Facebook’s IPO is coming soon to a stock exchange near you.
Will you buy into the social media megastar? According to a recent poll, plenty
of folks think the company is as overinflated as a used car sales pitch. Some
believe the glory days of Facebook will soon be in the rear view mirror. I’m
not sure where I stand about their value. I just know I am done with Facebook.
I opened my account back in 2007, before it was a household
name, and before it was the “in” thing. A friend at work had some cool pictures
of his motorcycle he wanted share, and the best way to do that was to get a
Facebook account. I largely ignored the account until more friends discovered
the service in 2008. I started by posting a few things here and there. My posts
increased in frequency in 2009 and throughout 2010. Then in late 2010 I found
the Facebook app. Wow! I could post pictures and comments anytime I wanted from
anywhere! I could share the picture of the cheeseburger I was eating. My poor cats were becoming famous,
whether they wanted to be or not.
Around the middle of 2011, I started to slow down. I was not
fond of recent changes Facebook made, and the mobile app was becoming useless.
I finally got fed up and deleted the app from my phone. This forced me to make
posts only when I was logged in to my computer at home. Pretty soon, I quit
logging in every day. Here’s the interesting part: I didn’t miss it. In 2012, I
deleted my personal data and all my pictures. To be honest, my concern was
growing about how Facebook would use my information and images.
The less I used Facebook, the more I started to ponder what
it meant to me. I realized something a bit disturbing about myself. When I was
a frequent poster, I was inching ever closer to the dangerous precipice of
narcissism. If I posted something I thought was totally awesome and didn’t get
immediate responses or enough responses (whatever that meant), it made me
depressed. In addition, I felt like I had to comment on all my friends’ posts. It
was starting to feel more like work and less like fun.
Today, I am happy and healthy without a daily dose of
Facebook. I can concentrate on my pursuits, like this blog, and my Flickr page. I’ll still keep in touch with friends and family, but I’ll
do it a way I see fit. Facebook has a good thing going, and for a free service
it is hard to beat. In the end, it all comes down to how you use it. Your
mileage might vary.
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