This was in The Guardian a couple of days ago. Three years ago I wrote this.
Today is International Microphone Testing Day 1/2/12
For some time now, I have been thinking of getting round to deleting my Facebook account. Since I joined Twitter I very rarely sign in to Facebook, apart from when it has something to do with my radio show. I'm even starting to get annoyed with that, last week I began my weekly email about the show with the sentence 'Don't leave the conversation, join it', and by the end of the day, ten people had opted to leave the conversation. This is what happened with Myspace, people forgot the meaning of the word 'social' in social networking. As I said a little while ago, Facebook has always been the bridesmaid as far as the social sites go, and now it looks as if it will never walk down the aisle. Twitter has all but eliminated the need for Facebook. The only thing people seem to do is update their status, and Twitter allows you to do that without all the other shit that Facebook entails; throwing sheep, biting, poking, playing at Farmville and all the distractions of that ilk. The only good thing on Facebook was an old application called Fun Wall, in which you could post funny videos and photos to people. This went off the boil when people started using it to post those 'my name is Billy, I'm six and have got AIDS. If you re-post this message to all your friends I may be cured' messages.
There are some photo albums that I have left public, as there are links to them on this blog. However, when my blog editing reaches those links, I will probably look at finding another suitable host site for them. Most of my facebook is private now, viewable only by people on my friends list, although my family type photos are now only viewable by the people in them. Not even my friends on Facebook can see them. I've also deleted some people, and had to block some.
There are some people who went straight to Facebook without ever having had a Myspace account, and those same people aren't yet up to date and using Twitter, these people I do feel a bit sorry for, as they don't know what they're missing.
On the other hand, I do find it a good tool for talking to my daughter when she isn't with me, so maybe I'll just remove everyone except her. Also, Mandi doesn't want me to delete my profile as my name will disappear from the 'in a relationship with...' bit in the information.
With the usual disregard for the wants of Facebook users, the new profile layout 'timeline' will soon be rolled out across the board. Everyone who complained last time about 'new Facebook' is in for a shock. Imagine the messiest, most cluttered Myspace profile, (there was always one person who's page wouldn't load properly because of all the html embeds they had on it), that is what your Facebook will look like. Once that happens, the ship will sink.
It seems therefore, to be excellent timing on Zuckerberg's behalf, to be floating the company now before it happens and the site still has a bit of pull. He'll grab the money and watch it fail when everyone leave, and go and live on an island with Tom from Myspace.
