Fed up with Facebook

Once upon a time there was a little website that let people stay in touch with their friends. Actually, there were thousands of websites like that, but this site, for various reasons, became very popular. It was ideal for making contact with long lost friends, faraway family members, old college pals, and before long millions of people started using it. It was the name on everyone's lips, the url in everyone's browser history, the request in everyone's inbox. In short, it was completely and utterly the new hotness.

It was, of course, Facebook. Sure, there had been lots of social networking websites before it, but none that so fully engaged so many non-traditional users. Since Facebook demanded no technical knowledge beyond being able to open a browser window and having an email address, there was no barrier, nothing to intimidate people from joining the site. And so millions of people were soon using it.

And use it they did. Facebook was perfect for staying in touch with people that you might otherwise not communicate with. It seemed that everyone was on Facebook, from faraway friends and relatives to your next door neighbour. What better way to stay in touch?

Ah, those were the days — when people used Facebook to actually stay in touch. One of the greatest strengths of Facebook was its simplicity. Just like no technical knowledge was required, nor could any be actually used. Unlike a blog or a Myspace page, your profile looked pretty much the same as every other profile. Quite simply, there wasn't a lot to do on Facebook, and that was ideal. You touched base with your peeps, and you went on with your day.

Unfortunately, and probably not unexpectedly, the people at Facebook, like most of us, wanted to make money with their creation. Short of charging people to use the site, the only way to do this is with advertising. And to maximize ad revenue, visitors had to be enticed to stick around and view more pages on the site. To keep visitors around, Facebook needed more things for them to do. And that's when Facebook jumped the shark.

Facebook had been simple, tidy and relatively pure in purpose and content. But in welcoming all manner of add-ons and applications in an efforts to give users more reason to stay, the door was thrown wide open to Everything That's Wrong with the Internet ™. We're talking stupid games, from things that are rip-offs of well known board games, to quasi role-play environments. Do you want to be a Jedi, a zombie, or a pirate? You can be all three, and many more, with the right Facebook apps. Or maybe you miss the same stupid forwards that have been arriving in your email inbox for years? You can get them all on Facebook, plus the false alerts that we all know and love. After all, when keeping in contact with friends and family, you should make sure gang members won't murder them for flashing their high beams!

And of course, apart from all these add-ons contributing to Facebook rapidly becoming a colossal waste of time, there's also the fact that most of the time, you end up using it to stay in touch with people you see all the time anyway.

But you'll excuse me if I end this rant before I get any more of my annoyance with Facebook off my chest. I have to go and set my status to "Fed up with Facebook."