Voodoochilli Design

Today I closed my account with Facebook. I could write a dissertation on the reasons I hate Facebook so much, but to keep things short and sweet I thought I would write a little list. Even closing my account was hard: it is closed apparently, but I can reactivate it meaning all my data is still stored on their servers. So essentially its not closed, its just not visible. Anyway, to the list:

1. The “You have not registered yet” message. God this annoys me big time and its the number one reason I have closed my account. How presumptuous is that? You accidentally mistype your password or use your other email address and the site assumes you have never registered with Facebook before. Who is that stupid? I can imagine it now: “Hmm I was sure I was a member…maybe I was getting mixed up with Ebay – they are both websites after all?”

EDIT: Maybe the facebook team were listening to me as they have got rid of this

2. Vampires. Bloody vampires and Ninjas. At first I thought it was different, kind of interesting, but now I realise pressing a “bite” button on a website just doesn’t do it for me.

3. The amount of email. No wonder Facebook gets so much traffic – the sheer amount of emails about said vampires gives my spam filter a hard time.

4. People contacting me I was hiding from. Well OK, its a social networking utility, but I don’t like it when cousins I didn’t like as a kid start sending me messages.

5. Vulgar fun wall pictures and video clips. Maybe I’m alone on this one but in my mind a good user experience isn’t spending half an hour deleting badly drawn pictures of dicks.

6. It’s a waste of time. Facebook is inherently addictive – this is the sites main purpose, to keep you coming back. Its not really about connecting people, its about traffic. I have spent way too many hours of my life on that website and I want them back!

7. Integrated applications. Facebook comes with a cool little API allowing developers to create web applications that integrate into the site. The only problem is most of them are buggy. Every time I try and add a little app someone has written it always says there was an error.

8. Privacy concerns. They have a hell of a lot of data about people, their names, their friends, photos, which school they went to, where they work – the list goes on. There are 1.7 billion photos of people for god sake! A good hacker could make a lot of money…But its not that I’m worried about. As they put it: “We may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship.” Responsible is a lose term and open to personal interpretation.

9. I didn’t think of it. Enough said.

10. Gifts, pokes and all those other stupid little things that make it annoying!!!

My account is finally closed and I won’t be logging on again! Oh, I just remembered all of my photos are stored on there and I need to get them back…

EDIT: I’ve had to open it again…God damit! It seems people I know now use the site to actaully organise things like weddings and events. Who’d thought…