Ben Brown, Internet Rockstar Feverish Velocity

If all your friends jumped off of a bridge…

I quit Facebook the other day. My friend Courtney posted a Facebook event invitation encouraging everyone to quit all at once which I thought was a funny, but I got impatient because when I logged in to find the event details, I couldn’t find it because I got distracted by my inbox full of vampire bites, all of a sudden it just didn’t strike me as amusing anymore.

Lots of people have posted about how the big problem with Facebook is the continual errosion of the privacy of their members. And that’s true, that is a big problem. But it is just the latest problem in a list of problems that will continue to get longer.

For me, the big problem with Facebook is the plain fact that it’s an extremely annoying piece of software. I could go on for paragraphs and paragraphs about all the stupid, nasty, and sometimes scary things Facebook has done, but that would be only slightly better than having to experience them all yourself. The central issue for me is that Facebook sufferes a severe reverse network effect: the more people who join, the less useful it becomes.

Before I quit, I was “connecting” with was an increasingly diverse and undifferentiated group of people ranging from senior executives at various large and important sounding companies to my best friend’s drunk little brother who never moved out of his home town and now grows pot and fights pitbulls in his basement. (Read about the collision of “fronts”.) I mean, it is great that I can inform such a wide and diverse audience about every minute change to my personal metadata, but is this something I ever really needed or wanted? And when the plugin applications came along, and then Beacon, the signal to noise ratio was thrown totally out of whack. Whispering endlessly into a room crowded with everyone I’ve ever met while simultaneously being badgered by evil robotic clone versions of those same people that insistently try to trick me into buy things from Overstock.com HAS NEVER BEEN SO MUCH FUN!!!

Is this getting me laid? No. (Read Groupware Bad by Jamie Zawinski.)

It is important to remember that sites like Facebook are pieces of software that we can choose to use or not use, just like we choose to use Firefox or Safari or neither. There is a perception that we are obligated to use social network sites like Facebook or MySpace because our friends start using them, and if we don’t, we will functionally lose the friends who do - every important announcement, party invite, and funny video will be locked away from us. This is a very dangerous way to think! Joining and being a part of Facebook is absolutely not an inevitability. If a piece of social software causes people who do not choose to use it to become ostracized, there is a serious flaw in that piece of software.

I think it is important to note that Facebook, though they claim to be a tool for staying connected, is actually a software tool designed *primarily* to deliver marketing messages to its audience. Facebook’s crack engineering staff will continually release new applications and features that do all sorts of glittery things, but you must realize that this is to get you to spend more and more time on the site so that you are more and more likely to accidently be tricked into clicking on an advertisement. Just because its got your friend’s name on it does not mean that Facebook’s intentions any better than those of THE BIG MEDIA COMPANIES. In fact, they’re whole bet is that they can be the NEXT BIG MEDIA COMPANY, the next boob tube, the next vast array of empty basic cable channels that everyone watches because nothing else is on.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the media business. I love the media business. Please to buy advertisements on my websites! But Facebook’s everything-to-everyone position means that they’re not building the software FOR anyone. They are the mall. They are Costco. The aisles are brightly lit, and there are ten thousand different options that seem different but are actually all the same mediocre, discounted, made in China crap - they just happen to be conveniently located in the same place. They are McDonalds. Walmart.

I try to buy my groceries local. I try to buy locally crafted goods and support local businesses - not just to be a good neighbor, but because the goods and services I receive are generally of a higher quality. They are made by real people instead of by factories. If I’m lucky and dedicated and passionate, I might be able to find goods made especially for me! Offline, shopping smart and local is all the rage, so why should it be different online? Why am I obligated to shop at Walmart just because you do?

Worse for me than the idiotic network noise, worse than the incessant marketing, worse than the blandness and stylessness of it all is that by using Facebook, I am in essence investing in Facebook’s future. The more I click, the more news items are created, the more cleverly disguised advertisements can be slipped into my friend’s feeds. Facebook makes a few more cents, but I have done the dirty work of creating ad inventory! I didn’t know I worked in marketing!?

Remember when your dad told you that time is money? This is what he meant. Is this the future you want to invest in? I see an ad when I load Facebook, I see an ad when I load my inbox, I see an ad when I click on the first zombie notification, I see an ad when I delete the zombie notification, then I see another ad when I go back to my inbox to delete the next one. Would you pay for all of these Zombie notifications? Surprise, you already did!

This is not an accident. Like I said, Facebook is actually software *designed to show you ads.* Every “feature” is designed with ad serving in mind.

(To be fair, it is most likely your employer who is investing in Facebook, because you probably use Facebook at work. Talk about unfair! And ironic, if you work at some other ad supported business!)

I don’t want the Internet to be the bastard child of basic cable and Walmart. I want the Internet to be something better, where control of the media really is democratized and where I can truly find content and services that are crafted with me and people like me in mind.

I hope that the future of the net lies not with mega-networks like Facebook, but with many many smaller networks and applications that focus on and deliver very real value to my life. They may well leverage the “open social graph” and interoperate with fancy APIs, but at the core of each piece of software should be some special intention, some crafty hands working feverishly to make something with their customers in mind.

As more and more of the software we use comes online and becomes socially aware, and more importantly becomes a competitor for your advertisment-viewing time, we have to concious of the choices we make. If we’re going to be spending a significant slice of our days, every day, using this software, we should be choosing software because we enjoy it and because it adds real value to our lives. In the near future, a lot of the advertising money that has been tied up by major media companies for decades will finally be up for grabs. It can continue to go to a few giant companies, or it can be spread out amongst lots and lots of smaller companies. I for one am rooting for lots and lots of little guys and medium sized guys to win this time around.

The power to make and influence the media is in our hands like never before. We should choose software were we, the users, are the valued customers and not just statistics to back up advertising rates to the real customers hiding behind the cleverly formatted text ads. And we should be wary of software that abuses our attention by trying to take more of our time than it needs to provide what utility it can. Software is supposed to make your life better and easier and more efficient so that you can actually *do* more of the things you *want to do.* We should resist aggregation and conglomeration and support the individual, the specialized, and the quaint. It has never been so easy!

Now that I have quit Facebook and never have to opt out of one of their stupid internet time wasters again, I am going to have a lot of time to create new ad inventory on sites with real heart and soul. Mom and Pop sites where I might one day become a regular with the other customers AND with the staff, even though they live on the other side of the world. That is the network effect. That is the democratization of media. That is the internet I signed up for.

UPDATE: It’s been about a month now since I quit Facebook, and I am happy to report that I haven’t lost a single friend, nor have I missed out on a single important announcement! And I’m not terrifyingly annoyed at everyone I know every time I open my inbox! Hurray!

Word!

For connection sake I’d like to keep my profile up but I would like it to view-only. I’d like to be able to deactivate individually Facebook communication tools, such as messaging, app announcements, etc.

I’d rather people email me directly instead of thinking they deserve a response because they sent a message to twenty facebook friends at once.

Social Software, in the end, really reduces what is required to make a contact or connect with lost friends, but if all that is going to be used for is to receive bulk messages from those people, I’d rather not we connected at all.

Meeting is important, but quality relations is what makes a meaningful relationship.

Also, ben, on a personal note, you must know I really like you if I went through process of registering for your blog just so I can leave a comment. I know how it is with comment spam, but 9 times out of 10 I don’t comment if I have to go thru reg process. I’m not sayin’…..I’m just sayin’…. ;>

OK Ted, you win. No more registration required to comment.

I agree with your vision of the internet, and I think people too easily discount the long-term community potential in blogs and other small sites… I still have high hopes in the development some kind of federated community affordances that will let people benefit from network effects even in the context of a small website or blog or something.

At the same time, though, I think that part of the genesis of the problem you describe is in fact one of the reasons Facebook has done so well. It’s a feature, not a bug, that there is a cost to adding more friends. The fact that the news feed gets more and more noisy as you add friends ensures that there’s a bit of pressure to NOT just add anyone you come across to your friends list. To me this is the thing that distinguishes Facebook from earlier social networking sites - it is very expressly not just about collecting unknowns or barely-knowns as “friends”.

I often think that the pundits and people like you and I who have seen all of these networks come and go since the beginning sometimes miss what it is about these kinds of software that people who are newer to the whole thing get about it instinctively. I know that the thing about Facebook that is different than every other social network since Six Degrees is that it is the only one that is bigger among my non-net-worker friends and acquaintances than with “the regulars” I’ve seen and befriended on all of these sites since the beginning.

Being more selective doesn’t totally cut down the noise, but it does help a lot and I think lets one use Facebook as just one software tool among many - in other words, to make it work for you, not against you (notwithstanding all of the crap vampire-like applications).

for the most part I agree with everything you said.

as far as you “”losing friends” I think that depends more on where you are in life. I hate to say it but you (and I) are old because we are over the age of 16.

in High School there is a different dynamic going on and kids who are over scheduled and don’t have time to “hang out” with friends any more are spending more and more time socializing online. And in those cases a teen who is not participation online does miss out on alot of the socializing that happens in school. I think think this need to be online dissipates as they enter college and the real world and they are more in control of their own time.

so different people can have different needs.

I second Ted.

I quit MySpace in May of 2006 after many of my circle of acquaintances seemed to forget how to use email, didn’t notice that I logged into MySpace about once a month, and then would get very mad at me for not replying to their email (really it usually was a bulletin to everyone) or seeing their invite. Many of these folks were intelligent folk who got so caught up in the MS system that they forgot how to communicate without it. I decided to not participate.

I quit Facebook about 6 weeks after joining, as I could not see how it was fun. It just seemed yet another white & mid-blue tedious thing to check to see if I got a message, of which most of the time the person could have reached me faster via email/phone/IM/twitter.

Ben - thanks for the post, particularly this bit - “If we’re going to be spending a significant slice of our days, every day, using this software, we should be choosing software because we enjoy it and because it adds real value to our lives.”

;o)

Ben, these are valid critiques of Facebook, but they’re also critiques of social networking sites in general, to varying degrees.

Your assertion that Facebook becomes less useful as more people join is, to my ears, a rephrasing of a common gripe with Friendster: “friends” were a quantity, and the ostensible object of the game was to accumulate as many as possible. So the person you sat next to in fifth grade suddenly became your “friend,” even though befriending that person added no value for either of you. In other words, if social networking sites decrease in user value as they grow, it’s only because they make it easy to widen your definition of “friend” little-by-little.

The pervasive, under-the-radar advertisements don’t bother me; they feel more like a search for a business model than a user-shirking money-grab. But there’s a lot of gray area there and reasonable people can disagree.

(But, yeah, I’m going to go Count Chocula on the next person who sends me a vampire bite.)

=)

While I certainly think you have a lot of valid points, I think part of the issue is not only what Andrew says in terms of friends becoming a competition, but also that Facebook makes it impossible to really differentiate groups of people that easily. In real life, not everyone you know is a friend, but on Facebook, they’re either your friend, or they’re not, and because people find it hard to turn down a friend request, the network they have online often ends up somewhat meaningless. That on it’s own screws up the signal:noise ratio, but then the people you’ve added discover whatever random ‘application’ is popular that week, ads get dropped into things, and that ratio becomes even more ridiculous as your “news” feed devolves rapidly into 90% crap.

Having said that, I think a lot of what drives use of Facebook is fundamentally how your life works. If you’re in school/college, you’re around an insane amount of people with a hell of a lot of stuff going on, and Facebook, if you’re careful as to how you use it, *is* insanely useful. I’m not saying it’s perfect, and certainly stuff like Beacon unnerved me, but at least for the time being, Facebook’s usefulness to me as a student clearly outweighs it’s various annoying tendencies.

Also, if you’re really tired of the zombie crap, the iPhone version of Facebook works perfectly in a normal browser, allows you to do most things you can do in it’s big brother, and has no ads or any zombie crap. At least not at the moment…

I’m seriously considering writing a full-length article in response to the above. I agree with what’s being said, but I have something else to add to the conversation. I joined Facebook when the floodgates were opened to the masses and have since seen a steady uptick in the number of annoying app messages that appear in my newsfeed. While I agree that the quality of Facebook is degraded by this noise, there is something about Facebook that I have not found elsewhere. I have found real value in the virtual friends I have made there. Facebook has brought to me an amazing amount of intelligent people with intelligent things to say and share. It’s partly a side-effect of running the AAAS science-themed group– this gathered in one place people with more serious and professional profiles who became my “friends”. Part of Facebook’s success here also lies in the (now overcrowded) newsfeed, that serves as a dashboard of sorts for all the latest information being generated by your friends. I agree that if you are not selective in whom you allow into your circle, you will be bombarded with junk. But if you surround yourself with people who are worthwhile listening to, Facebook gives you the ability to aggregrate in one place what they all have to say.

plz see

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thelastminute/1529829880

I totally acknowledge the value Facebook can deliver to someone in college or High school. However, it seems that there would be much more value had the network remained closed, allowing those school networks to develop in their own contexts instead of being blown open and intermingled with the worthless babbling of silicon valley deebs.

@ Alison - Its great that you can connect with the AAAS people. I hope that the money-hungry folks who run Facebook don’t one day decide that they needs to monetize the site by making people like you pay exorbitantly to continue using the site or to extract your group out of their software. And what happens when you want to add custom functionality for your community members?

I agree that my complains can be applied to a lot of social networks when they reach a certain scale. I am picking on Facebook here because it is the most recent and most notable example of these problems, and also because I think it is going to get much, much, much worse.

Oh, I agree that my poor group is ripe for the pickin’. Even within my own organization people are chomping at the bit to throw marketing and advertisements their way. It has also crossed my mind that someday, poof, Facebook would change the rules and either I or my group members would get screwed. AAAS isn’t ready as an organization to create its own platform yet. For now, I’m content to learn what to do and what not to do from Facebook. I’m not yet convinced that trying to run our own social network is the solution either. While we would retain control of the content/community (important to us), we would be faced with a number of hurdles — programming talent we don’t have, reluctance to join yet another social networking site, a slow initial launch period until we gain critical mass, etc. Maybe the answer lies in something that hasn’t been created yet — a way for people to aggregate updates of their friends that is platform independent and free from commercialization. But then, what pays to get that done? And is that even possible to achieve? The IDEA behind social networking is still good… try not to get too jaded! :)

Ahoy! Pretty awesome conversation going up here! :)

“Maybe the answer lies in something that hasn’t been created yet — a way for people to aggregate updates of their friends that is platform independent and free from commercialization. But then, what pays to get that done? And is that even possible to achieve? The IDEA behind social networking is still good…”

Couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately it seems everyone just wants people to aggregate data on their site :\ (with Google positioning itself to be the aggregator for all as its OpenSocial partners). Perhaps building on some P2P network might relieve the costs of maintaining a free service as user resources are used. :)

I still believe in the social software - the kind which gets you laid :D not the kind that gets you spammed and wrecks your real social life (I’ve talked about a pratical example and exploitable example here: http://do.sheeptalk.org/?p=45&language=en).

And following up on the title…
… I sure hope they we’re doing base jumping! ;)

Great post Ben/ What is it *for.” You ask the right question. I am still on facebook but it is more and more what myspace is: a place you need to be as a performer, to easily invite people. The best personal element is reconnecting and finding friends from college and seeing quickly what my pals are up to. twitter does that better/more succinctly than facebook for me but many people in my life are not as geeky as I am and do not use twitter.

I agree with the sentiment in this post and that Facebook kinda messed up their brand on their own. Opening the network for everyone to join wasn’t the problem; opening the network and offering an API that spawned such madness as vampires and superpokes and superwalls was where they screwed up.

In a sense, MySpace’s network is much smarter than Facebook’s. At least on MySpace you can make your page look pretty (or pretty ugly) with your own customizations; on Facebook, your page looks ugly, period. You’re spammed with notifications to all manners of applications that are ultimately out of your control. I leave my status message at “stop inviting me to your applications; I hate them, they suck, die die die,” or something to that effect because it’s frustrating having to deny them all the time.

To Facebook’s credit, they make it easy to deny them all, but there really is no satisfaction when you know you’ll come back in a two weeks and have to update your status and do it all again.

Also, the best parties are still text-messaged, or word-of-mouth, Facebook invites be damned!

Hey Ben,

It’s nice to read of someone voting with their feet and keeping things more local. I completely agree that what you get is of higher quality, and you get it in a much more satisfying way i.e., from a grocer who KNOWS it’s a good apple, and WANTS to tell you rather than someone on an aisle who THINKS it’s a good apple and HAS to tell you.

This is something I often write about - how to add real value, keep the signal:noise ratio in check. I’m part of a company called Naked. We’re a startup building a social network/messaging service, only we call it Open Messaging. If you’re interested there’s a link to the main document on it in the sidebar of our blog (www.nakedyak.com)

Your move out of Facebook and the things you write about in general are a great way to start the year!

~biff~

Given the non-stop marketing that is life today, a social networking site seems a strange place to draw a line and say “no, not here.”

Mostly, though, this is either a strangely bad choice of words or revealing:

“I try to buy my groceries local. I try to buy locally crafted goods and support local businesses - not just to be a good neighbor, but because the goods and services I receive are generally of a higher quality. They are made by real people instead of by factories.”

Real people work in factories. FYI. A lot of folks forget that. Don’t be that kind of folks.

I’ll pass on commenting on the ever-present authenticity narrative. Except to note that this sounds a lot like Republican versions of privatizing social change, making it all about “personal choice.” I read that sort of stuff all the time. It makes me think Clinton was actually completely effective in destroying the Left and making us all Republicans at heart.