3 days ago I deactivated my Facebook account. I did this for a few reasons with the top 3 being:
Signal to noise ratio – I had 130 or so people on my friends list. The news stream has evolved these past few years with Facebook trying their best to to decide what I’d be interested in. Unfortunately, they didn’t do a very good job as I was finding myself missing out on status messages from my favorite friends. I only discovered this when I visited their profile pages…which kind of defeats the entire purpose of the news stream. The news stream worked back in the early Facebook days. Why change it?
Data Farms - Everyone and their dog was becoming obsessed with Farmville, Mafia Wars and other games. These games are nothing more than data mining operations which, when given access to your profile, will gather stats and information about you and your interests. There’s nothing wrong with that if you don’t mind being targeted by ad campaigns but here’s the thing – By giving these companies access to your Profile when you play the game or answer questions on an IQ quiz, you’re also allowing them access to your friends’ pages. I don’t want 3rd parties gathering data on me because one of my friends wants to ride around on a virtual tractor.
Crowd Sourcing Fail – One of the things I love(d) about Facebook was the Crowd Sourcing potential. For example, Want to know where to buy good quality bagels? Ask your friend base in your status. It’s a great way to reach out to many people at once. Unfortunately it’s not always so simple. You’re more likely to get quizzed about “why the hell you eat bagels” or “did you know that bagels aren’t as healthy as whole wheat bread…” or some other crap you didn’t ask about. This may say more about some of my Facebook friends as well as my temperament on some occasions though. :p
So, I have flown the coop for now. I opted to disable my account rather than delete it. Facebook make it very difficult to delete one’s account fully. Plus, I may want to jump back in to grab photos I have that only exist on Facebook. For any of my Facebook friends reading this, I can be found via email (check out the contact page) or on Twitter @1morematt or on Google Buzz.
I shall post more at a later stage to let you know if I suffer any Facebook withdrawls.
Life Without Facebook
3 days ago I deactivated my Facebook account. I did this for a few reasons with the top 3 being:
So, I have flown the coop for now. I opted to disable my account rather than delete it. Facebook make it very difficult to delete one’s account fully. Plus, I may want to jump back in to grab photos I have that only exist on Facebook. For any of my Facebook friends reading this, I can be found via email (check out the contact page) or on Twitter @1morematt or on Google Buzz.
I shall post more at a later stage to let you know if I suffer any Facebook withdrawls.