Dark Confessions of a Facebook Sinner
Tonight I have committed a gross, some might even say indecent act of modern communications heresy: I have deactivated my Facebook account. It was an impulsive move and one that had to be made with a sharp intake of breath, eyes shut tight with immutable dam buster spirit. Like jumping into a plunge pool of ice water, best not to think too long about it before reason prevails and forces a re-think.
In the two hours since, I have vacillated between feelings of great liberation and a gnawing doubt that I may have consigned myself somewhat rashly to the community of laggards who either fear, reject or simply cannot get to grips with emerging and evolving technology. Will I be doomed to social - and familial - obscurity? Should I even be confessing my sin to a broader, professional public who may consider my move an indictment of my proclaimed aptitude in online reputation management? By shutting down such a pioneering dialogue channel, am I in fact kicking my own professional credibility and reputation into the long grass?
In the hot forge of my decision this evening, I am writing this blog because I need to capture the raw intuition behind my decision making along with something that, I believe, passes for a rationale.
In an earlier blog, "Time to Write Off Twitter?", I was very clear about the role Facebook plays in my own social/networking mix. Unlike Linked In and Twitter, to which I remain absolutely committed on a professional level, Facebook for me was always a 'closed community' deal. One that had strict admittance criteria for close friends and family only; a forum for domestic and trivial news share that I was always very comfortable to segregate from the more academic business exchanges I've contributed to, and profited from, through my Linked In and Twitter accounts.
Facebook is an amazingly colourful, engaging tool that I have a lot of warmth for. I know I shall miss it deeply. The applications are ingenious to bring laughter, insight and collaboration into one's personal relationships. Yet, ironically, my growing sense has been that the quality of those relationships may actually be falling victim to that ingenuity.
It just seems that the more time spent with family and friends on Facebook is less time spent on human - yes, dare I say, telephone - conversation. For this is the added brilliance of Facebook. The instant text messaging facility is just so easy! And compelling. Though not confining you to a mere 140 characters, it does mean your real-time "conversations" are so much more to the point; text messaging forces conciseness. By its clinical nature, it cuts down the more fallible nature of human discourse: emotion, innuendo, political sniping. It lends a more objective, less risk-laden and therefore, I suppose, innocuous form of discussion. It's an ideal channel for those wishing to avoid the intricacies of complex humanity and family ties.
The visit today of a close friend, whom I have not seen for a long while, threw into stark relief the sense of how much I value human interaction; of how much of it was moving away as our collective addiction to Facebook text-chatter intensifies. I'm reminded, in my brutal decision this evening, that I will never escape my nature. I'm a humanist, a communicator. Words, expression, nuance have always been the make-up of my character as well as the tools of my trade - whether I've been aware of this fact up until this point, or not.
I have always been interested in human 'presence' and reaction and know from experience that reading faces, listening to tone beyond words and pure, personal chemistry form the most powerful basis for collaborative and gratifying relationships. Tonight I realized these cannot be sustained by Facebook alone.
In the two hours since, I have vacillated between feelings of great liberation and a gnawing doubt that I may have consigned myself somewhat rashly to the community of laggards who either fear, reject or simply cannot get to grips with emerging and evolving technology. Will I be doomed to social - and familial - obscurity? Should I even be confessing my sin to a broader, professional public who may consider my move an indictment of my proclaimed aptitude in online reputation management? By shutting down such a pioneering dialogue channel, am I in fact kicking my own professional credibility and reputation into the long grass?
In the hot forge of my decision this evening, I am writing this blog because I need to capture the raw intuition behind my decision making along with something that, I believe, passes for a rationale.
In an earlier blog, "Time to Write Off Twitter?", I was very clear about the role Facebook plays in my own social/networking mix. Unlike Linked In and Twitter, to which I remain absolutely committed on a professional level, Facebook for me was always a 'closed community' deal. One that had strict admittance criteria for close friends and family only; a forum for domestic and trivial news share that I was always very comfortable to segregate from the more academic business exchanges I've contributed to, and profited from, through my Linked In and Twitter accounts.
Facebook is an amazingly colourful, engaging tool that I have a lot of warmth for. I know I shall miss it deeply. The applications are ingenious to bring laughter, insight and collaboration into one's personal relationships. Yet, ironically, my growing sense has been that the quality of those relationships may actually be falling victim to that ingenuity.
It just seems that the more time spent with family and friends on Facebook is less time spent on human - yes, dare I say, telephone - conversation. For this is the added brilliance of Facebook. The instant text messaging facility is just so easy! And compelling. Though not confining you to a mere 140 characters, it does mean your real-time "conversations" are so much more to the point; text messaging forces conciseness. By its clinical nature, it cuts down the more fallible nature of human discourse: emotion, innuendo, political sniping. It lends a more objective, less risk-laden and therefore, I suppose, innocuous form of discussion. It's an ideal channel for those wishing to avoid the intricacies of complex humanity and family ties.
The visit today of a close friend, whom I have not seen for a long while, threw into stark relief the sense of how much I value human interaction; of how much of it was moving away as our collective addiction to Facebook text-chatter intensifies. I'm reminded, in my brutal decision this evening, that I will never escape my nature. I'm a humanist, a communicator. Words, expression, nuance have always been the make-up of my character as well as the tools of my trade - whether I've been aware of this fact up until this point, or not.
I have always been interested in human 'presence' and reaction and know from experience that reading faces, listening to tone beyond words and pure, personal chemistry form the most powerful basis for collaborative and gratifying relationships. Tonight I realized these cannot be sustained by Facebook alone.
Labels: Facebook, Linked In, PR, reputation, social media, Twitter
posted by Joanna Lund
at
10:22 PM
Posts 
21 Comments :
Social media tools bring great benefits but they are no panacea to eyeballing, listening to tone of voice, adapting what you say, when you say it, pressing the flesh or hugging. Thank you for reminding us!
I closed mine a year ago.
So much depends on the objectives before you join any social network. I've seen what you've written about first hand — a closed experience — but also have seen it work well to build open communities around interest.
I think the challenge for communicators is today is having a sense of what we intend to do in the spaces we intend to occupy, ranging from reserving our names to full engagement, before we sign up. However, all that aside, if a network isn't working for you as an individual, then closing the doors isn't a sin as suggested. There are hundreds of thousands of networks and it is impossible to fully engage people on all of them.
For organizations, it is very different. Closing off communication channels once they are implemented can be paramount to taking a phone off the hook.
Thanks so much for sharing your post and your thoughts. This is worth thinking about and expounding upon.
I'm thinking of ditching - I dont spend much time on Facebook but there is a tendency to feel obligated to respond. LinkedIn is fantastic for business, but I think face to face with friends and family still wins - there is nothing like live engagement.
It is your choice and always will be. Depends how 'connected' you want to be with people...
I totally agree about the human dialogue. You need Face-2-Face otherwise you lose the connection (sic). I don't know how many CEs and SLTs I have said this too but it never seems to get across...they want to hide behind 'things' or 'methods' of interacting with their employees and /or stakeholders.
In my book you just cannot beat the good old fashion method of meeting someone, shaking their hand, having a conversation and most of all...listening to them. That is where a relationship begins!
Good move - enough of this faceless communication, time to start a campaign for real conversation!
Maybe we can partition for the closure of Big Brother to encourage people to go out and have real interactions, rather than sitting at home and texting...
Oh look, it's happened - the Gods of personal communication are smiling on us once more!
I did the same - know the feelings. It gave me nothing and I don't want it in my life. Good for you!
Not at all. The fact is after months of frantic facebooking I've realised that I have more important things to do than facebook and more important things to learn than the holiday plans of a woman I went to high school with and haven't seen since. I think Facebook has proved itself the most efficient device ever created for wasting time. It has been useful for reigniting some old friendships but most of those occured in the first few weeks/months of use. Since then there has been a continual decline in any benefits to be gained from the site.
Interesting piece.
Depends which Gen (X, Y or Z) I think. I know a few non GenY's who are "bored by the whole Facebook thing", "sick of being bothered by annoying quizzes and 'pokes' by people they have no intention of being 'friends' with"...GenY on on the other hand seem to be embracing as much as ever.
I use FaceBook much less than I did a few months ago. I love LinkedIn for business. I must say, since being on FaceBook, I've rekindled relationships and reunions I would never had. A college get together with old roomates on the beach after 20 years. We all talk on the phone now...
I just say, respond when you want, or just let people know you are not that active and not to get upset if you don't respond to them, that's what I do. I would never get anything done if I spent all day on that site. I check it MAYBE once or twice a month... just for fun...
Are you aware that Facebook has business pages now? So it acts like another blog and people now use Search on Facebook for other than social purposes.
Maybe you can just put up a business page and a business group and use it as a tool.
I completely agree with you.
Here's an alternative way of thinking about Facebook (and the reason that I am not closing my account). When I visit my Facebook page, I can catch up on the doings of up to 50 relatives and friends in sometimes very distant places (e.g., Russia) in as little as 5 minutes and let them know what I am up to. Imagine the amount of money and time it would take to have that interchange of information with each one individually. Once upon a time some families had a circulating letter in which each family member added what they were up to and passed it on. Facebook is the family chain letter of the early 21st century, complete with easy access to photo albums.
If I expand that time commitment, I can send little personal notes or comments that let people know that I am thinking of them. I can express sympathy, request more details. I've also used it to set up face-to-face meetings with local friends or those in regions that I will be visiting in future. Yes, I could use e-mail for those things rather than funneling it through Facebook, but Facebook allows me to more easily keep track of the threads of conversations.
Full engagement all the time is neither necessary nor (in the case of drama queen contacts) desirable. Facebook gives me a way to pick a level of engagement somewhere between none and full.
Congratulations on cutting the cord of electronic dependency. (Sound odd coming from "Kodak's digital guy"?) I have avoided FaceBook, though my wife and daughters all have a presence there. My reasoning is very much like yours. I do not want to spend anymore time in front of a screen than I have to. Like you, I enjoy people, whether face-to-face, on the phone, or even through a personal email.
Facebook, to me, is like a great glass wall protecting me from interaction and revealing parts of my life that I want to reveal, but to more people than I really want to deal with. (How do you say 'no' to a "friend" request from someone who worked with your 25 years ago and you never thought you'd see again?)
Professionally, I know that Facebook and Twitter are supposed to be grand PR tools, but most of what I see there is wrong (because the writer couldn't be bothered to get it right) or superficial. A well thought-out review by an authority in the field seems ultimately more useful than hundreds of short impressions from . . . whom exactly? When I spend the time to read something, I want to learn and to be entertained. I really want to be challenged, but only a few people can do that.
Joanna - I fully support your choice to remove yourself from Facebook, but I disagree with many of your characterizations of Facebook - and by extension, the people who enjoy it. I have had a number of tremendously rich and powerful experiences with people on Facebook from whom I have been separated by time or who are currently too far away for me to see in person. Through my Facebook interactions, I have been able to develop and enhance many relationships, both old and new. For some of these relationships, it is the only means of communication we have; for others, it's just one of many channels we use - not as a substitute for face-to-face communication, but as a complement to it.
After their initial FB frenzy, everyone has to decide for themselves what they want the nature and extent of their FB experience to be, and to recognize that it's up to them to create that for themselves. As my own initial FB mania has died down, I am finding it relatively easy to integrate it into my routine and my ongoing communications with folks. As with the other social networking tools I use, I have customized FB to maximize the value I both give and receive in my interactions with others.
That customization is constantly evolving, on the professional level as well as the personal level. To wit: I am relaunching my own consulting business and intend to create a FB presence for my firm as a means of building community with the folks who are interested in my work. Again, this presence will serve as a complement to all the other ways in which I interact with folks and should help draw us closer to one another rather than erecting virtual barriers to our ability to connect.
I personally am not a Twitter fan, for many of the reasons you've ascribed to Facebook, and I've contemplated closing my accounts. But because I know that other people (like you) find it tremendously useful, I've decided that perhaps I haven't given it a fair enough shot yet. I am committed to gaining a broader and deeper understanding of its potential value before I draw any definitive conclusions. I would hope that people would do that with every communication channel available to them.
I think that in many cases the Facebook is just an attempt to feel that you are not along, that you belong to something biggest and that your life is visible for many. But as a many intellectual illusions, early or late, disillusionment will come. On the other hand if you use Facebook as a ordinary tool which help to inform your own ideas and thoughts, than why not?
I think we all interact with Facebook differently. I find it useful on a personal level to stay connected with family and friends that I don't see much, but whose lives I care about.
I do feel that FB's usefulness for business/reputation management purposes is somewhat limited by the volume of extraneous noise in that forum. The games, lists, quizzes, gizmos and other diversions make it, in my view, very difficult to attract attention to a serious communications message. I can see some use to the Fan pages as a resource for grass roots communication and mobilization, but again, the challenge of drawing attention to those Fan pages in the midst of all the other noise on FB is somewhat daunting. I'm still learning how to use those resources effectively as part of a client communications program.
If you're a person who prefers talking on the phone, then perhaps FB is not a tool you'll enjoy long term. Personally, I hate talking on the phone, hate voice mail, hate telephone tag. I'd much rather send messages back and forth on FB and Twitter, and know that the people who are receiving those messages can read them and respond when it's convenient for them.
Bottom line, Joanna--it sounds like you're just not that into FB, and that's perfectly OK. There are many other ways to get your job done.
I agree with Courtney, and many others who have commented. You need to have clear objectives as to how you will use a social networking tool. And if it no longer meets your objectives, or your objectives have changed, by all means stick it in the junk drawer or get rid of it altogether.
Like others here I have had a chance to rekindle many old friendships and have had a blast doing so. Nothing wrong with that. If it becomes a bore or a problem to any degree, I will do as you have done and not look back.
Thanks for this interesting article.
Seeing as Facebook is primarily a tool to maintain pre-existing relationships (in most cases F2F) it's no wonder people haven't figured out a way to monetize it.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about that decision. I don't find your decision heretical, so I won't send the Grand Inquisitor to your door. I was struggling to understand the context and cause for your "community suicide."
The essence seemed to be in your sentence, "Yet, ironically, my growing sense has been that the quality of those relationships may actually be falling victim to that ingenuity." Do you agree. You felt that you were diminishing the intimacy of your friendships by using technology?
I don't disagree with your decision, but I've also consigned Facebook to personal relationships and LinkedIn to professional, and I have 200 friends there. They tend to be all over the US and even International (I have a daughter, son-in-law and grandson in Greece), and I find it helps create community with a wider group of people with whom I don't communicate often. I'm organizing a group of high school classmates to begin thinking about our 50th anniversary of graduation, e.g. I've not seen some of these people for 40+ years, and I'm having lots of rewards reconnecting, sharing photos from the last 50+ years, etc.
It sounds like you were discouraged by Facebook's ability to help you create community with a smaller group of very intimate relations? Am I right or wrong?
I'm interested in your blog concept, because I'm very interested in the psychological and philosophical issues of social media. I'm also interested in the really practical aspects of how I can effectively use several social media tools and balance them all.
Roger
twitter.com/prwise
sysop of PRwise group on LinkedIn
President of Newswise.com
Just today I benefited professionally from FB. I jumped on a bus to go a short distance, and I recognized--albeit vaguely, the man sitting next to me. Pre-facebook I would just assume I didn't really know him and sit next to him in silence for my three-minute ride.
But I had actually worked on a very brief project with him, at the time I had added him to FB although we never corresponded. Because I saw his name scroll through my feeds once in a while I was able to remember him.
We struck up a conversation about future business.
I think FB just keeps people in your consciousness, and keeps you in theirs. There are other ways of doing this but FB is rather efficient, while at the same time, fun.
For that I find it useful.
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