I’ve never really liked Facebook, as regular readers of the blog will be all too aware of, but I’ve been a user of it in the last couple of years, mostly at the cajoling of friends. During this same period of time I also started using Twitter, a service which I was also skeptical about initially. Previously, I’d always relied on my blog, forums and official sites to do my interacting, and I wasn’t sure I needed anything else.
What’s happened in the last couple of years is that Twitter has risen inexorably in my daily usage due to being genuinely useful as a networking aid, while Facebook has not fared that well at all. I tried posting updates to it from Twitter for a while via Selective Tweets, which led to a considerable blip in my Facebook usage (even though I wasn’t using the site) but honestly I can’t be bothered with it anymore. And not just because of the rubbish that sloshes around Facebook.
Facebook is ‘sold’ on the idea that you can realistically make / be friends with people, or even keep in meaningful personal touch with people you do genuinely know, via short messages and photos on an online service. My personal opinion after trying to use it as such for a while, is that this is a massive crock of elephant dung. Relationships are built on meaningful contact, and Facebook provides – is only capable of providing – only meaningless, trivial contact. Of all the ways you can keep in touch with people, it’s about the very worst you could possibly use, IMHO. It’s convenient, sure, but convenience doesn’t make for good personal contact. Honestly, if you can’t be bothered to make the effort to meet someone in person or talk on the phone (and home video calls aren’t that hard in the 21st century), then really you’re not that bothered about keeping in genuine contact with them. It’s better just to be honest – you’re kinda interested in knowing what’s up in their life, but not interested enough to have coffee with them, or otherwise make any genuine time for them.
In this context, Facebook is a fallacy. The whole point of Facebook versus Twitter or any other public internet medium is that Facebook is ‘private’ (barring any changes in rules they might feel like making to make a buck on your data of course). But if you don’t care enough to speak to someone other than in Facebook, and vis-a-vis you’re not really that much of a friend, then why would you want them to know things you wouldn’t post publicly? This is behind many the Facebook fo-pahs that seem to crop up with increasing regularity. Twitter is honest about the level of interaction you’re having with people. Facebook tries to make you think it’s more significant than it is.
Maybe you’re a highly gregarious person who genuinely has over 100 real friends that you’d share your private information with. Maybe you feel that personal relationships are upheld and maintained by Facebook messages. I don’t, and I’m going to stop pretending that it’s serving a useful purpose in my life. I have a small collection of friends and family with whom I exchange information by meeting and speaking to them – these are the only people I’d consider exchanging genuinely personal information with. There’s a second much larger collection of people whom I don’t meet personally but who I’m interested in keeping in contact with, and by and large they’re all on Twitter – which also does a far better job of delivering that information without bombarding me with all kinds of other nonsense. There’s really no useful middle ground for Facebook to fill, for me. And using Facebook as a supplement with people I already know? Frankly it’s far more entertaining to talk to them about their week’s exploits than read about them on Facebook – in fact Facebook can take the wind out of a good anecdote 
Really, you should never post anything on the Internet that you wouldn’t mind being public, since Facebook hardly has an unblemished record for actual privacy (whether that’s via Facebook themselves, or friends or friends-of-friends). I think that a lot of people use Facebook like I use Twitter, except there’s far more scope for dangerous misunderstandings about what is appropriate to post. I think non-digital social protocols dealt with sensitive & private information much better, and that online services are best used only for non-private things. From now on, that’s what I’m going to do, and I’m not the only one.
June 20th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
At first I thought facebook would have been a good way to be a good free universal dating website, or rather, a way to meet new friends as I moved in a new town thanks to stuff like hobby-matching, etc.
But it is flawed in so many ways, and peoples use it like it is some sort of virtual social spying game, which is really stupid.
The facebook developpers have poorly managed the visibility problems of the profiles, and what interesting features they could put on it.
I hope the site popularity goes as down as possible
My account is finally completely deleted.
June 20th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Strange, if I were to give up one of the two, I’d give up twitter. Unthreaded conversations and replies that are hard to associate with what it replies to. Artificial 140 characters limitation. I don’t know. Twitter seems more like a general broadcast tool and not a conversations tool. I do keep facebook for people I generally see, and yes sometimes it steals a bit of wind out of anecdotes. But sometimes it creates interesting surprises. You find out about interests and hobbies of people you see everyday that you never would’ve found out otherwise. I think it’s a low-investment way to keep in touch with people and see if there is room in your “in person” network for them or not. I have 86 people on there, friends, family members. Of those, I have maybe 15 or so I would consider meaningful contacts. The rest are harmless.
BTW, I agree that everything you put there should be public in scope. And for me it is. Private stuff are meant for in-person relationships.
June 20th, 2010 at 7:09 pm
I agree on a lot of points made and think also it best to keep work life and social life seperate which I feel is a mistake I made when I started. Though this does not effect all people I personally prefer independance of a social life and may also consider terminating my account at a later date. When I meet a new bird I do prefer they not have this superficial telephone construct. Maybe the more friends you have here reflects depth of a shallow character although just pychological theory, one wonders. Also the pointless games, Farmville, Cafe World etc, etc. Get a flipping Wii if you wanna piddle about on these pointless mini games. A communication device? It is like walking into a phone box and being asked to make chess moves when you put your money in the slot. And twitter, well what can I say? I have not done it but I guess if you feel invisible and forgotten in the world it does have some pychological benefits. I guess a lot of people can feel that way. Noone is alone on this planet and you should not need twitter to validate your existance like religion.
June 20th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Haha, very funny link at theoatmeal – its so funny cos its true :p
I found FaceBook exciting at first – it was a great way to re-connect with friends I had last touch with since moving to the UK. I could see photo’s of how they had changed, where they lived now, their wives and kids and pets. Via their friends I could speak again to even older friends whom I did not think I would ever hear from again. This excitement waned after a year or two and my usage diminished.
It got annoying when the bombardment of ‘updates’ and ‘notifications’ began, but fiddling in the admin settings had sorted all that out. I never really used FaceBook to do Status Updates, not much anyway, but to me this isn’t the main benefit – if you want to do this, probably best to use Twitter.
For me, I use FaceBook as my primary contact book. If I need an up-to-date phone number, email address, remember a birthday, or just to send a direct digital message, then one central place is most convenient, and that place might as well be FaceBook. Its also pretty convenient for organising events/meetings. Not to mention a great place to create photo albums to share with whom I want (like of my daughter as she grows because I’m a proud daddy) because its so easy to set-up.
For right or wrong, FaceBook became immensely popular and now everyone’s contact details are on there, creating a nice central lookup point.
Until the next big thing comes along, I’ll keep using it for these reasons.
Yeah, some people take FaceBook for more than it is, but that’s up to them. There are no rules to follow, just use it as you like. I might get in contact with an added Friend at some point, or I may never speak to them again. For instance, many of my “friends” are people I might have met just a few times, and may never see again. It doesn’t matter – to me its just a contact. I even have “friends” on FaceBook whom I have never met in real-life, just like your good self. Some see this as ‘cheating’, like its all a big social contest or something. Well, to some people it is and to others its not.
I don’t log into FaceBook very often at all, unless I need to. But so what, I don’t think this means it has failed at its job – its just how I like to use it. You are correct when you say that FaceBook provides “meaningless, trivial contact”, because apart from my main reasons I listed that is exactly what FaceBook is there for. And its free. I see your reasoning for not using it any more Steve, but honestly I don’t know why it winds you up so much.
P.S. I wish you could edit these comments. Like you can on FaceBook :p
June 21st, 2010 at 7:50 am
@Paul: whatever works for you
I find Facebook useless as a contact book because I have plenty of family / friends who aren’t on Facebook, so my master address book is actually – my address book. Facebook is also useless to me for arranging meetings for the same reason. Seems like Facebook utility is based on *everyone* you know being on it, and I wouldn’t want to inflict that on my friends 
It’s actually quite insidious when you think about it.
@Christian: I just think Twitter is more honest about what online communication is good for. If I want to have a huge conversation about personal things, I’ll do it in person or on the phone. For non-personal things, subject-specific forums are more useful. I like Twitter because it doesn’t pretend to be meaningful, nor does it make the assumption that you have to get all of your friends on it in some kind of all-consuming super-service, it’s public & rapid fire, a low commitment buffet, a kind of personal news service without all the clutter. That makes it the thing I check every day.
June 21st, 2010 at 8:44 am
Facebook can be trouble, that much is true. For a professional tool LinkedIn is superior in just about every way. In fact it’s slightly annoying that LinkedIn is starting to become a bit more Facebook-y.
My wife’s family is all in the States, so it is useful to share pictures and news via Facebook because we can’t just “meet up for a coffee” whenever we like. Pre-face book it was emails and huge attachements to a distribution list, which really doesn’t scale very well.
Totally understand why you would shy away from Facebook though, if you have everyone you want to share personal information with close or dislikes Facebook as much as you do… why bother?
Facebook do have a tendency to be too cryptic with their terms and conditions, hiding behind them and making things like privacy complicated. For the moment I’m putting up with all that, but I def can see where you are coming from.
June 21st, 2010 at 9:13 am
@Paul Evans: I have remote family too (my parents live in deepest Cornwall, and it’s actually quicker to get to major US cities from here than to get there since they’re miles from any decent airport and the trains are driven by rubber bands
), and frankly a phone call is far, *far* superior to any Facebook communication. Video calls would be even better. Plus, I can share photos via Flickr, Picasa et al and my family can view them without having to be members of Facebook, which they’re not.
The privacy element of Facebook is a big con – it’s really just a way to recruit new members, without ever being truly private. Hence why I prefer services that are honest and up-front about these things.
June 22nd, 2010 at 9:22 am
Highly predicted move by you
, and congratulations on good riddance 
June 22nd, 2010 at 4:09 pm
@Steve true, not sure why I never got in to Flickr.
I just saw this came thought you would be interested:
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/70256.html?wlc=1277218123&wlc=1277218836
June 22nd, 2010 at 5:06 pm
Thanks for that – there’s definitely some talk around distributed social network models, and I used to think that would be the answer (as my blog from a while ago attests), but I’m increasingly thinking that privacy & control is not the issue – people thinking a system can replace their personal networks is. Even if there isn’t an ‘evil’ company controlling it all, even if you have a perfect distributed system with 100% control over your data (tip: it’s never going to happen as long as you need replication, which you will) – people are still going to use it in ways that will get them into trouble, and will fool themselves that they’re maintaining relationships with people when really it’s surface-deep. Any abstraction of communication suddenly makes screw-ups like posting something you shouldn’t far easier, and distills communication to it’s lowest common denominator, compared to if you were talking to someone face to face or even on the phone. Talking to someone is a massive wideband signal that loses 90% of its meaning when you put it into deferred text communication system, at least for anything significant. Facebook can only really be a supplement to real communication when personal connections are involved, but I wonder whether it encourages us to think we don’t need to do anything else.
Social relationships and communications are vastly more complex than something like Facebook can handle effectively, which is why it tends to degenerate to the banal & trivial IMHO. I think Facebook is pretending to solve a problem that can’t be solved by a computer system, it can just pretend to do it or at best be a fairly trivial supplement.
The reason I’m happy with Twitter is that it’s not pretending, or encouraging us to pretend, that it’s anything other than a superfluous news exchange service between casual acquaintances. Facebook can be used like that too, but my beef is that it tries to pretend that it’s helping us maintain our personal relationships, when IMHO it’s trivialising them, or encouraging us to do so.
June 22nd, 2010 at 6:25 pm
I use Facebook on my terms, and could care less about their self-image or what problem they claim they are solving. It keeps me networked with friends and family in a digital format I’m comfortable with. The scribbled twitter twits or twats, or whatever they are called, often make me sratch my head. The odd shorthand and abbreviations and #yadayda# stuff just leaves me scratching my head.
June 22nd, 2010 at 6:31 pm
Forgot my smiley on the previous post. I was being a bit cheeky at the end there.
June 29th, 2010 at 1:38 am
You might also be interested in Diaspora:
Diaspora
Sounds like the way to go, IMO.
June 29th, 2010 at 9:31 am
@Dan: As I said to Paul, whatever you feel works for you. Facebook doesn’t work for me.
@jacmoe: I think I covered this in the comment thread above already, but although I think an open system would be better, I actually think a system of any sort that makes any claim to privacy or being a good way to exchange information you would not want to share publicly (ie that it’s somehow a close personal relationship) is a fallacy. The Internet doesn’t ‘do’ privacy, regardless of what anyone may claim, and non-interactive communication is a rubbish way to maintain close personal ties. Thus, the whole concept is flawed IMO.
The Internet is great for keeping in contact with casual or professional acquaintances and to share non-sensitive information easily. It’s quite capable of achieving that with public resources instead of ‘club’ systems like Facebook. To pretend it’s good for anything more personal than that is to deceive oneself, IMO.
June 30th, 2010 at 4:39 pm
What I find interesting about Disapora is not the privacy issue, but the fact that it’s distributed.
I agree that privacy doesn’t exist on the internets, but a move away from centralised services would be a good thing, IMO.
I also find it encouraging that those four geeks actually managed to raise the money.
August 13th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
“But if you don’t care enough to speak to someone other than in Facebook, and vis-a-vis you’re not really that much of a friend, then why would you want them to know things you wouldn’t post publicly?”
I agree! I have a Facebook profile but I log in very rarely. In fact this year not even once!
The problem I am having with it is that now I have some old ‘friends’ there as my ‘friends’ who I actually don’t want to talk to, other than say ‘hello’ when passing by each other in the street kind of, you know.
So I feel that I can’t actually say anything there in my profile as I am not one of those who like to say trivial things over and over again. So my profile won’t be updated. It’s now like a static page on my part.
Oh, and I was once criticised for being ‘unsocial’ when I said to my fellow students that I don’t like to talk to mum and dad over the phone much because I want to see them face-to-face. How is that unsocial is beyond me. I know I am not the most social person but wanting to see someone face-to-face and then being called unsocial for that is dumb!
August 13th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
I have to add that I don’t live too far away from my mum and dad… they are like a 25 minute drive away and I’ll gladly drive there to talk to them instead of doing it over the phone.
Also the fact that my dad can be difficult to communicate with makes it much better to talk to him face-to-face as it can be difficult to understand him over the phone! He’s a very sensible man but his replies are often a bit too short and cryptic so many follow-up questions are needed to figure his replies out and I like to play that ‘game’ face-to-face with him. Also he often likes to illustrate his ideas by drawing… it’s pretty inconvenient to do that over the phone I think!
July 4th, 2011 at 5:10 pm
[...] left Facebook about a year ago and have been using Twitter as my primary social tool ever since. At the heart of this decision [...]