Facebook is not the product. Its users are the product.
This is not news. I assume this from day one of using any free internet based service – webmail, social networking, content sharing, they all do it. I accept this. But Facebook have managed to turn data mining into a fine art. The recent exposure of “the experiment” was really just the straw that broke the camels back, so to speak. A quick Google on this topic will point you in the direction of much more eloquent writers than I.
I have other reasons. I did a bit of comparison between Facebook and Twitter and discovered that the majority of my FB friends are located in the same city as me, whereas Twitter is skewed quite the other way and I network with people far and wide. I felt that FB was limiting my face-to-face contact with my friends who live in Melbourne by enabling me to say “oh I see that person on Facebook”. I don’t like that about myself. I want to change that. Let’s hang out in person, yes?
The News Feed would shit me to tears on a daily basis. All I ever wanted out of FB was a chronological list of updates from my friends, in the order that it was posted, which doesn’t even come close to happening.
I have reservations about it. Not that I think I will miss the service so much, more that I will miss out on contact with two groups of people – those friends of mine that live overseas and those that pretty much use FB as their only online presence. I won’t miss the ecards. Plus I deactivated my Instagram account when Facebook took over.
We’ll just have to meet up for coffee and I’ll coo over your photos of your kids then (I’m not being facetious, I love cooing over pictures of kids).
Jackie of No Trade 