Adios Facebook!!

I don't like change. Especially when it's done for no other purpose than to roll out the latest technology and make a semi-user friendly website, non-user friendly.

I basically use two web companies for all of my online social needs except e-mail: Blogger and Facebook. Blogger I use for my public online needs and Facebook for my private online needs.

As of late, each company has decided to roll out new features, which depending on what kind of a heavy user you are, is either the greatest thing since sliced bread, or the worse thing since New Coke. With Blogger, most of their improvements have been somewhat of mixed blessing. The latest improvement, which I wrote about here, will initially drive me buggy, but in the long run, will be something I'll get used to. So long as I'll be able to do the following things without too much aggravation, I'll grudgingly accept it.

1} Allow me to write blog posts.
2} Allow me to schedule blog posts.
3} Allow me to easily access my old posts.
4} Allow me to properly moderate comments.
5} Allow me to find my blogs.

Whereas I use Blogger for my public online persona, I use Facebook for my private persona, and it's Facebook that is the main reason for this post.

Unless you've been comatose for the past week, you know and probably experienced Facebook's new and improved semi-user friendly website with all of the latest bells and whistles. What you probably didn't know, and the main reason why I'm saying adios to Facebook, is that they're introducing a new concept called "Timeline" that in my opinion, will take your privacy concerns and stick them where the sun don't shine.

If you read this nice informative article by PC World, you'll get a better understanding of what I'm about to say. In a nutshell, Facebook will be taking every single scrap of information that you posted about yourself since your first day on Facebook, either publicly or privately, and what your friends also said about you both publicly and privately, and create a nifty searchable record that will be attached to your profile.

Now I don't know about you, but I migrated to Facebook because I wanted to be somewhere where I could be myself and share certain things with friends about myself that I didn't want to put out on the blogs or in the chat rooms. However, this new feature being rolled out by Facebook is taking my personal information to an extremely uncomfortable level of non-privacy.

Because of this new feature being rolled out, and its something that you can't opt out of, I have decided to deactivate my Facebook account. For those of you who follow me both on the blog and on Facebook, you'll now get me just on the blogs, or via the e-mail if you so desire. For those of you who follow me exclusively on Facebook, you'll now have to keep up with me via the blog or via the e-mail if you so choose to.

In any event, I will post a note on Facebook that will reiterate what I've stated here today and give everyone at least a couple of days to prepare for my departure from Facebook. It's been a fun 2+ year ride on Facebook, but for the time being, my privacy concerns easily outweigh me keeping in touch with my friends on a social network.