I don’t “Like” Facebook
I am the first to admit I am not the biggest Facebook fan (pun intended). I like knowing there is one place I can keep in touch with people when I want to instead of having to email/call people individually and find old high school friends, but my dislike of Facebook comes down to one word: segmentation.
Like everyone else, I have a hierarchy of relationships and I should be able to segment those relationships on Facebook.
Facebook does allows you to segment your friends for your privacy settings and sharing which is great, but what I don’t understand is why I can’t segment my news feed. I hate that news feeds are all or nothing, I either always want to see person’s updates or never. WTF? In the age of personalization, I want to be able to segment who I want to see and when. Without lists and segmentation, Twitter would be completely unmanageable for me, which is what Facebook is to me.
I have mostly kept Facebook to be close personal friends, because those are the people I don’t want to miss anything in their feed, but as Facebook has grown, more casual contacts have requested to be friends. Not that I don’t want to see their updates, I just want to be able to prioritize the updates I see and not miss the updates of my family and closest friends.
Until segmenting for news feed becomes a feature or there is a replacement for Facebook with this feature, sorry friends, my Facebook interactions will be limited.
How do you manage your Facebook friends?
Edit: So, there is a way to segment friends, is there a way to have one of those lists as your default feed? I still find Facebook overly complicated to use.
Comments
1. In the left rail just below your photo click on "Friends".
2. In the main content well at the top right there's a button to "+ Create a List".
3. Create a list for co-workers, family, high school, haterz or however you'd like to segment your friends.
4. Ta-Da!
@Ben Thanks! I knew the lists for privacy, but I even tried searching on segmenting before this post and couldn't find anything about it. This feature isn't the easiest to find and I should be able to control my default feed.
Maybe I am just too old, but I find Facebook illogical and difficult to navigate. And those kids need to get off my lawn too :)
I think you hit on the main point of why I'm a Facebook luddite. "as Facebook has grown, more casual contacts have requested to be friends."
We've now reached a point where if you meet someone once or twice, or even in a business setting, it is not uncommon to then get a friend request from them on Facebook. Even worse, it could be considered rude if you don't accept it.
With such personal content (photos of the kids, mundane banalities of people's everyday lives, etc.) and no easy way to organize (Facebook's interface is not intuitive, perhaps on purpose?), I'd rather not introduce such a constant stream of uninteresting information from people I don't really know into my life.
I know, I know, Facebook is wonderful, it lets you "keep up" with your friends, and you don't have to send a birthday card anymore, you can just click the "happy birthday" button or something, and yes, you really do care about all those people, etc. I've heard all the arguments before.
I'm abstaining. (But I love to complain about it since the rest of the world is totally addicted.)
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