fedward, tumbling

So here’s the thing. I’m quitting Facebook.

[snip]

Yeah. Facebook means well, but it’s fucking up badly right now. Their management structure is so thoroughly tainted with stupidity and greed that you really should consider finding another way to stay in touch. Leave now. Seriously.

I’m not even sure they mean well, exactly.  What they mean to do is make themselves famous and make a lot of money.  It’s clear from his public appearances that Zuckerberg enjoys being in the spotlight (as long as he gets to pick the reason why), and I think that they generally have an understanding of the public/private line that’s different from yours and mine.

I’m not, however, leaving Facebook, at least for now.  I don’t enjoy the site for many reasons (most of which are technological, like the fact that once you disable chat and remove Flash it won’t keep you logged in).  I’ve had it on privacy lockdown since they first started playing with the privacy rules last year, and after the most recent change I removed everything that I was a “fan” of and locked down a couple more things.

But there are too many people who don’t look outside the garden, so if you don’t exist on Facebook you might as well not exist online.  My sister dipped her toes in twitter for a while but she seems to have given up, and she doesn’t pay attention to Flickr despite having two accounts.  I don’t update Facebook much now but my profile is still up, and an old, old friend recently found me there so I’m genuinely happy that he could (and did) do that.

I post all my stuff on Flickr, twitter, and here, and I still have my own vanity domain I eventually might do something with, so all I really use Facebook for at this point is as sort of a yellow pages ad for myself.  It’s not really a good way to contact me, but it is a common, (quasi) public way to find and contact me, and for that purpose it beats the alternatives.  For now.