Five reasons why I deactivated my author’s facebook page
I must say, my more personal foray into Facebook did not last long. Probably not the shortest stay ever, but after a month or two of surveying the landscape, I decided it wasn’t worth it. If you have a Facebook page, swear by it, love it love it love it, that’s perfectly fine. I’m not trying to tear down, or even convince anyone else they should get off, really. Mostly, I’d just like to say why I’m not there, in case anyone really noticed or cared.
So, here are the top five reasons why I deactivated my personal/author page on Facebook, in no particular order.
1. I don’t think anyone is really going to notice or care.
As far as I know, unless I tell you all I’ve disappeared, you won’t know I’ve disappeared (even then you probably wouldn’t know, or care, because you missed it in the timeline or don’t really go over to other people’s Facebook pages regularly).
2. Facebook is different than Twitter.
By and large, in my brief stay, I had a lot of the same people on Facebook as I do on Twitter. There were some new faces, sure, but people I guess I’m used to only interacting with on a professional basis were more personal than I’d anticipated. Apparently, that’s the point, which is, again, fine. If that’s the point than, do it. However, I guess I just didn’t need to know as much as I was getting to know about people. On top of that, I was thinking, well, I don’t know if there’s all that much I’d like to share about me, and while I’m there, reading what they’re putting in (nothing horrible or out of the ordinary mind you), it just wasn’t why I was there.
3. More going on than I expected.
On Twitter, you really don’t get friend requests, unless someone sends you a DM or tweet asking you to follow them back. In Facebook, though, friend requests are a part of the deal, and so the decision to accept or not accept friendship requests are a part of the deal, too. I don’t know that I want to be ‘friends’ with everyone who wants to be ‘friends’ with me, especially if they’re going to invite me to play games four or five times a day, or send me some other kind of invitation constantly. Maybe they do that to everyone on their friends’ list, but it doesn’t say, “This is a bulk invitation, don’t take it personally!” anywhere on the invite. Sorry, but I just don’t feel the need to be playing some game in the middle of the day when I’m trying to get work done. There just didn’t seem to be a polite way to tell someone that, either.
4. My whereabouts would show when I posted something.
Not at first, but something changed in about a two week period, to where it would say my posts were coming from my current location. I didn’t do anything, as far as I know, to turn that on, and in fact, I didn’t really have any location listed in my bio or settings, so it was something Facebook was doing through my IP address, I suppose. I tried to find where to turn it off, but I couldn’t. Facebook, in many ways, is not that intuitive for me, which might actually be another point, but not a main factor in why I left at this time.
5. Facebook was hacked. Again.
Not sure how many of you have been following all the hacking of accounts that has been going on, from government websites to commercial, but there’s been a lot of it lately. Facebook has been a part of that. I will probably need to have my page deleted entirely to avoid having my information culled, which, as I said, I didn’t have much up there, but if Facebook can locate me, and hackers can hack Facebook, it follows that hackers can locate me, too, doesn’t it? I just don’t need that in my life, if it’s at all avoidable. Hopefully, it is.
Okay, there’s the list. I guess I could go on, but for what purpose? The majority of us are too busy going about our daily lives to notice who drops out or not. The reaction, if there is one, is not much more than a collective, “Meh.” That’s because we really don’t know others online, and if we think we do, well, we’re setting ourselves up for a world of hurt, I think.
I guess I’ll keep the Age of Restoration Facebook page for now, and try to direct people to like it more. And I’ll do some more advertising through Facebook, since it’s been the best bang for my buck, but as far as personal postings or the like, I’m checking out.
Meh.
