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.
Great post. Facebook is not needed anymore. With e-mail sent directly to your phone and the ability to send out mass group text messages with the touch of your finger, Facebook has essentially become a vestige of the past. What Facebook did back in 2005 was revolutionize the way we communicate with each other, creating a one-stop-shop to disseminate information, share photos, create event invites, etc. However, what has happened in a mere seven years is phone technology has caught up with the revolutionary innovations Facebook came up with. We do not need Facebook anymore to help us tell 25 people about a Super Bowl party we're throwing. I can do that from my phone. But, seven years ago I couldn't. It would take hours to call everyone or individually send out text messages. Facebook made it super easy. So, what Smartphones have turned Facebook into is a place to share pictures of babies and a place to hock wares, neither of which I give two hoots about (excuse my language). But, the progression of Facebook to the state at which it is at now makes sense because, like any business, they don't want to fold. What I disagree with you about is Facebook being gone in three years. I think it will go the way of MySpace and become increasingly less relevant, dying a slow death much in the way that AIM did, but that's just my opinion. By the way, AIM is still around. You have to dig for it a little bit, but it's still there. It's a virtual ghost town - kind of fun to take a trip through. It kind of stands as an example of what happens when companies ignore the market trends and alienate the consumers that keep their site up and running.
ReplyDeleteMarc
I agree that Facebook will still be around in 3 years. I just meant that it will eventually give way to Twitter and Instagram as the main sources of communicating online (Until we ruin those two as well). Yes, it will stick around like MySpace does currently. And sir, I also agree, watch your language. I don't need the 20 people that read this blog being offended.
DeleteI had facebook account,after deleting that it seemed to me I got rid of an evil.
ReplyDeleteI dont need facebook any more,it is use less.
My reasons for quitting facebook are different from yours. I can agree that I wouldn't trust facebook to maintain my privacy. I'd be worried about what intelligence agencies would be doing with the information I'd be supplying to facebook. What if we all lived in a police state in the future like 1984 and the police were to use our facebook profiles against us while we're under interrogation? I've been off facebook for nearly six months now. It's the second time I gave up(the first attempt lasted three months). I'm more determined now as I'm beginning to realize that true friends will make an effort to meet up with you and stay in touch and won't rely on a tool which is essentially a cyberstalking site. My contacts or so-called "friends" on facebook rarely chatted with me there and even though I stayed on the site for nearly four years, I found their silent treatment towards me as extremely hurtful and it caused a rift between me and them. It can be hard and sad some times, because I've lost touch with a lot of people, some of whom I thought were my real friends and I've been living a very lonely life not just because I've lost contact with them, but also because of my struggles with unemployment.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about rifts. My time on facebook has ruined friendships, or what I thought was friendships.
DeleteI had a facebook account. I saw lots of kittens. I saw a very different side of the people I knew. Some were rude to me. Most did not give me the time of day. It made me imagine a small town that had something bad in the water. That town was disturbing. I stay far away from that town and all it's inhabitants.
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