Quitting Facebook tomorrow...

I know, Facebook and twitter serve different purposes, but I’m switching.  And Facebook is a tremendous company that has built an unprecedented following worth a ton of money.  I have nothing but respect for the group that did this.

However, I’m a grown up — and Facebook is a pointless toy.  The concept of “my 100+ closest friends” is a perversion of the term “friend.”  I don’t have 100 friends, never will, and never hope to.  And, if I haven’t “contacted” someone in 20 years, there just might be a reason for not doing so — I didn’t care about what you were doing before, and I’ve been on the internet for a long time, so just because you’re online doesn’t mean I am suddenly interested in your life.  If I were, I or you would have connected in other ways.

I am pushing 300 connections on LinkedIn and they are just that, connections.  Some are also friends, but that’s the exception.  There simply are not that many people with whom I want to keep in touch on a personal level.  I don’t care what someone’s children did this morning (their relatives do), I don’t care how someone is feeling about their upcoming plane trip or what someone’s dinner tasted like.  I am simply not interested — not in the minutiae of someone else’s life.

People have been starting to use Facebook as a marketing and self-promotional tool.  Don’t you see that if you are trying to market anything serious (I saw entreprise software webinars come through a couple of times), you and your content will automatically be dismissed as worthless junk bordering on a teenage prank.  I will never take anything on Facebook seriously from a professional point of view.

Facebook is a great app and a powerful medium, but a complete waste of time.  Nothing useful — just human fabric minutiae.  I have nothing to contribute to the topic and want nothing in return.  I guess that makes me an anti-social misanthrope.

I have recently started using twitter.  Skeptical at first, I am starting to get quite a bit of value from the network.  It lets me interact with the professional side of my life.  Now, twitter can devolve into a Facebook style baby-food stained goo pretty easily.  If I really need to, I can always get two twitter accounts: a professional one and a family one.  That way things are cleanly separated.

Since I am not very into family communications, I have just one twitter account: @sheynkman.  See you there…  My Facebook days end tomorrow.