Why I Don’t Use Facebook (Too) Much Anymore

September 11, 2007 · 65 comments

Ever since Facebook applications came along…

Facebook Requests
Where can I set auto-ignore?

That is all.

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{ 48 comments… read them below or add one }

1 GuillaumeB September 11, 2007 at 3:11 am

Definitely,!I don’t understand all the buzz around Facebook. I played a bit with those past 2 or 3 weeks but man it’s so cluttered. I really don’t need to be transformed into a werewolf or receive stupid gifts!!!

I moved to orkut and I guess i’m gonna stay over there. it’s much cleaner and does the job right. I can import any kind of feeds and there are a bunch of interesting communities. Nothing more. Just plain clean and tied to my Google account

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2 Adam September 11, 2007 at 3:32 am

Here here! Well said. There is a greasemonkey script that kills the applications, but I use Camino and refuse to change back to Firefox on grounds that Facebook is a pain in the arse.

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3 blauereiter September 11, 2007 at 3:54 am

My sentiments exactly. :]

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4 Don Wilson September 11, 2007 at 4:56 am

That’s complete insanity.

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5 Mathew September 11, 2007 at 5:44 am

I completely agree. There are only so many times you can tell it that you don’t want to be a zombie before the whole 3rd party apps thing gets too much.

Maybe you should make an app that ignores all the other apps? :P

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6 Zach Kollegger September 11, 2007 at 6:23 am

it does get annoying, with all the clutter, etc..

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7 Noel Hurtley September 11, 2007 at 6:42 am

I was thinking the same thing the other day. I think serious changes need to be made to F8 including an option to turn off application requests.

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8 titanium_geek September 11, 2007 at 7:49 am

the thing is, when you sign up for an app, it says: invite all your friends? if you click through quickly just doing the typical windows install “ok.. ok.. ok..” you spam everyone. You have to find the small button that says “skip this step” ARGH.

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9 Ralph Dagza September 11, 2007 at 8:12 am

don’t you love those ninja vs pirate invites? dont forget to mention the vampites!!!

facebook is starting to look like myspace

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10 Chris Marshall September 11, 2007 at 8:40 am

Is one addiction I have pretty much manged to avoid so far anyway, but thanks for the warning :-)

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11 Omega September 11, 2007 at 9:01 am

I agree with u paul, its really annoying. When i started my facebook profiles, almost a year ago, the site was the most promising social network on the net. Ever since they open the platform the absolute chaos came.. :(

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12 Greg September 11, 2007 at 9:07 am

Great post! That’s totally the way I needed to start my day! I for one have not gotten caught up in the Facebook/MySpace hype. I mean it seems cool for a second but I am definitely a fan of my privacy. I mean, If you’re supposed to know what I’ve been doing and all the ins and outs of my life we’re probably already talking via phone or AIM anyway so the need for it in my life is just not there. Now that I’ve started my own blog I feel it would just be one more distraction. No offense to those that love it…just my personal preference :)

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13 Josh P September 11, 2007 at 9:08 am

With the introduction of Facebook Apps, Facebook has quickly turned in to another MySpace…ugly and all. It’s quite sad.

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14 Ian Halliday September 11, 2007 at 9:26 am

Agreed! Facebook has turned to the dark side for sure.

Just after I finally convinced all my friends that FB was the answer to our prayers, a world unlike Myspace, a world where your eyes don’t constantly get bombarded by vile graphics and generally poor design, Facebook opens the doors, and every idea/theme under the sun is turned into a FB application.

No I do not want a virtual fish tank on my profile, I do not want to become a pirate/zombie etc. Admittedly there are a couple of applications I use, those being the LastFM app and the Upcoming app but that’s it.

Kill all these FB apps asap and make Facebook a better place again!

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15 Bruce Keener September 11, 2007 at 9:29 am

I backed out of FaceBook more for concerns about data security than the lack of filters, but the inability to filter out crap you do not want to see is a huge failing on its part. I use Plaxo because it does give me the ability to filter. But, it does not have the application add-ons that FaceBook has. FaceBook still intrigues me because of its application platform, and I may tinker with it again someday. But, I will have to see filters added before doing so, and will have to be convinced they are serious about not sharing my data.

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16 Dimitry September 11, 2007 at 10:11 am

Long live iPhone.Facebook.com! Most clean and elegant FB layout since the early days.

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17 Ben September 11, 2007 at 11:16 am

Thanks for reminding me why deleting my Facebook account a year ago still stands to be a good move. =)

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18 Nia September 11, 2007 at 1:37 pm

So…why don’t you guys simply ignore the virtual fish tanks and vampire bites? It only takes a sec, you click ignore instead of accept and that’s a done deal. It sounds to me like you are making too much fuss over nothing…

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19 matt September 11, 2007 at 5:50 pm

I like the idea behind some of those Facebook apps, but it’s definitely getting to be a cluttered site with all the news feed updates and invitations and stuff.

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20 Caitlyn Imburgo September 11, 2007 at 5:56 pm

I totally agree with you Paul. It is SO annoying. Just build in a Top Friends feature or something. Forget about apps.

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21 Michael Janofsky September 11, 2007 at 7:41 pm

As much as I love faceboook, I really do hate the new apps. I switched from myspace for that reason, to get rid of the clutter.

I particularly hate the ones in my notifications that say “your friend has written on your super wall” or something to that effect, when really, it’s just an invite to add that app.

I’ll continue to use facebook to keep in touch with friends, but i’m really not a fan of the apps either.

Are all of those notifications from your facebook Paul?

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22 Paul Stamatiou September 11, 2007 at 7:47 pm

@Michael – yup, that’s my account.

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23 Richard Crowley September 11, 2007 at 7:48 pm

I’ve been diligent about marking applications as spam. It actually seems to do something, as I’ve never had repeated troubles from stupid apps (almost all of which were made by Slide).

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24 Blake Brannon September 11, 2007 at 10:21 pm

My point exactly.

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25 James Tucker September 12, 2007 at 4:38 am

I watched the tour of a local cafe. The cashier asked me for some personal information and then let me access and look around. I saw a thumbnail sitting down and said we have the same laptop. “Can I add you as a friend?” Then she replied “welcome to MugMag, don’t SPAM me or I will report you.” Lisa88 added me as a friend after she looked at my profile which was located at my crotch. We got naken an hour later and I was glad I borrowed my friends Apple MacBook. It was a chick magnet. (excerpt from “What Happens When I Walk Out My Door”)

Facebook was the most boring thing I experienced. I logged in and got overwhelmed with the friends who jumped at me. Freakin’ lemmings. The apps in facebook are useful if you have no life and need to fix what doesn’t need fixin’ – my doorbell works just fine, I do not need it to ring all my devices.

Based on the opinions of this thread, how can this be improved? Is there room for another community site with a new angle, a smarter method? I say yes! I want to help build it.

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26 Steffan Williams September 12, 2007 at 8:32 am

I completely agree!

Also, when they started allowing people who aren’t associated with a university in it went a bit downhill. EmoSpace Mark II with “applications”…

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27 Eric Atkins September 12, 2007 at 9:00 am

With great power…comes great responsibility.

I think this applies to Facebook AND to the user.

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28 Kevin September 12, 2007 at 6:42 pm

I’m glad I’m not the only one feeling stupid about Facebook. It’s become a ghetto mess with all the bacn application email alerts. High noise, low signal.

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29 Mara September 12, 2007 at 10:56 pm

I feel the same way!!! I hate this application thing its so annoying.
AUTO IGNORE PLEASE!!!

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30 David September 13, 2007 at 1:45 pm

Very very true. Facebook should limit users to 3 applications each. I actually don’t have trouble with invite spam at all – my biggest beef is how enormously ugly some people’s pages look now. As much as I’m a fan of freshness and innovation and all that jazz, there’s a definite advantage to things like Facebook pages having a certain amount of uniformness. Find what you need fast. To me that’s a big part of what Web 2.0 is about. Application overflow is a step backward.

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31 Jonathan Solichin September 13, 2007 at 11:56 pm

Sorry to bother you Paul.

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32 Paul Stamatiou September 14, 2007 at 1:17 am

@J – ;-) no worries.

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33 Astorg September 16, 2007 at 12:26 pm

Adding an auto-ignore feature to settings would solve the problem.

There’s no getting away from the fact that the point of joining a social network is being able to interact with people you know.

I joined Virb° a few months ago when it was about to go out of beta and there was a lot of hype about it. But I never managed to get more than a handful of friends to join it.

The other point of a social network is that it will never be able to everything: the world’s best social network will never be able to combine the best of Vimeo, Last FM, Flickr et al. into one. So interaction with other sites is the key.

Facebook is the only large social network that has both a large user base and can interact with other networks.

I agree Facebook profiles have got really ugly of late but I’ll be sticking it out: the pros outweigh the drawbacks and there is no credible alternative.

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34 Christian Rodriguez September 21, 2007 at 2:43 pm

Whereas a vast majority of apps are absolutely useless and purely annoying, there are definitely instances in which great applications can be built that utilize to a great extent the networked user base and friend communities.

For example:

http://lendingclub.com – peer2peer lending

http://wegobreak.com – group spring break travel planning

As for auto-ignore, I think a more appropriate functionality would be one-click-clearing.

I’d like to know what exists out there (wouldn’t we all like to be informed) but would like the option to make it all disappear with one click instead of 15 if nothing interested me…

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35 Scott Bradley September 21, 2007 at 8:17 pm

Paul,

I do agree with you. The applications and notifications are getting obnoxious. Some of the applications are so pointless and waste a lot of time. Although this is the case, the basic features from facebook are still awesome for networking and connecting with like-minded individuals!

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36 gRegor September 22, 2007 at 3:06 pm

It can be a nuisance, though I’ve not received invites quite to the extent you have. Whenever I receive one, I go to the app’s page and click “Block” and I’ll never get an invite to it again. Takes a bit of time at the beginning I guess, but eventually the majority of the most popular apps will be blocked and you’ll see no invites. I get one maybe every 2 weeks now.

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37 Kyle Mark Milgram September 26, 2007 at 7:20 am

Yes, some people’s Facebook page can be soo cluttered. :(

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38 alicia September 28, 2007 at 1:14 pm

yeah. they definitely need an auto-ignore feature. or at the very least let you ignore application requests you already turned down from some other friend.

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39 titanium_geek September 28, 2007 at 11:10 pm

I guess this is a bit behind the times, but now you can choose to have applications not notify you! yay! uncloggyness!

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40 xyz October 1, 2007 at 4:32 pm

How Facebook Spies on Users:
http://albumoftheday.com/facebook/

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41 aj koop October 2, 2007 at 7:46 pm

Facebook used to be nice and then — as you said — came the APPLICATIONS and the beginning of Facebook as MySpace. Pretty awful.

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42 Mrs. Flinger October 4, 2007 at 1:08 am

Amen

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43 Tony October 5, 2007 at 4:26 am

I also joined Virb and totally love it. Yeah there aren’t as many friends as I would want to join on it, but what I do love about it is that there are little to no ads, you can pipe your existing blog posts onto your virb profile, and they are adding lots of other useful modules to their service that will ultimately integrate much of other things we do from various other social networks.

Now, Facebook has a one up on them in that they created a way where 3rd party developers could create apps for your profile. I’m just not a huge fan of that and the facebook profiles look ugly and plain.

Just my thoughts.

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44 mike December 28, 2007 at 4:21 pm

Amen, I deactivated my account because FB turned into a 3rd party for 3rd party apps.

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45 Dean April 3, 2008 at 11:11 pm

I KNOW!

Facebook apps suck, especially with all these people sending invites. Auto-ignore? Amen!

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46 Ian Tearle May 9, 2008 at 10:15 am

Too right, and what a great read. Haha. The trend is losing its ability to keep users hooked.
With the additions FB is making by way of suggesting random friends of friends to you its getting very annoying and pointless. Much better when it was just you and your “friends”.

And what is with the applications. The worst decision FB made was to open up the API to any tom dick or harry, as well as henry!

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47 Vladislav Chernyshov June 26, 2008 at 11:40 am

Paul!

You post helped me to make summary of burning problems of social networking. Thank you very much!

You can read it here on my blog: http://tinyurl.com/3me6c3

Thanks again.

Take care,
Vlad

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48 dinges December 12, 2008 at 12:10 am

Can someone explain to me the hype around facebook, myspace or any website like it?
It seems to me the services they offer already exist for decades, unless im missing something.

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