We all know that FaceBook is an evil thing, right? Maybe I should give some argumentation for this statement, but that will make either a long list of ethical and technical issues or an even longer list of swearing and nasty words. And there's been a hell lot of those since the early days of FaceBook. You should check The Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Quit Facebook.
Thing is, most of us know that FaceBook is far from being good to it's customers, but we still stay. Why? At least, why do I stay?
FaceBook makes its living on the power of a huge network. That is, each of us is there because everybody is there. Existing user base is the best argument for joining the social network. The argument that doesn't get trumped by technical features, design or anything else.
Unfortunately, FaceBook is the only social network that I managed to find most of my real life friends in. So switching to Buzz or something else really can't cut it. What would I do in the network where I'm my only friend?
illustration by Oversocialized
But let's check what features I really need, and how much of those can be done on some other sites, preferably not belonging to the same company, and how much is just a gimmick that I can live happily without. Why do I need FaceBook and what can be done somewhere where privacy invasions won't be regular news.
- statuses, links and videos from friends – Well, it's a nice thing to have those with the morning tea. To see how the last night went, what's going on, exchange a word or two and keep going. You know, the regular social network smalltalk. Yes, this could be done on Twitter, or even better on Plurk (as it has comments and actually embeds pictures and videos). But I can't get all that crowd on Twitter and making them switch to Plurk is mission impossible. It's like your friends gather in some dirty and annoying inn and for some strange reason you can't make them move to any other place where all of you would feel better. So you just join them cursing the fate.
- photos – Same as with statuses and links. Additional problem being that FaceBook, unlike Flickr and most of the other photo-sharing sites, gives unlimited space for photos.
- birthdays – Yeah my memory fails me with birthdays, not to mention that I don't even know all those dates. So having a service that tells me whose, of 300+ people on the list, birthday is today is quite a nice thing. OK, I can harvest that list and put it in my personal calendar, at least the part of the list that contains the people I do want to send some nice thoughts and a funny picture on their birthday. And I can do that by email.
- events invitations and calendar – That one's handy too. Parties, exhibitions, movies… This one turned out to be the FaceBook's most useful feature for me. At least I RSVP them as "maybe attending" so the bloody thing is not telling the whole world where I am planning to be tonight.
- updates from services and sites – Why don't I use RSS feeds for this?
- games – Yes, I am guilty as charged. I do enjoy an occasional poker game for fake money online. Guess I should do it somewhere else. Web is full of games, isn't it?
So, it sums down to daily communication with friends and people that I like keeping some lose contact with, about the things that doesn't deserve any serious way of communication. And event notifications maybe. Now it seems that I give too much for what I get in return. It's time to delete some stuff there.
And you? What prevents you from deleting your FaceBook account?
"So you just join them cursing the fate. "
That sums it….