Thursday, December 06, 2007

Well, I did it. I finally did it. I deactivated Facebook.

I have been angry with Facebook for a while now. I was angry when they started publishing our feeds; I didn't need all my friends seeing a 2am scribble on another friend's wall. I was angry when they abandoned their core audience and their brand equity by opening the community to everyone and their grandmother.

And then came the widgets. Jesssssuuuuuuuuuuuussssssssss. The first pirate invite was cute. The next 250? Not so much. And the vampire bites? Never cute, never fun. Just. SUPER. Annoying.

And then they decided to split things up: individuals here, bands and brands there. OK. But did you need to delete the pages of Brands that were already in-community WITH NO WARNING, OVERNIGHT, after you made the announcement, Facebook? That's like breaking up with someone you live with and not giving them a chance to pack up - just throwing their shit out the window and on the street!

And then came Beacon. With this, it's almost hard to believe that Facebook started out as an Ivy League community, although I'm Jesuit educated and we believe we're smarter than Ivy anyway, so I guess it shouldn't be that surprising that a bunch of Harvard kids could eff up marketing so hugely in this day and age. Rather than even tiptoe in the stupidity of their "opt-out" answer, I defer to Chris Heuer's excellent post on that topic.

So, I tip my hat to my friend Colin, with whom I've bitched, lamented and threatened to do this for many, many months, but whom beat me to the punch to it earlier today and I bid adieu to my Facebook friends. You can find me on Twitter, here, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo and many other places but you will no longer find me on Facebook.

Good riddance and AMEN.

4 comments:

Mark Schoneveld said...

You're a brave woman... heheh!

Anonymous said...

We finally did it! Though for different reasons, at least we finally had the courage to do it.

ericsmithrocks said...

You forgot to mention the whole "you-being-listed-as-a-high-school-student" thing. :) Hehe.

Social Anniemal said...

Good point, Eric! And I even had a meeting with Facebook execs two years ago and told them about that issue! They said they'd would help rectify it.