11 Comments »Well it looks like Bill Gates has had enough of Facebook. After becoming addicted and spending hours a day on the site he has decided to call it quits. According to the Wall Street Journal, Bill Gates has stopped using the site. He had over 8,000 friend requests and too many group invites to handle.
Bill Gates should give Robert Scoble a call and see how he is able to manage such popularity. While Bill Gates is a unique case, an increasing number of people will experience similar problems as their personal social graph expands to an unmanageable level. Â Last week I discussed the challenges of social media overload.
If you read the Wall Street Journal article you may start to think that social networking is going out of style really quick. Once you add enough friends on your social network sites, you will soon never have a lack of people to follow-up with and send keep in touch messages to. Perhaps social networking is only a fad and we will soon see a backlash as people experience social media fatigue. Have you considered deleting your Facebook profile?
He should have been banned. We all know what happens when revolutionary companies let him on their soil. Microsoft’s “FaceNook” is probably on its way already
He should have been banned. We all know what happens when revolutionary companies let him on their soil. Microsoft’s “FaceNook” is probably on its way already
Actually I just deleted (whoops, I mean deactivated) my account two days ago.
I think that I have always been ahead of the curve in terms of engagement in the site, even if I was skeptical at first about a lot of the features- a wall? status? remember how silly those seemed at first?
But I grew to love it all. I knew everything that was going on… and yes it did bother me when I saw someone respond to someone else without responding to me. But I realize that many people just let messages pile up for weeks or read and respond to things arbitrarily.
Facebook was great because it let me know everything… but it just became too much. Everything became diluted. Too many friends/applications/pictures/notes from people that were not that important to me. It was fun to add or get added by people that I met, but a lot of them quickly faded to the background in my life. But there they were, still always listed with everyone else, still always in the photo updates and status messages. There was no simple way to really filter out the information I didn’t care about (i.e. about those I really didn’t care much about) from that which I enjoyed (information about close friends). It was simply oversaturation.
So I attempted to fix things by pruning some friends. 100 people cleared away (what would they think?) Well… then it just became boring. Not enough stuff was happening. Updates were too sporadic. I had grown accustomed to the chaos.
My moment of clarity occurred when I was attempting to update my profile picture. I had spent a lot of time going through pictures of me, looking for cool/funny shots to post… but for whom? Who was my audience? Peripheral friends that I really didn’t care much about? (I deleted them). So now it was for my good friends- was it worth it laboring over finding a simple 2d representation of myself? But don’t they know me? One simple picture shouldn’t be that important (but lord knows how it is on facebook). And wait… I know them too. Why is this site needed again? I have their emails and phone numbers and screennames- I can stay in touch through those means. Facebook was useful to get their contact info back in the day, but I have it all stored now. Facebook, byebye.
Things I’ll miss out from deactivating Facebook:
Pictures:
Entertaining, insightful, a fun time-kill. But I can probably live without what everyone looks like in random (drunken) situations. This feature would have been a lot better had I been able to select some friends to Never see pictures of.
Messages:
I would receive an email notification telling me to check my facebook messages. Wouldn’t it be easier if we all just communicated in the email?
Applications:
some were awesome, but it was too hard to distinguish the good from the bad. And oh the spam! TYVM but I’d rather not be a virtual monster. I’m your top friend? Well then call or email instead of clicking on my picture from an invitation list.
Scrabulous- if I didn’t know about better online scrabble apps (synchronous) then I might just have stayed for this app. But oh the rack-lookup abuse on scrabulous was just blatant and disheartening (easy to notice when crazy words are played with no respect to placement or strategy. Did he really just play gyttja? And then on the next turn play quite for 15 instead of qi for 68!?)
Events:
This is one of the most powerful features of Facebook. Everyone (who is anyone) is connected. That’s what made it so useful. That was also the problem. Too many people makes it harder to isolate the people that you want to invite (why on earth don’t they let you put filters on the invite list!). I don’t want to scroll through everyone to pick out the people I want to invite (and invariably miss someone creating awkwardness). And their customizable friend lists suck- smart filtering would be the answer. So I have a hard time inviting just the right people to my event, but all of my friends have an easy one-click way to invite me (select all). Result: Spam
But events are useful when you had the right people invited. Things can get organized on the wall. Everyone is in one place, but not everyone is aware of it. Standards have laxed. Some people try and be popular and commit to everything. Lots of others just never read the information or choose not to respond. Only ½ the confimed list shows up, and a non-responder has a better chance of attending than a Maybe.
Profile information: Was interesting, but probably superficial. I have a fake account created for my friend with completely bogus (intentionally humorous) profile information. No one mentions it. His brothers even friended him.
Wall: I’ll miss this
Courses: Holy crap remember this? This was amazing! So useful because people used it… I could spam the class and find out what the exam was on or if I could borrow notes. (And yes I do realize that I was a part of the problem). No third-party app will ever take its place.
Birthdays: Now I’ll be clueless. I guess you’ll get nothing instead of a virtual gift or a wall post!
Common Friends: This was useful to find out real life friend connections, but as facebook friending got more and more loose (we all became facebook whores/sluts), this became to mean less and less in the real world.
Notes: screw your lost cellphone or term paper that you think is great. I’m glad you found Jesus- now please take good care of him and keep him to yourself.
Marketplace: Could have been great but failed.
Video: Cool idea, but it is easier to upload to youtube and then you can send that embarassing video to everyone in the world. The beauty of youtube is that you can watch the funniest things from millions of people. The chances that a video of one of your tagged friends is actually funny, however…
Posted Items: I have some friends that post some pretty funny links, but I’m happier with reddit/digg/stumble or emails/ims from friends.
Groups: Dumb inside jokes or massive flamewars. Some could be useful, but there was never enough response on discussion boards/wall compared to the number of members (unless it was idiotic stuff).
Conclusion: I can live without it. I have survived two days. I still feel great.
Only read the following if you are very dorky/nerdy (so yes that probably means you):
So I got my friend (one of the very last holdouts) into Facebook a year or so back. Over IM I informed him told him about me quitting…
J: Things seem better now
J: simpler
J: colors are brighter and the birds are chirping and all of that stuff
A: no you already had your chance for that
A: early 90s/childhood
A: now we need dull colors and information overload
J: but………. why?
A: ok seriously heres why
A: facebook is a load of shit
A: but it can be useful for specific purposes if it has a critical mass of people in a certain social group
A: the more people who dont join (andy now, lauren and myself two years ago, etc) or drop out (YOU), the less useful it is to the remaining users
A: but, when a larger percentage of a group uses it, it makes it very easy to communicate with several people at once, organize events and parties, and share pictures and media, particularly across large distances
J: but people are getting lax about keeping up with things- they accept without noticing or never notice in the first place
J: it’ll be a problem that only spreads and worsens
A: it will spread faster and collapse sooner if users simple drop out completely
J: the rules of engagement have changed for the worse- there’s no remedy
J: and something else will arise
J: that’s how these things go
A: you’re only accelerating the difficulties that you yourself are complaining of
J: but I get joy from that next new thing
Later…
A: REJOIN FACEBOOK!!!!
So is this Eternal February? Gates and now me?
I’d be happy with elitebook again (anyone want to help re-create this? remember the good times?) I’d be happy if I had just joined facebook now and caught up with my good friends (they are the happiest/most fanactic users now). But at the point where I was in my account… it just wasn’t maintainable- I didn’t want to become a negligent owner (who I disliked) and I didn’t want to deal with the junk. The information and responsibilities couldn’t be easily reduced… so the only option was total deactivation.
Others will follow. So, what’s next?
Another reason these networks need to have priority buckets for friends. He could’ve easily put 99.9% of them in the “I don’t care about you bucket” and have Warren B. and Steve B. in the other bucket.
Actually I just deleted (whoops, I mean deactivated) my account two days ago.
I think that I have always been ahead of the curve in terms of engagement in the site, even if I was skeptical at first about a lot of the features- a wall? status? remember how silly those seemed at first?
But I grew to love it all. I knew everything that was going on… and yes it did bother me when I saw someone respond to someone else without responding to me. But I realize that many people just let messages pile up for weeks or read and respond to things arbitrarily.
Facebook was great because it let me know everything… but it just became too much. Everything became diluted. Too many friends/applications/pictures/notes from people that were not that important to me. It was fun to add or get added by people that I met, but a lot of them quickly faded to the background in my life. But there they were, still always listed with everyone else, still always in the photo updates and status messages. There was no simple way to really filter out the information I didn’t care about (i.e. about those I really didn’t care much about) from that which I enjoyed (information about close friends). It was simply oversaturation.
So I attempted to fix things by pruning some friends. 100 people cleared away (what would they think?) Well… then it just became boring. Not enough stuff was happening. Updates were too sporadic. I had grown accustomed to the chaos.
My moment of clarity occurred when I was attempting to update my profile picture. I had spent a lot of time going through pictures of me, looking for cool/funny shots to post… but for whom? Who was my audience? Peripheral friends that I really didn’t care much about? (I deleted them). So now it was for my good friends- was it worth it laboring over finding a simple 2d representation of myself? But don’t they know me? One simple picture shouldn’t be that important (but lord knows how it is on facebook). And wait… I know them too. Why is this site needed again? I have their emails and phone numbers and screennames- I can stay in touch through those means. Facebook was useful to get their contact info back in the day, but I have it all stored now. Facebook, byebye.
Things I’ll miss out from deactivating Facebook:
Pictures:
Entertaining, insightful, a fun time-kill. But I can probably live without what everyone looks like in random (drunken) situations. This feature would have been a lot better had I been able to select some friends to Never see pictures of.
Messages:
I would receive an email notification telling me to check my facebook messages. Wouldn’t it be easier if we all just communicated in the email?
Applications:
some were awesome, but it was too hard to distinguish the good from the bad. And oh the spam! TYVM but I’d rather not be a virtual monster. I’m your top friend? Well then call or email instead of clicking on my picture from an invitation list.
Scrabulous- if I didn’t know about better online scrabble apps (synchronous) then I might just have stayed for this app. But oh the rack-lookup abuse on scrabulous was just blatant and disheartening (easy to notice when crazy words are played with no respect to placement or strategy. Did he really just play gyttja? And then on the next turn play quite for 15 instead of qi for 68!?)
Events:
This is one of the most powerful features of Facebook. Everyone (who is anyone) is connected. That’s what made it so useful. That was also the problem. Too many people makes it harder to isolate the people that you want to invite (why on earth don’t they let you put filters on the invite list!). I don’t want to scroll through everyone to pick out the people I want to invite (and invariably miss someone creating awkwardness). And their customizable friend lists suck- smart filtering would be the answer. So I have a hard time inviting just the right people to my event, but all of my friends have an easy one-click way to invite me (select all). Result: Spam
But events are useful when you had the right people invited. Things can get organized on the wall. Everyone is in one place, but not everyone is aware of it. Standards have laxed. Some people try and be popular and commit to everything. Lots of others just never read the information or choose not to respond. Only ½ the confimed list shows up, and a non-responder has a better chance of attending than a Maybe.
Profile information: Was interesting, but probably superficial. I have a fake account created for my friend with completely bogus (intentionally humorous) profile information. No one mentions it. His brothers even friended him.
Wall: I’ll miss this
Courses: Holy crap remember this? This was amazing! So useful because people used it… I could spam the class and find out what the exam was on or if I could borrow notes. (And yes I do realize that I was a part of the problem). No third-party app will ever take its place.
Birthdays: Now I’ll be clueless. I guess you’ll get nothing instead of a virtual gift or a wall post!
Common Friends: This was useful to find out real life friend connections, but as facebook friending got more and more loose (we all became facebook whores/sluts), this became to mean less and less in the real world.
Notes: screw your lost cellphone or term paper that you think is great. I’m glad you found Jesus- now please take good care of him and keep him to yourself.
Marketplace: Could have been great but failed.
Video: Cool idea, but it is easier to upload to youtube and then you can send that embarassing video to everyone in the world. The beauty of youtube is that you can watch the funniest things from millions of people. The chances that a video of one of your tagged friends is actually funny, however…
Posted Items: I have some friends that post some pretty funny links, but I’m happier with reddit/digg/stumble or emails/ims from friends.
Groups: Dumb inside jokes or massive flamewars. Some could be useful, but there was never enough response on discussion boards/wall compared to the number of members (unless it was idiotic stuff).
Conclusion: I can live without it. I have survived two days. I still feel great.
Only read the following if you are very dorky/nerdy (so yes that probably means you):
So I got my friend (one of the very last holdouts) into Facebook a year or so back. Over IM I informed him told him about me quitting…
J: Things seem better now
J: simpler
J: colors are brighter and the birds are chirping and all of that stuff
A: no you already had your chance for that
A: early 90s/childhood
A: now we need dull colors and information overload
J: but………. why?
A: ok seriously heres why
A: facebook is a load of shit
A: but it can be useful for specific purposes if it has a critical mass of people in a certain social group
A: the more people who dont join (andy now, lauren and myself two years ago, etc) or drop out (YOU), the less useful it is to the remaining users
A: but, when a larger percentage of a group uses it, it makes it very easy to communicate with several people at once, organize events and parties, and share pictures and media, particularly across large distances
J: but people are getting lax about keeping up with things- they accept without noticing or never notice in the first place
J: it’ll be a problem that only spreads and worsens
A: it will spread faster and collapse sooner if users simple drop out completely
J: the rules of engagement have changed for the worse- there’s no remedy
J: and something else will arise
J: that’s how these things go
A: you’re only accelerating the difficulties that you yourself are complaining of
J: but I get joy from that next new thing
Later…
A: REJOIN FACEBOOK!!!!
So is this Eternal February? Gates and now me?
I’d be happy with elitebook again (anyone want to help re-create this? remember the good times?) I’d be happy if I had just joined facebook now and caught up with my good friends (they are the happiest/most fanactic users now). But at the point where I was in my account… it just wasn’t maintainable- I didn’t want to become a negligent owner (who I disliked) and I didn’t want to deal with the junk. The information and responsibilities couldn’t be easily reduced… so the only option was total deactivation.
Others will follow. So, what’s next?
Another reason these networks need to have priority buckets for friends. He could’ve easily put 99.9% of them in the “I don’t care about you bucket” and have Warren B. and Steve B. in the other bucket.
I’ve jumped through the hoops with Myspace - and I haven’t yet hit the wall with Facebook. However, I’m seeing it grow in two different ways - one, I enjoy - the other annoys the ever-loving-crap out of me, to be brief.
1. I slowly see my friends that generally loathe social networking wandering in and adding me, finding me, tracking me down, stalking me (yeah that means you - and you KNOW who you are). They see value in it. It doesn’t take up a lot
of their time - and you can put as little into as you want which is nice. It lacks the distractions of Myspace, the negative media and scantily clad 15 year olds (as far as I know, and as of right now). And I say as of right now - which leads me to…
2. Sure facebook might be more stringent on their terms of service or whatever, but the applications are driving me nutty. I drilled down for 5 minutes after posting on 4 different walls (funwall, superwall, superfunwall - i don’t know what they were all called) until I found the one I could post on without adding any superfluous apps. I get offers to be hugged by zombies, to kill zombies, to be a zombie, to be a vampire, a vampire killer, the guy that kills the guys that’s killing the vampires and the zombies - and of course I’m constantly being told that someone has a crush on me and that by gum - I should find out who. Not for me. I’m inundated with ridiculous requests and this is getting to be too much. I find it hard enough to keep up with all of my social networking ’stuff’…which is why I may try using something like Flock - but for now I take it for what it’s worth. I poke people on occasion and they poke me back. I keep track of birthdays and social events. And eventually send a message or two. No more, no less.
Were I as popular as Scoble or Bill Gates - yeah I might bail. But for now, little old me will stick around and keep clicking ‘ignore.’
I deactivated my account over a year ago because I spent too much time looking through friends’ photos.
yeah that lasted only 3 months when 90% of my (good) friends forgot about my birthday and realized how reliant everyone is on facebook.
So i reactivated my account, and at the same time got back in touch with everyone I went to high school with people, the sort of people I would never keep in touch with without facebook!
And now my extended family are finding their way to facebook, i dont talk to them but i like to know that they are there, what they are up to, and that i can get in touch with them if needed!
I’ve jumped through the hoops with Myspace - and I haven’t yet hit the wall with Facebook. However, I’m seeing it grow in two different ways - one, I enjoy - the other annoys the ever-loving-crap out of me, to be brief.
1. I slowly see my friends that generally loathe social networking wandering in and adding me, finding me, tracking me down, stalking me (yeah that means you - and you KNOW who you are). They see value in it. It doesn’t take up a lot
of their time - and you can put as little into as you want which is nice. It lacks the distractions of Myspace, the negative media and scantily clad 15 year olds (as far as I know, and as of right now). And I say as of right now - which leads me to…
2. Sure facebook might be more stringent on their terms of service or whatever, but the applications are driving me nutty. I drilled down for 5 minutes after posting on 4 different walls (funwall, superwall, superfunwall - i don’t know what they were all called) until I found the one I could post on without adding any superfluous apps. I get offers to be hugged by zombies, to kill zombies, to be a zombie, to be a vampire, a vampire killer, the guy that kills the guys that’s killing the vampires and the zombies - and of course I’m constantly being told that someone has a crush on me and that by gum - I should find out who. Not for me. I’m inundated with ridiculous requests and this is getting to be too much. I find it hard enough to keep up with all of my social networking ’stuff’…which is why I may try using something like Flock - but for now I take it for what it’s worth. I poke people on occasion and they poke me back. I keep track of birthdays and social events. And eventually send a message or two. No more, no less.
Were I as popular as Scoble or Bill Gates - yeah I might bail. But for now, little old me will stick around and keep clicking ‘ignore.’
I deactivated my account over a year ago because I spent too much time looking through friends’ photos.
yeah that lasted only 3 months when 90% of my (good) friends forgot about my birthday and realized how reliant everyone is on facebook.
So i reactivated my account, and at the same time got back in touch with everyone I went to high school with people, the sort of people I would never keep in touch with without facebook!
And now my extended family are finding their way to facebook, i dont talk to them but i like to know that they are there, what they are up to, and that i can get in touch with them if needed!
how do you get popular well im in fith grade and i need to now