Why Facebook is Becoming Useless to Me (And I Don't Want it To)
Sun, 11/08/2009 - 23:44 | Wouter Van den Bosch
In the beginning
When I joined Facebook, in 2006, I did so mainly because of both a professional as personal interest in such systems. Even though Facebook was far from the first social network site I had ever used, it quickly proved to be one of the most exciting ones I had come across so far.
More than other social network sites, Facebook centered around the 'Friend Feed', an aggregated view of the activities of one's friends on Facebook as opposed to the profile-centric approach many of the other platforms were still taking at the time. You didn't have to visit a friend's profile to know what they were doing. This powerful feature enabled one to gain a 'social peripheral view' of what was going on in one's social network. A steady stream of interesting and less interesting updates from the people that matter to you.
Speaking of people that matter, Facebook was also the first social network site for me that actually had quite a sizable number of my friends on it. As an early adopter I had been spending time on such systems mostly with a limited number of other early adopters and quite a bunch of strangers. Yet here was a system that somehow was accessible enough to convince those not surfing the edge of the technology wave to come aboard. Facebook allowed me to interact casually with a growing group of those who matter to me. As opposed to my interactions on LinkedIn or Twitter, my Facebook interactions were mostly fun-oriented. Staying in touch with friends and relatives.
