Goodbye Facebook

Why I am leaving Facebook

I have explained this in fits and starts to people, but never in one comprehensive post. When Facebook came out, it was "the new MySpace". This was good for me, because I was tired of MySpace. It had become a parody of itself with glittery flashing profiles that begged small children to mingle with pedophiles. Seriously. I am not making that up. Several pedophiles were caught through fake MySpace profiles used by the police. It was becoming creepy and dangerous.

Then I heard about this thing called "Facebook". It was great, because it had everything that MySpace didn't, and had none of the profile customization that made MySpace so annoying. I didn't have to keep my computer speakers off in fear of being blasted out of my chair by the cringe-worthy strains of Abba on someone's page.

But recently, Facebook has become a parody of itself, much like MySpace did. In the quest for more advertisers, games and game requests have filled up my feed and Mr. Zuckerberg's pockets. Lax and difficult to understand security policies and settings have plagued Facebook from the beginning. Now, with the new video-chat feature, I am completely done.

When Facebook integrated video chat, they completely reset my chat permissions, and logged me in to chat when I logged into Facebook. Within thirty seconds I was bombarded by chat from people I no longer really cared to speak to. They should never change your personal settings, and they should never log you into ANYTHING. I felt insulted. It was the last straw.

Many of the people on my Facebook were there because of the Army. One of them (well, several of them) hit on my wife and one of them used someone else to get to her. I don't want to speak to those people again, but I know their families, and their families don't know our specific histories, so I keep them on. And I kept them on to keep track of them, Honestly. There are a few that I would like to keep in touch with, but mostly not. People would request me, and I would feel like an ass if I said "no", because I worked with them. I realize that is my fault, but I was acting on what I felt was a social convention.

With that, however, came feeds. Lots and lots of feeds. I don't have 241 friends. I have 217 "friends", and 24 FRIENDS. And, to tell you the truth, I really don't want to read your quoted biblical passages. I am against prosletyzing. I may like you, but I dont want to read another passage form the Gospel of whomever, ever again. I read the Bible (except parts of Psalms, it's a little too repetitive), and once was enough.

When I got an invitation to Google+, I dismissed it as another social media construct that wsa not to be a part of my daily routine. But the more I played around with it, the more I began to appreciate the face that I could separate my "friends" from my FRIENDS. and separate my colleagues from my coworkers. There was no fiddling around with any "groups". Google+ has circles, and you set your people accordingly from the outset. You control which feeds you read from and which feeds you send to.

This means that if I have a great night on the town, and there are compromising photos that I want to post (not that I would), I can control the viewing permissions on that. If I get a new tattoo, and I don't want the people at work seeing it, I can post it and still control viewing permissions. And in this day and age, when part of your background check can involve a "social media" check to screen out those candidates who could bring bad publicity to a company, I am all about filtering myself first. It may not HELP me get employed, but it can help be avoid being TURNED DOWN for a job.

So, I am leaving FaceBook because it no longer serves my needs. The desire for more money has driven Facebook to want to sell music, and have video chat by partnering with one service or another. I am not interested. I do not want to participate. I don't want your game updates. I should have to opt IN to those things, not out.

Google+ has the same features, video chat, games (coming, they have started talks with Zynga, who makes FarmVille), but like with everything else on Google+, I have to opt in, not out.

Will Google+ make it? Well, it already has. It's not going away. As of 19 July, their estimated user base was around 19.5 MILLION. Yes, with an M. It had been around for less than 90 days. It is not so much a social media construct as it is a merging of so many other services, with a feed and some groups thrown in for good measure.

When you log into Google, your "+" account shows up, as does your Reader, G Mail and Docs. Google + puts all of that together in one friendly bar with a start page that includes stuff your friends and people you follow post. Google+ will work because it IS Google. it combines everything that I was already using into one element.

So, goodbye Facebook, You really DID become the exact thing you said you never would. Your attempt at providing an email service was pathetic and too-late. Your inclusion of games that all my "friends" would post onto my wall was irritating, and your attempts to force me to interact when I didn't want to finally turned me against you. You used to be all about the nice, clean layout with minimal interruption from the garbage of the World Wide Web. Now, you have become like that drunk chick on the dance floor. You were hot, until you started acting like an ass.