O.K., so here’s this chart and an article talking about “facebook’s rapid decline” and if I had to sum up my response in one word, that one word would be “bullshit.”
People are constantly predicting facebook’s imminent demise, and it just isn’t happening. Sure, there are things we don’t like about facebook. The fact that everything you put online essentially becomes Mark Zuckerberg’s property is a bit bothersome, but since everybody knows that going in (or should), they can make adjustments accordingly. It’s the way of the world in cyberspace. If people really wanted privacy, they would unplug themselves from the internet, cut up all their credit cards, and move to a cabin which doesn’t have a phone by a lake in Idaho or in an isolated village high up in the Italian Alps. They’d have privacy up the wazoo. There probably are a handful of people in the world who have done exactly that, but they are not the ones you see on facebook complaining about facebook.
What the chart shows is that teenagers aren’t using facebook as their primary form of social networking any more but, since I’m not a teenager, I’m cool with that.
The way I see facebook, the analogy I’d use, is that of a crowded pub where everybody is talking at once, except with better acoustics so you can actually hear what’s being said, and you can choose which conversations you want to participate in and drift in and out at will.
When I first entered facebook, it was a pub that catered to a younger, hipper crowd. It was originally envisioned as a college students thing, exclusively. I was the old geezer hanging out with the young crowd and trying to be cool. But, as happens in real life, when there are too many of the old farts hanging around, the young people head for someplace a little louder, a little wilder, that stays open a little later, and whoever can’t keep up gets left behind.
It’s all good. I see some stuff there I like, I get into some interesting conversations, and I’m reminded of everybody’s birthdays. When somebody shows me a better pub, we’ll go there and I’ll try it out.
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