A tale of evolution. How Facebook and I grew apart.

I am leaving facebook or at least I am going to concentrate my social activity somewhere else. Most people leave because they are worried about privacy violations and similia but I don't really care about that. I am well aware that my credit card companies, my banks, my favorite grocery stores¹ and my postman know more about me than facebook does - and more importantly they know things I never actually told them directly. So facebook privacy invasion is the least of my worries. I am leaving simply because I realized facebook didn't evolve at all during the five years I have been using it but my social needs did.

I joined facebook to keep in touch with old friends (the second most common reason after getting laid, I suppose) but eventually found myself trapped in a network of people that I barely knew or didn't know at all, sharing mostly contents I really don't care about or that were trivial to find. I interact regularly with probably less than 10% of my facebook friends and it turns out it's not because they posted a new picture of a cat doing funny things but because they shared interesting reading, worth following or commenting. I figured that if this has become my main use of facebook, than the platform is badly flawed for that use. As people say when they split: it's not you, it's me.

After a week of pondering about, I figured this is what I need:

• I share links almost every day and sometime I want to go back and be able to find something I posted in the past. It's 2010 and there's no freaking way to do that in facebook! No tagging, no real searching, no labeling. Even worst if that is something somebody else posted.
• I have had some interesting discussions with people. Again, gone. There is no way to find them back unless I remember with whom I was having that discussion and still I'd better be ready to scroll the mouse wheel for a couple of hours.
• I belong to the email generation and I always hated when some of my private conversations ended on some remote folder on facebook. I like to keep all conversations in one place, so much that even my text messages go straight from my phone to Gmail. I have 10 years worth of emails in my archive and I can find anything I need if I have to. (hint: If you need to talk to me, please send me an email)
• Of course I like to make new friends but they better be people I find interesting and with whom I share passions or curiosity. Facebook completely misses that feeling of "hey, I like how this guy thinks and what he/she reads and share: we may have something to talk about".

Seeing how things are going, it doesn't look like facebook is interested in targeting my needs. None of the points here above had been even remotely addressed since I joined (2005). They had half a dozen of UI changes, a little more power in grouping people and a myriad of flash games. No effort versus organizing contents the way I need, really. So Long, Facebook (and thanks for all the phishing.)

Why don't you just reorganize your friends, you silly!

Yes I could do that. I could just get rid of that 90% of people I care little about and my signal to noise ration will get better. But I doubt it would work fully for I noticed that even that 10% of people I follow is posting less and less or even disappeared in the past months. I presume it's because they are experiencing the same frustration so there is no good in having only interesting friends who are hardly active anymore. I am feeling so it's better to leave the sinking ship.

Hello Google!

So, where to concentrate my networking now? Looking at the four points above, it seems that what I miss the most is the possibility to organize and search for contents and not for people: "search" and "contents" being the keywords here. What is a good internet company specialized in searching contents?

Here we go, Google. To be honest, I tried a couple of alternative before. Never been a fan of twitter but I figured I should give it a try. I also gave a chance to friendfeed and delicious. None of them did it for me: again way too much noise. Then I took my virtual ladder and climbed up to my virtual dusty loft where I restored a completely unused Google buzz account and a Google Reader account filled with bold numbers.

Buzz gives me the chance to share status updates and pics if I want; Google reader the opportunity to organize my readings and the tools to discover new contents and people, based on my interests and likes. Also the environment seems unfriendly enough to attract the people I care to meet. The only problem so far is very few friends of mine use any of the two. In fact, if you are reading this post most likely is because you have been shortlisted to be one of those I want to bring with me (congratulations) and I am trying get you to use your buzz and/or reader account.

The good thing about the new combination is that in fact they are split tools with different purposes that cover different needs. The former is a bit more facebook like and it's about sharing your status, pictures and such; the latter is mainly a way to organize your readings on the web that also happens to be socially integrate so that you can actually share and discuss with other people what you find. So, it's completely possible to just use the Reader without joining yet-another-social-yadayada. That's how you do it:

1. Login to your Gmail account (you have one, right? right?!) and setup your Google profile. That is mainly to associate a face to a name, way less invasive than facebook really. The buzz link will sit next to your Gmail inbox so there isn't another website that you have to open regularly. It's all there.
2. To find your profile page click on your name.
3. Find friends who use buzz already. My bet is that it's not going to be many. 1 or 2 maybe.
4. Start adding contents to your Google Reader account. That would be blogs/newspapers/website you normally read. Google Reader will aggreate all of them for you so that you don't have to browse around to find your new readings. It's all that. I am personally scared away from blogs and feeders who tend to publish too much. Anything between 0.1 and 2 posts per week is an OK number for me.
5. You can tag entries using the reader, "Star" them or "Like" them. This way it will be a breeze to find those contents in the future. Also, every time you share/star/like something, Google will learn a bit more about your taste and will show you contents you will probably like.
6. Use the Buzz This!³ Bookmarklet and the Note in Reader³ bookmarklet. These will let you add to your collection also some random pages here and there, even if they don't belong to website you subscribed to.
7. If you are into sharing pictures of your baby (I am) you can also associate a Picasa account and share pictures. Quality wise, it's even better than what you were doing with Facebook.

Will it last? A couple of nerdy observations.

I think so. It seems Google and I share the same outlook on what I need and how has to evolve. There are only a couple of things that worry me: first, the Android app for Google Buzz sucks big time and this may be a sign that they are not investing so much in this direction as I wish they were. But that may be not necessarily true: at the end of the day, most of the Google developed Android app still suck² yet there is no doubt Google has no plan of dropping Gmail or the Android market. The second thing that worries me is how Google wave was handled and failed. Buzz didn't have the publicity it deserved and Google profiles never really took off. Yet, the tool is really nice and worthy and that's why I am writing this, to make my friends aware.

Notes.

1. At least those with whom I have a fidelity account.

2. Gmail, the market and Google listen, I am thinking about you. Still early to say something about the newly released Google Reader App.

3. Working bookmarklets can be found in the original article

Original article by Giorgio F. Gilestro.