Dion's random ramblings: Facebook won't last - it is already on the way out...

I would be interested to hear how many people share my sentiments about facebook. A few months ago I would check my facebook page daily (sometimes more than once a day). I had a network of friends and family that I would follow. It was manageable.

However, I now only check my facebook account once every few days, sometimes not even every week. The simple reason is that it is a chore to reject all the silly invitations to join groups, attend events (half way across the world), and update applications just to stay in contact with the people I DO want to have contact with.

The reason for all the 'fuzz' and interference in my facebook account is that I accepted too many people that I wasn't sure about, or didn't really know, because I think I am a nice guy. I felt bad not accepting friends who wished to link to me... Now, however, their 'stuff' crowds out what I really wanted it for.

It won't be long and I probably won't use facebook at all - it's just too much hassle. Or, I may just abandon my account and set up a smaller, private, account....

Cory Doctorow predicted that this phenomenon would happen. Moreover, if enough people feel the way that I do then facebook may be heading for a collapse as people leave to find less cluttered ways of relating via the internet.

Here's his article:

My latest Information Week column is "How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook" -- in which I explain why Facebook and all the other social networking services live in a boom-and-bust cycle because they get crufted up with people you don't want to add to your friends list, but have to for social reasons.

You'd think that Facebook would be the perfect tool for handling all this. It's not. For every long-lost chum who reaches out to me on Facebook, there's a guy who beat me up on a weekly basis through the whole seventh grade but now wants to be my buddy; or the crazy person who was fun in college but is now kind of sad; or the creepy ex-co-worker who I'd cross the street to avoid but who now wants to know, "Am I your friend?" yes or no, this instant, please.
It's not just Facebook and it's not just me. Every "social networking service" has had this problem and every user I've spoken to has been frustrated by it. I think that's why these services are so volatile: why we're so willing to flee from Friendster and into MySpace's loving arms; from MySpace to Facebook. It's socially awkward to refuse to add someone to your friends list -- but removing someone from your friend-list is practically a declaration of war. The least-awkward way to get back to a friends list with nothing but friends on it is to reboot: create a new identity on a new system and send out some invites (of course, chances are at least one of those invites will go to someone who'll groan and wonder why we're dumb enough to think that we're pals).