I’ve recently taken an extended break from Facebook. I’d got fed up with the drama, vapidity, over-sharing and passive-aggressiveness. I’m know I’m probably guilty of some of those things myself; that and the fact can easily become a huge time-sink are reasons I felt I needed a time-out from the place. But it’s made me wonder if there is a better way.
I really detest Facebook’s walled-garden approach. The most valuable thing about any internet-based community site isn’t the site itself, it’s the relationships you build and maintain through it. I don’t want those relationships wholly owned and controlled by an increasingly creepy corporation that’s only interested in monetising our mutual personal data so they can sell it to advertisers. Facebook has sucked the life out of far too many forums and blogs, and while many forums have their own problems, that can’t be a good thing. With more and more external websites morphing into detestable Facebook ‘apps’, they’re now actively trying to eat the rest of the web.
The only reason I’ve got a Facebook account at all is because there are people who have no significant online presence outside it, and I don’t want to lose all contact with them. I’d much rather a few more people who want to contact me follow me on Twitter, or comment on my blog. Or just use old-fashioned email.
It’s been said that Facebook was created by people with Aspergers syndrome. Whether this is true or not, it does appear to have belief in the geek social fallacies written all over it, especially #4 in that list. That does seem to be a root cause of a lot of the site’s problems.
In an ideal world, a combination of Twitter and blogging does everything I want out social networking. But blogging in particular is quite hard work if you want to build an audience. Facebook’s greatest strength is that it provides a ready-made audience for those who don’t have an awful lot to say. Unfortunately that’s also it’s greatest weakness, hence the vapidity and over-sharing. I always feel bad when I have to mute, unfollow or in the worse cases block people because they’re friends-of-friends in real life. Just because we like the same music doesn’t necessarily mean we have anything else in common.
So what to do? Should I hold my nose and use Facebook sparingly, just to keep in touch with those who are active nowhere else? Or should I try to encourage more people who actively want to interact with me online to follow me on Twitter or read my blog? Should I be spending more of my online time on existing communities like RMWeb and Dreamlyrics? Or should I put my faith in alternatives such as Google+ or even Diaspora?
You should be asking yourselves the same questions.
I use Facebook for some of the reasons you mentioned. to keep in touch with friends and find new friends related to my interests. If it where not for Facebook I wouldn’t have met most of the Mostly Autumn gang, or at least have been able to build a relationship with them. its also good for sharing your thought and letting off steam. I also find its very good for passing on information and finding out what bands are up too. yes it has its limitations and its downside but used in the right way its a very good tool
Most of my friends and family aren’t on Twitter, so if I want to keep an eye on what they’re doing or advertise something that I’m doing, Facebook is the only real option (okay, email – but in some cases that’s a lot more contact than I really want). Main thing is to set it up to do what you want and absolutely nothing more, hence putting up a firewall of sorts against the rampant evil that permeates it. To mix a metaphor.
Tim I share your dilema. I have a lot of friends on FB that will never come to twitter and I would hate to lose those connections. I have reconnected with people after decades of being apart. There are some from the testing community who have accepted or submitted friends requests. And through FB I have gotten to know them better than I could through Twitter. I love Twitter for conciseness because sometimes FB is too much reposting the same posts, too many pictures, making it hard to skim for relevant content. But at the same time I do not see myself leaving FB because I would miss the friends I have made or reconnected with – whether I know them in person or through social media.
I deleted my Facebook account a couple of months ago, and haven’t missed it in the slightest. (Admittedly, I wasn’t a big user of it and hadn’t friended that many people – final count was about 60, I think)
For me, Facebook was too intrusive and had a cluttered, confusing interface. Twitter is a cleaner, simpler way of connecting with people. The limited size of tweets is a plus point. I like the idea of just dipping into a stream of short messages whenever I want to.
I do have a Google+ profile, and much prefer it to Facebook. The interface is cleaner and the Circles concept works quite well. I’m heard it said that Facebook is for your ‘social graph’ and Google+ is a better fit for your ‘interest graph’, which sounds about right. The audience on Google+ will be smaller, for sure, but probably more discerning.
My situation is tougher: I have to use Facebook because of my job, which has a strong social media presence. I’m trying to reduce my dependency on it as much as possible, though, because in five years who knows what it will be replaced by. With any luck it’ll be something that isn’t a walled content garden that’s nothing more than a thin veneer over an ad-display system.
Thanks for all the comments guys.
If you’re promoting a business through social media (As do many people I know in bands), then Facebook is an unavoidable evil; it’s where the biggest chunk of the audience are, so you have no choice but to use it. But it should never be to the exclusion of other channels, a mistake some people had made in the past.
Twitter’s greatest strength is the 140 character limit – It forces you to be concise, and makes it easy to skim, as Bernice says. And the fact that while it can show pictures and videos, they’re not displayed in the stream by default is a big plus. Twitter is great for real-time conversations and topical link-sharing, not so good for anything you want a permanent archive of.
I’m wary of using Facebook to blow off steam – Experience has taught me that can sometimes be far more trouble that it’s worth. FB has it’s taboo subjects; I steer well away from religion or politics, for example, even since one “friend” (now a very ex-friend) outed himself as a BNP sympathiser.
I would lose a lot of contacts if I left Facebook, so many people i don’t communicate with anywhere else. For me it is a necessary evil that I use a lot. If it weren’t for Facebook, I would t still be in contact with you Tim. I don’t like the way Facebook shares information so I have deliberately entered a false hometown and birthdate, I also have an alt account I use on occasions, which has none of my personal data. I use Twitter, Myspace and Google+ rarely because most of my “crowd” aren’t there. It would be great if there were a viable alternative to facebook…
I’m mainly on FB for reasons above – everyone else is on it. I’ve removed a lot of profile data though and have left apps well alone. I’m looking for work but is of dubious value for that. Need to keep a ‘clean’ profile at moment in case Mr Employer takes a look !!
I have picked up experience of FB which may be of some use in world of work.
I prefer Google+, but have enough friends and family members that don’t use anything but Facebook that I can’t really quit it. I don’t spend a lot of time on it, probably check my news feed 3-4 times a day and it never takes more than five minutes.
(I use MSN Messenger for the same reason — it sucks as an IM client but it’s the only one some of my friends and family know about.)
Pretty well spot on, Tim. I prefer G+ to FB but there’s not enough of my friends on there to make it more than a passing fancy. Twitter is great, and yes, the 140 char limit is the real sweetener.
If only more FB’ers would make the move to G+ and see the benefits that Circles have to offer, the better!