OK, so last month the experiment ended. To be very honest, I didn't miss Facebook at all during the break, but did begin to miss interacting with a select few people who I know very well will probably never look at another social network. Everything I wrote in my last post still applies - Facebook is still, in my view, not a very appealing or attractive social networking site, but there are a couple of reasons why I decided to re-activate my account.
First-up, I'm human. A couple of good friends of mine gently nudged me with 'we're missing your updates on Facebook' comments, and when one of these came in a Christmas card I thought perhaps I should get back on there and begin sharing again. It's not like it's going to kill me.....right?
Secondly, my interest in social media (especially for work) is growing fast and the reality is that if you're going to be interested in something, you need to be actually, you know, using it. The ever-increasing ease of sharing and the ever-improving tools for doing so mean that a Facebook account is worth having, even if it's not your primary network.
Almost immediately after I de-activated, Facebook introduced a number of changes which sought to address some of the major criticisms, and also the much-discussed Timeline. Having gone back in I'm still not sure I like the overall feel of the place. It's a bit like being forced to use a Windows PC when you're a Mac guy (like myself). Sure, it works, but it's really not that pleasant a place to be.
Last, but most importantly, I decided that if I was going to go back onto the site, I'd address my number one criticism from my last post - noise. One of the things which made it such a huge time-sink previously before was feeling obligated to 'friend' every human being I'd ever so much as met since the day I was born. I've had the good fortune to know a lot of cool people over the course of my lifetime, but I've come to the conclusion that life is an ever-evolving and changing process, and as part of that process people come into your life, and then at some point they go out of your life again. It's no reflection on them whatsoever, but they're simply no longer part of my contemporary life, and it's safe to say that will be for a reason, assuming I wanted to analyse it. The bottom line is that I don't much care to read all the trivial updates from their lives, or have them know mine. That all seems rather pointless to me now.
So, I decided to purge all these 'friends' who are no longer in my present-day life and just use Facebook for family and the friends who I am still actively engaged with in some capacity. For the most part I've also discarded people who were only 'friends' because I happen to work with them. If I wouldn't go out of my way to go for a drink with them, then I'm unlikely to be too interested in whatever their baby barfed all over them that morning!
So, taking all those 'friends' out, and bearing in mind several of my friends aren't on any kind of social network at all, I'm left with around 30 people (compared to around 110 previously). Much more manageable, and a fair bit more intimate too. I like the fact I'm just talking to, and listening to, those people who I see from time to time in the real world. It also means I won't have to think quite so broadly about all the people who will see what I post before I do so.
I'm still mostly tweeting and having those sent to Facebook, but I have started toying with other mobile apps which can post directly to Facebook, and of course I can now interact with posts which others put on there. I'd still rather everyone were on Google+, but I suspect that's going to take a while, and with the average age of my friends/family may happen never! You know what they say, you can't teach an old dog new tricks!
