Leaving Facebook (Blog)

[Savage]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

Leaving Facebook

[secrets0stolen]

I'm pretty much an average Facebook user (as in, on a scale it's designed for) and I've actually come to consider it a chore. I'm hesitant to delete it entirely because in some cases it's my only link to certain people. Maybe it's time for a friends' list purge.

[Trezker]

From a subjective perspective, I’m not particularly disappointed. I’ve been wanting to spend less time online and more time connecting with people in person, so these problems may simply be part of the way that desire manifested.

Aha! It's your fault facebook sucks!

Yeah that site is a chore, sometimes even if you're a smallfry. With all these events and apps happening to you and you have to load a page and click something to make it go away. Sometimes it's impossible to make things go away, sometimes it comes back after a while repeatedly.

The only things that can disappear forever on facebook are the things you want to keep.

Perhaps in the future if you feel like giving something facebook-like another go, you could get into Diaspora, or something else that pops up.

[invisiblehouses]

Thank you for the synchronicity.

[cacheborn]

I have often wondered how people over 1K facebook friends manage. I sometimes find it difficult even with my tiny 160 or so friends. Malcom Gladwell says in Tipping Point that the best number in a group that can be managed is 150. Anything above that and it becomes chaotic. He gives several examples of organizations where this phenomenon has been observed. While reading that, the first thing that came to my mind was FB's absurd 5k limit.

I have not found FB so much annoying so far although the big hoo-halla they made over the new profile zucked.

Good to know you have more peace now.
And we can always connect here on the forum.

[lookcloser]

Good to know there are more people leaving
I left about a year back and that's when I just started accomplish SOMETHING. There are so many things to distract you on FB. Jeez.

But I do miss connecting with forum members on FB. I think I'll be back when I reach a point in like where I don't have to use the internet for studying and researching and EVERYTHING. Its easy to get distracted and log into FB and have 5 hours of your life sucked into some kinda vortex.

I thought the forums were addicting too. But I've never 'wasted' as much time here even on my low days as I have on FB.

[secrets0stolen]

Originally Posted by lookcloser

I thought the forums were addicting too. But I've never 'wasted' as much time here even on my low days as I have on FB.

I've spent way more time on here, but overall I've gotten so much more out this forum than FB. I really haven't gotten anything out of FB besides it being used as something like socially convenient email.

[ericabiz]

Steve I hear ya and wanted to voice my support for you leaving Facebook. I don't plan on leaving Facebook entirely, but I do use an extension for Chrome called StayFocusd to limit my time there and on Twitter to 30 minutes a day total.

I think 2011 may well be the year of the Facebook backlash, when many people wake up and realize that a corporation owning most of the content they produce may not be a good idea.

Facebook is the AOL of this decade...yet another "walled garden." Eventually it will fall, as all walled gardens inevitably do. It will be interesting to watch this space evolve.

[Andreas]

I hope you're right about the backlash, Erica. I created an account last year for my site Byteful Travel (mostly to see what Steve was doing on there), but I rarely ever use it because it always felt "off" to me. Definitely a walled garden and a timesuck, and more than a little intrusive.

The main problem with Facebook is that long ago they started putting profits ahead of people, which shows up in the user experience. And that is why they fail.

Hopefully a backlash will encourage them to see the light, but I don't see that happening until a worthy alternative arises. Although I've heard Google has something up it's sleeve, so let's intend that that kicks ass, shall we? Google isn't perfect, but I see it doing a better job on user experience than Facebook. (Just look at Gmail.)


Steve, good on ya for dropping another process in your life that was sucking up the Universe's limited resources. I hope your new years resolution goes from 1024x768 to 2560x1600!


...God, I'm a geek.

[Warping]

https://joindiaspora.com/

"The developers aim for it to be a decentralized alternative to social network services like Facebook."

[Curtis2011]

Damn. And your status updates were some of my favorite.

Oh wells.

[Federer]

Originally Posted by cacheborn

I have often wondered how people over 1K facebook friends manage. I sometimes find it difficult even with my tiny 160 or so friends. Malcom Gladwell says in Tipping Point that the best number in a group that can be managed is 150. Anything above that and it becomes chaotic. He gives several examples of organizations where this phenomenon has been observed. While reading that, the first thing that came to my mind was FB's absurd 5k limit.

I have not found FB so much annoying so far although the big hoo-halla they made over the new profile zucked.

Good to know you have more peace now.
And we can always connect here on the forum.

HI cacheborn,

I think they never manage their friends. Even if awesome people gets above 4K mark, they will think to leave FB. it is very nice communication platform. I have 50 connections on FB. I can handle 50-100 on FB. I think to have 50-100 people are enough. Above them can make you tiresome.

[Cochonette]

Yeah, Mark Zuckerberg is... I shouldn't be mean here. :P But... He used to (possibly still does) have a business card that says, "I'm CEO, *****!" Power has gone to his head, and it's always gone to his head.

That said, I do find FB useful, personally. Despite the annoyances. I only have 216 friends right now. But I definitely use it to chat with friends. I have become close with at least a couple people through the FB chat. No, at least 4 people. Plus I don't know how else I'd keep up with all my friends. Although I, too, am trying to spend more time offline. I don't believe I need delete Facebook for that.

[Beuford]

The thing that really gets me with Facebook is it throws a #! in the url... then when you try to click on someones name from the chat bar or open your messages the page won't change and it will do the error on page thing. If you delete the #! in the url it works(then puts it back when you do something else). It seems pretty simply to me. Still, all my friends have Facebook and it is convenient for me so I'll still use it. I think it beats Myspace by a lot though.

[silvino]

FB is just a tool. And as any other tool, is good for some people but useless for other. Steve was very straightforward saying that FB was no good for his particular situation, he did not said that others shouldn't use it
Also there is no problem in using FB if you are aligned with their values. I think is not even about being "evil" or not

[StacyT]

Sad to see you go from Facebook Steve, but by the way you explain it, it really seems like more hassle for you than it's worth - I'd drop it too if I had those problems.

I've actually thought of getting rid of my facebook because there are days when I spend way too much time on it when I would be more productive doing other things. The upside for me is that I have re-connected with people that I otherwise would have never heard from again...so I stay.

[JoePike]

36 FB people like that post so far. The ultimate in irony.

[danas]

Originally Posted by Curtis2011

Damn. And your status updates were some of my favorite.

Oh wells.

Yeah, mine too

I wouldve left FB a long time ago, but for me it really helps advance my career.
In general Im a very private person and dont like the world knowing too much about me unless they are good friends.
But for my career its been great.
For instance I spent a year away and a lot happened, press, exhibits, I won a prize etc.. and I always post this stuff on FB. (and Im not the kind of person who would send out a group email with a press review or informing that Ive won a prize, but with fb I dont mind).

Now when I meet important people in my field, they know about everything, which is opening a lot of doors for me. Ive had important career moves happen through fb.

So for me its a tool to promote my career, besides also being a way of keeping in touch with friends scattered around the globe).

Not to mention connecting with eligible men
The other day I was invited to an event on FB, so I thought Id test my courage and forwarded to a guy on FB I like, and asked him if he'd like to join me. He said yes . we have a date tomorrow night.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Curtis2011

Damn. And your status updates were some of my favorite.

Oh wells.

Is there any way to pull Twitter feeds into a Facebook timeline?
I mean, Twitter does provide an RSS feed, after all.

[Weena]

Originally Posted by Warping

https://joindiaspora.com/

"The developers aim for it to be a decentralized alternative to social network services like Facebook."

This sounds very good!

PS: Steve, I agree with your description. For me though, I don' t get near as much problems as you get, and it still is a positive rather than a negative .

[Lynn 007]

Sorry to see you leave fb.

I can see how your situation would be a real hassle but I guess that's what happens when you're so popular

Over the past few months, I had noticed some odd comments people had posted on your page that made me wonder if they actually visited this site or simply felt lonley and wanted some attention from someone with over 8,000 friends/fans.

Perhaps it's time for fb mods. I should open an account "updates from Steve Pavlina". You can send me your wisdom/updates and I will post on your behalf, filtering out the junk and spam. You can comment as you normally would on any interesting post. This saves you time to focus on face to face communication but still sharing your updates.
As you can see from the previous post, people really value your updates and it's sad to see you leave with such a strong following.

Lynn

[sirkinm]

I deleted my Facebook a few months ago. I made another site for my business, and I'm not adding any friends - it's solely for the purpose of running Facbeook Ads.

I don't need another inbox, and I don't want people thinking that FB is a good way to get in touch with me.

[seeker5]

Perhaps someone can setup a Steve Pavlina Fan page and stream his twitter feed to it using these instruction I googled:

The Easy Way To Send Your Twitter Stream To Facebook Fan Pages Using RSS Graffiti

These instructions don't seem to require Steve to do anything in regard to allowing this to happen and it's ok since Steve released the copyright to his tweets. However, I'm not fully sure what the facebook policy is on setting a fan page for someone else though, there may be complications there.

I do know I really enjoyed getting his twitter messages in my facebook stream so hopefully something can be set up to continue receiving his stream in facebook.

[Andrew Brunelle]

Facebook is evil. I'm only on it to post my own funny or inspirational messages, and I don't have a large problem with spam. But every now and then, I'll have to delete some message or invite, and it is a complete waste of time. I hate Facebook, but it is almost a necessary evil for some. I never found it to be as flexible as Myspace, though. But nobody goes on Myspace anymore. I'm thinking of not quitting Facebook, but not going on it so much

[Curtis2011]

Originally Posted by Andreas

Is there any way to pull Twitter feeds into a Facebook timeline?
I mean, Twitter does provide an RSS feed, after all.

Yeah I think there is, but I don't know how. And I hate twitter so I won't be jumping into it anytime soon.

[James81]

I think facebook is much more enjoyable if you use it the way I use it. That is, you only add people you have interacted with face to face. I've gotten some requests from people around here and I've had to tell them that I only add people wiith whom I've had a face to face interaction.

I have about 200 friends right now and that works. I imagine if I ever get above 500 friends I may have to revisit my rule and make it stricter because I can't imagine trying to keep up with more than that.

To me its a small scale social networking tool. That's what its original intention was and that's how I use it. I can't. Imagine trying to use it for business purposes.

My point is, instead of writing all of this stuff off completely because it doesn't match what you think it should be, try being a bit more flexible in how you use it. Are you going to just up and shut these forums down at some point because you post too much here or because vbulletin makes an update you don't like?

Personally, I am predicting that that is what will eventually happen.

[BillyTheAdult]

Originally Posted by James81

My point is, instead of writing all of this stuff off completely because it doesn't match what you think it should be, try being a bit more flexible in how you use it. Are you going to just up and shut these forums down at some point because you post too much here or because vbulletin makes an update you don't like?

Personally, I am predicting that that is what will eventually happen.

That would suck though I wouldn't be all that surprised.

[James81]

Originally Posted by BillyTheAdult

That would suck though I wouldn't be all that surprised.

An offshoot would spring up somewhere. Maybe someone oughta work on a "SP Lifeboat" forum for when it happens.

[yogi]

Good luck trying to delete it tho'. You'll discover that they never actually delete it. If you ever contact customer service and ask for your old profile back, they'll restore it. So nothing is ever deleted.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by James81

I think facebook is much more enjoyable if you use it the way I use it. That is, you only add people you have interacted with face to face. I've gotten some requests from people around here and I've had to tell them that I only add people wiith whom I've had a face to face interaction.

I'm glad you're able to use it that way. I don't see it being practical for me though. Not all the problems are due to having a certain number of friends. Some issues are simply due to lots of people knowing I'm on Facebook and the way various features are implemented. Most of the spam I got came from non-friends.

Maybe I could have used it like that from the get-go, but it's too late to try that approach now.

Also, many of the benefits I got from Facebook, like the community-building aspects and the cool connections, were a result of having a very large network of friends there.

If I used FB with a smaller friend network, I might be using it more as it's intended, but then I think it would be too boring and pointless for my tastes. The richness I got from it was partly a result of the scale at which I used it, which is also the scale at which it's very broken.

As for using FB for business purposes, that was never my aim. I used FB much like these forums, as an outlet for sharing and building community.

Are you going to just up and shut these forums down at some point because you post too much here or because vbulletin makes an update you don't like?

When I ran my indie game developer forums in the early 2000s and later decided to get out of the games biz, I helped transfer the community (including all the old posts) to a new site run by three veteran members, so the community remained intact. To this day that community is still online at Indiegamer Developer Discussion Boards - Powered by vBulletin and remains active. I think that was a graceful way to exit, and it's nice to see that the community carried on just fine without me.

If I ever decide to stop hosting these forums, I could always use a similar approach to keep the community intact.

In any event, I haven't had problems here like the ones I've had on Facebook. Facebook is a whole different animal. I'm keeping my Twitter account too because I haven't had any issues with Twitter either. It seems to work just fine and doesn't create headaches for me.