I'm not on Facebook.

this is another dated posting i pulled out of my draft box, but recently i watched the movie "The Social Network" - which i highly recommend to everyone - and felt this would be a good time to revise and post this.

its been reported by many sources that Facebook has over 500 million users on their service and counting. however i'm not among the masses that have been swept up by the phenomenon that is this social network giant. and i have my reasons. so many of the people in my life - family, friends, acquaintances - have inquired about friending me on Facebook, and i have had to quaintly explain that i'm not service as a simple form of protest.

why do i protest being part of a social network as big as Facebook with benefits such as:

1. keeping in touch with the people so close to me
2. meeting old friends from years ago
3. making new friends
4. playing games and competing with other over the web

simply put: the people who i love, care, and/or concern over i stay in touch personally. and i already have all the tools i need or could want to maintain that connection. let me count the ways.

1. mobile phone (voice/text)
2. email
3. instant message
4. Skype
5. Twitter
6. Blogger
7. Youtube
8. Vimeo

admittedly my social network is rather decentralized. however, i prefer it that way. there are no exclusivities in many of the services i subscribe to. my friends are not required to have the same cell phone provider as i do to call or text me, nor have the same ISP as i do to send me an email. neither are they required to be members of Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube, or Blogger to enjoy any my contents. but to access their profile page on Facebook - just to check it out - does require me to join. not fair.

as for reacquainting myself with friends long ago, my view is this: past relationships are now a chapter in my life that came and went. its a bit of a sad truth, but if a friendship is solid enough to last then a service like Facebook is not required.

another part of why i protest joining Facebook has something to do with my time spent as a user of MySpace years ago. i was freshly divorced and looking to expand my friend base by including some internet pen-pals. MySpace seemed like a good place to meet new people. i never accumulate many friends on it. the only ones friended were people i knew personally. whenever i did receive a friend requests they were from people (mostly girls) who had hundreds or thousands of friends on their list - which meant i would have been nothing more than a number to them. also got friend requests from a few budding musicians, comedians, and web-cam porn stars. i came to conclude that MySpace was nothing more than a popularity contest. no real potential to make friends. i became disillusioned with the whole experience. i figured Facebook would be no different.

continuing my reasons for my protest was a moment where i sent someone a well crafted personal email expressing my appreciation over an event that was taking place in Worcester. this person was a city official that, along with many others, were coordinating an event to commemorate the contributions U.S. Army soldiers from Puerto Rico have made. what i got in return was a form letter from her Facebook account explaining how much better it would be for me to join to stay in touch. so... i take the time to write an email, and this is what i get in return? that really pissed me off!

the lack of enabled privacy settings on Facebook is also among my strongest protests. i've never been much of an early adopter when it came to technology. i like to sit back and see how others who have taken the plunge express their views on it. with Facebook there was a time when i considered joining, but i held off. good thing; lately there have been many reports of the lack of privacy settings enabled by default after creating an account on Facebook. because Facebook by design and intent is a social networking site, by default all (if not many) privacy settings are turned off. the motive behind this is to promote the notion that all Facebook users should desire their personal information to be open to the world no matter how private or public that information is. so there is no need to change the privacy settings ever. after all, the mission statement of Facebook is "Making the world more open and connected." yet this ideology is costing Facebook many users that are waking up to this revelation, and leaving.

another strong protest of mine is the lack of a user's accessibility to out right delete their Facebook account quickly and safely. if a user wishes to delete their account with Facebook, it takes an act of Congress to do so. a user has to really go out of their way to remove their profile from Facebook. to comically illustrate the frustration in deleting a Facebook account South Park's Stan Marsh had to enter into the Tron-like universe of Facebook and defeat his account in a game of Yahtzee. the kicker is even if you do manage to "delete" you account, it's not gone for good. it's just been made inaccessible to other users. however, all of the user's personal data remains on Facebook's servers. why? because all that data a user provides on the Facebook service - be it texts, photos, videos, statuses, etc. - becomes property of Facebook. it is part of the agreement between the user and Facebook as outlined in the Terms of Service which grants Facebook complete ownership of that user's data. that doesn't sit well with me.

lastly, but not my final protest, is that having a Facebook account would another web service i'd have to spend time managing.

to speak of the company itself, Facebook is worth billions of U.S. dollars($), but it doesn't generate any revenues. that doesn't stop investors and business partners from pouring cash into it. what allows for Facebook's financial success is the philosophy that personal information freely provided by their users is more valuable than revenue generated from advertisements. Facebook collects as much data as users are willing to give about themselves which in turns helps their business partners better understand trends of behavior. and, granted, Facebook is not alone. there are other sites such as Twitter and Google (with some exception as Google does generate some of their revenue from advertisement, but not all) that work the same way. they don't make money, yet they are worth billions. again it's all about data collecting, organizing, and analyzing.

all this being said, i do recognize the incredible impact that Facebook has made in our world, both good and bad. it have escalated itself to level of great importance that cannot be ignored, and a powerful tool of communication. there may come a time when Facebook could take over the entire communication sector. instead of AT&T or Verizon, it could be Facebook that powers future mobile devices. so in a continuous effort to live my with the least amount of hypocrisy i will say this: as long i draw a breath upon this e@rth the possibility and probability of joining Facebook is there, but i'm going to hold out as much as i can.

peace,
@riel