The Death of Facebook

I remember 6 years ago when my college roommate joined Facebook. Back when it was just a network for college students.

"I joined this thing called Facebook," she told me. "It's a network for college students. You just sign up and you can get in touch with other Wheaton students on it."

"Sounds like a scam to get your information," I replied. I didn't join.

Fast forward to 2006 or 2007 and Facebook was becoming THE THING. I had a Myspace account at that point, but since I was no longer a college student I couldn't join Facebook. And then they opened it up to anyone. So I joined. I wanted to keep in touch with people more, and even though I preferred Myspace, it was dying. I wanted to go where the people were...because that's where I could connect with people.

As I've seen upgrade after upgrade with Facebook, I've become more concerned about my privacy. It seems with each upgrade there's some covert way they've applied settings that violate your privacy, and you have to figure it out in order to turn it off. And then there's all the applications (which I avoid like the plague), that get all of your information (and aren't necessarily run by Facebook).

This is what led me to start blogging on blogger in addition to Facebook. And someday soon, I imagine, I'll stop blogging on Facebook altogether. If you've read the book 1984, Facebook feels to me much like Big Brother. It's watching me. Its ads are tailored to the things it knows about me. (It thinks I'm fat, though, because of all the cookies I write about.)

I was going to blog about this last night but I fell asleep early. And then I read this article this morning: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38463013/ns/technology_and_science/?GT1=43001.

It's been just in the beginning stages of Big Brother-ness for a while now. But I feel like it's going to keep getting worse. And eventually, I think this will lead to the death of Facebook. Myspace died because something else replaced it. Something cleaner looking, that appealed more to the demographic. Myspace tried to keep up, but they were powerless to stop it.

But Facebook? I believe it's committing its own suicide.