with the infectious applications as well as their rate limiter gone amok. I write a friend Happy Birthday on their wall yesterday and they say I’m spamming, apparently because two weeks before I wrote another friend Happy Birthday. I’m not sure who’s running that ship but they are starting to go off course.
The Facebook apps are a real pain, and I have started to remove, block or turn off email alerts on all of them. But I still love Facebook for the fact that it put me in touch of all the people I know/knew in my home town, people who are not necessarily supernerds and “early adopters”, and is far from creating an accound on twitter.
At this point, all your data is shared with applications that you install. Which means now you’re not only trusting Facebook, but the application developers, too, many of whom are too small to worry much about keeping your data secure. And some of whom might be even more ethically challenged than Facebook. In practice, what this means is that all your data – all of it – must be effectively considered public, unless you simply never use any Facebook applications at all. Coupled with the OpenGraph API, you are no longer trusting Facebook, but the Facebook ecosystem. So. this data sharing without my permission must not happen though it happens for all the users on facebook. May be this is the reason I find FB no more safe and want to delete my account.
I have just deleted my facebook account. For good this time. Three times I have been sucked back in. Oh how clever to keep all my settings so that you just need to log back in and it’s as if you never left…but this time there is no going back. For sure I was hooked on it, like daytime TV soaps, Sure the technology is attractive, all your mobile photos and videos in the same place- you can’t do that on Hotmail or picasa yet. But I remember the early web, you could do whatever you want, now you have to be in those silly boxes and click silly buttons called “like” and play their game for the right to be yet another user the same as all the others, like termites in boxes ” little boxes, all looking just the same” as the song went .. all continually sending their little snippets of marketable data back to HQ without realising they are just bricks in the wall of the biggest spam email list in the world….
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