my month without facebook

[mythomanic]

I am completely baffled by new Facebook layout. I think about the way I use Facebook: as a reference. If I want to find my (real-life) friend's birthday or phone number, it's there. I like reading people's status updates - this aggregator is what made the Livejournal model so successful. It used to help me keep in touch with what my friends were

Comments

[ducttapedemigod]

I'm tired of the other rubbish that comes with the useful stuff. Like the invites to events that are on the wrong side of the world, the causes invitations that allow you to signal support but nobody wants to donate to, and the games where you slay fish, cook Mafia and collect zoo animals.

rebuttal: the extent of farmville and castle age updates on your news feed is less the fault of facebook and more the result of the facebook friends you keep (though i haven't taken any drastic measures to de-friend the obsessive farmville residents, yet). granted, facebook allows this bombardment of rubbish apps, but they're not feeding you anything your friends aren't doing.

i've debated on a departure from facebook due to social drama a couple times (and, man, not being facebook friends with a significant other is actually a pretty sweet thing), but i appreciate the photo upload app and my visual bookshelf enough to keep my profile for now. i use it as sort of a media diary of the links and videos i think are good enough to share...and facebook has all these things conveniently kept together in one forum (versus multiple accounts for flickr, twitter, stumbleupon, digg, etc.). granted, twitter gets rid of the clutter, and lj allows a diary to continue intact where you can guarantee people will be reading it (versus a facebook note that perhaps will be lost in the madness of 300+ new live feed updates).

but, after all that is said, you still present valid arguments for decluttering your social networks. i know others on that bandwagon. good luck on your experiment - i'm interested to see how it goes for you, and read your lj updates on the progress.

[mythomanic]

Simply getting rid of the facebook website works for me, but I'm not terribly visual - you like the photo uploads, so you'll have to find another way to declutter :) Some folks I know have done other - perhaps more drastic! - things, like paring down their facebook friends list and apps.

The one facebook game I appreciate is Zoo World...teaching kids about biodiversity since 2009. Lemurs, sloths and rare Ecuadorian frogs, o my!

[ducttapedemigod]

while i have made a strict vow never to fall into the evil grasps of a facebook game, i have to say it's so hard seeing those little animals in the ads that "need my help in ZooWorld". if i were a weaker person (actually, perhaps just if i had more downtime i needed to fill), i may have started playing that one.

[metallian]

FWIW - You can screen out the games (and possibly other apps...I haven't bothered to try) so they won't show up on your feed. I certainly have, I can't imagine why I'd want to read such things.