I awoke to a mailbox full of religious dialog from a group on Facebook that someone signed me up to without my permission, and certainly without my interest. As the world's most successful social network extends its insidious reach into our privacy (mostly with our sheepish acquiesence), I spend more time thinking about why I stay and what the trigger for my departure might be:
The Value of Facebook
Low burden community networking
I don't have to go looking... its easy to connect to people in my present and past lives without much effort, and connection is mostly good. Drive-by, one-stop social shopping... a quick view into what friends and colleagues are doing without the demands of engagement.
Easy photo sharing
I have some wonderful camera gear that mostly goes unused, as the crappy camera in my phone is good enough for spur-of-the-moment image-blogging. Posting pictures is fun, easy to do, and often more eloquent than equivalent spur-of-the-moment-text. This is the age of the image, after all.
Additional exposure for my twitter feed and blog
As I pipe both into my FB feed, each gains additional exposure, though I suspect FB's recent change in what you see on your feed has probably reduced this benefit substantially. I can't tell though, because I don't get any stats on who looks at things on FB.
The Network Effect
Any standard or technology or platform is effective in proportion to the number of people who adopt it. It is hard to argue with 500,000,000 users (and still growing fast).
The Downside of Facebook
The Business Model
The most galling aspect is that spoiled rich kids are getting more spoiled and rich from our participation, and this drives the business decisions.
The Intrusion
As per the introduction to this post.
No Stats
See above. FB gets all the benefit, the user is left in the dark.
The Potential for Disruption of the network
Yes, I appreciate the irony of whining about something-I-hate being interupted. The problem is that the community connection IS important to most of us.
What will trigger my departure?
A better alternative.
The installed base is a huge barrier to overcome, but I'm hopeful that the whispered Google alternative will be good enough to attract a lot of us sour FBers. I'm ready.
Or maybe I'll just tire of the whole thing and sail away.
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Irises in The Nezu Museum garden in Tokyo
