By now you have heard of the Facebook changes coming, and seen the already implemented ones. If you have logged into Facebook today you have seen the complaints starting, and believe me they are just starting. Here is why complaining is pointless, and you either need to decide to ride the changes and find the benefit of the new service to you or simply disappear.
Facebook Complaints are Rampant Today
Now these are my friends and they are each connected to hundreds if not thousands of people on Facebook, which is the reason they are speaking out. If it was not for those connections most of them would likely leave, cancel their accounts, or greatly curtail their Facebook activity. That is not the case however.
Most people see themselves as Facebook’s Customer.
The user is not Facebook’s Customer. Facebook provides access to their network without charging the users. Facebook is collecting Data, documenting your life, your connections, your marital status, your location, your dining preferences, the companies you like, where you travel, which brand of soap you use etc etc etc. They are doing this to sell that information to companies that wish to sell to you.
Remember this: The time that you invest in your facebook profile, the updates, and every other way you share, is the work that Facebook sells.
So what is the next move? You can make a choice as to how much of that information is OK to share, and adjust your usage. You and your significant other can decide that having Facebook aware of your relationship is not worth the marketing, or you can decide that it is.
You don’t have to use Facebook.
Shocking? Well it shouldn’t be.
Two examples of groups addicted to Facebook:
I understand the appeal of Facebook for adolescents. They are looking for their place in the pecking order and with the opposite sex, so it seems normal that they would be addicted to perfecting their profile picture and posting things that make them look ahead of the crowd and cool. Facebook provides that platform like no other.
Once you are an Adult is Facebook’s level of self centered-ness a healthy way to portray yourself? With the epidemic of divorce, those who are soul mate searching have a natural pre-disposition to use Facebook as a way to browse prospects and showcase themselves in the best light possible. It is a normal and powerful human urge that Facebook understands, and they profit off of the amount of information the 800 million users provide. Is that wrong? No the info is willingly provided.
To these groups it would be hard to stop using Facebook, which is exactly what they want. So they know they can continue to tweak their design, functionality, and data collection techniques to continue to make more and more money.
Mark Zuckerberg is worth 17.5 Billion Dollars, and they haven’t gone public yet.
Do you think it is ironic that most of the complaints about Facebook are conveyed with Facebook? Do you think that people making this much money doing what they are doing are going to change what they are doing as long as the people who complain about it are using Facebook to complain? There is only one way to go if you don’t like it…
The best complaint you can make is to leave.
If you do want to leave, and you have had enough of the childish games, and the amount of information about your personal life that they have collected and continue to find new ways to highlight, you can. There are several new services, the most promising of which is Google+, that take privacy very seriously. I love it there, and like everyone else, I just wish more of my friends were using it.
You can find me on facebook Here, on twitter Here, and on google+ Here.
Have a great day.