I don’t believe that Facebook will be around in 3 years. At its beginning, Facebook was a revolutionary way to socially connect with others. For pure communication and sharing of ideas and images, it still is. The easiest way for me to connect with my friends and family quickly and efficiently is the use of Facebook group messages. It's even more of a positive for me when my heavy disdain for talking on the phone is taken into consideration. Facebook is still a great way to connect. However, I feel that these positives are far being outweighed by many negatives.
Remember those late ‘90s chain letters sent in emails? “Forward this to 100 people in the next 5 minutes and you will fall madly in love within a week”. Yeah those ones. You never fell in love after emailing those 100 people, you just continued to forward similar emails while shoving Swiss Cake Rolls down your throat. Those emails were almost always accompanied by a Trojan virus and opening them instantly took 2 years off your computer's life. Now that every middle-aged housewife and grandma in America is on Facebook, these types of messages have seen a resurgence. I could only take so many “I will donate $100,000 to the Battered Wives’ Club of Barberton if this post gets 10,000 likes”. These posts were flooding my feed and made me want to bite my nose off my face.
Even worse than chain posts? Any meme ever posted on Facebook. Like I said, the glory days of Facebook revolutionized the way that people communicated with each other. Truly innovative. Today’s Facebook revolutionizes the 100 different ways to say “Happy Friday” and “Oh No, Not Another Monday”. Throw in a cute kitten for Friday posts and an angry baby for Monday posts and you have a winner – that is, if your description of a winner is something that makes me gouge my eyes out.
Perhaps the most egregious of them all is the monetization of the platform and how this affects user experience. Almost every new and innovative program eventually falls victim. I am holding out hope for Spotify, but I know that the quest for maximizing profitability will ultimately lead to its demise. Privacy policies go by the wayside once advertisers demand more information for deeper market segmentation. What was once easier to read than a Little Golden Book, Facebook’s privacy policy is now as ambiguous as Congress’ Affordable Care Act. The focus is no longer on offering an engaging online experience, but monetizing every aspect of the platform.
I ultimately gave up when sponsored posts started to appear in my news feed. Companies can now pay to promote posts within an individual’s feed, further blurring the line of how far advertisers will go to reach their audience. As a Marketing guy, I know I may sound like a hypocrite here. However, nobody wants promotions and offers shouted in their face. If I was selling a product or service at a seminar or trade show, I would not interrupt conversation to shout “Hey - this product/service will change your life – you need to buy this now!” and then walk out of the room. No, I would get to know my prospect/client and start to create a relationship built on trust that may ultimately lead to not only a purchase, but greater customer loyalty. I see these sponsored posts as the shouting method. I drew the line when in between Sandy Hook Elementary posts on the afternoon of December 14th, there were sponsored posts for HBO’s The Wire and monogrammed golf balls. The whole point of Facebook was to give users a place to talk about what they are passionate about and communicate with friends and family. Now, it has turned into yet another medium to try to turn a profit.
So I am trying to quit for good. This will be hard for me, and especially for this blog, as the majority of everybody who reads this access it from Facebook. I will still promote this blog through Twitter and Instagram, but my audience has been cut drastically. So is anybody here? If a blog post is written and not shared on Facebook, is it a blog post at all? I will soon find out. If you do like this post, please share with your friends on Facebook, as no matter how much I say I don’t care who reads this, you know I really don’t mean it. If you do not share, that’s okay too. But please don’t post anything today about Happy Friday. Thanks.
