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.
Dalton Caldwell thinks Twitter is pivoting. This is what Twitter is now, at least to me: