Bye Bye Facebook

Let's face it. I was never that into you to begin with. Our entire relationship has been unrewarding work.

I can't get through the week without hearing a new story about a violation of my trust.

In the year and a half I've been using Facebook, I've been careful to upload as little information as I could usefully get away with because I was never sure when Facebook would start selling my personal information to the highest bidder (or accidentally let it slip from their grasp). If Facebook's business model continues to scare away users from using their service, they're not going to have much of a future.

But even if I didn't have to deal with any of this silliness, I'd still be closing my account. I really have tried, but I just don't see the point of being on Facebook.

It's been reasonably good for networking, especially finding old friends. But LinkedIn is better for making connections, and unlike Facebook it's designed for grownups.

I have liked getting short, real-time updates from my friends and colleagues. (These days, I seem to demand that everything be short and concise. I'm either getting old or impatient.) But Facebook still doesn't support Atom or RSS feeds, and I've got enough to do without remembering to visit my homepage throughout the day.

And let's not forget that Facebook's default privacy settings are complete crap. I shouldn't have to devote a weekend to fine tuning that labyrinth.

And then I finally joined Twitter. It's simple. It's powerful. It supports syndication. (It makes me wish I had a decent smartphone.) It's everything I ever wanted to get out of Facebook that was never possible on Facebook.