If You Can't Tweet 'Em... (Part 2)

In my last post, I hypothesized that Facebook is slowly turning into Twitter, but I never really explained why, other than ranting about people putting hashtags in their Facebook statuses.  It's much more than just that, especially given all the changes that Facebook has made recently.

First, there's the new feature where Facebook users can "subscribe" to other users, which basically means they can see what said users are posting without having to be friends with them.  You can subscribe to your friends, coworkers, celebrities, or even random strangers you've never met before, and follow along with everything that goes on in their lives.  Hel-LOOO?  Isn't this exactly what Twitter is for?

The other big change they've made is the ticker in the upper-right corner of the News Feed.  With this little doohickey, every little thing that each of your friends does on Facebook is displayed in real time for you to see.  Every status they write, every person they friend, every page they like, and every comment they write - even to someone who isn't one of your friends.  That's right.  Every.  Freakin'.  Thing.  This is the part of the new Facebook that bothers me the most.  If I really wanted to know everything each one of my 800+ "friends" was doing, I'd get a Twitter account.  Not to mention that the scroll bar on the ticker is way too impossibly narrow for one with even the most steady of hands and 20/10 vision to manipulate using a standard computer mouse, let alone the touchpad or TrackPoint on a laptop. 

But what really rolls my twelve-sided dice about these new changes to Facebook is that I no longer have any control whatsoever over who sees my every move and what they can or can't see.  That means that every time I write a comment on someone else's status or photo, all of my "friends" can not only read what I wrote, but they can also see the original post by said someone.  And the worst part is, where I once could limit the visibility of my posts to just my friends, or restrict it even further than that, I no longer have control over these privacy settings.  Instead, I have to cross my fingers and hope that each of my "friends" will take 10-15 seconds of their precious time to scroll down to my name, hover over it with their mouse, wait for the info box to appear, hover over the "Subscribed" button, wait for the menu to pop up, and uncheck "Comments and Likes."  Yeah, it's only 10-15 seconds, but when you consider that I have, as I mentioned earlier, over 800 "friends" on Facebook - which is actually kinda low compared to a lot of my colleagues - that means it would take, if my calculations are correct, well over two hours to do this for my entire friend list, which robs me of all motivation to even start such a herculean task with even a few of my "friends."  And if I lack the will to do that for my "friends," what makes me so sure they'd be willing to do the same for me without me having to twist their arm a little?  Statistics is not my strong suit as a mathematician (that job falls to my good friends and fellow bloggers Jonathon and Jonathan), but I can tell y'all for sure that I don't like those odds. 

Were it not for the fact that being able to post on Facebook helps me keep in touch with my friends a lot more easily and has gotten me out of a few minor jams (like finding people to help me move stuff into my new apartment, or helping me recover a paycheck that fell out of my coat pocket on the way home), I would seriously consider deactivating my Facebook account.  I don't know about everyone else, but I for one am getting sick and tired of all these changes that Facebook keeps making, when all we wanted in the first place was a "Dislike" button.  The way I see it, Mark Zuckerberg (I'm resisting the temptation to make an obscene rhyming pun on his last name here) just realized how much competition he's getting from Twitter, so he decided to turn Facebook into a fancier version of Twitter to appease all the Twitterites.  In other words, to repeat the old adage that I concluded my last post with, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. 

But seriously, Zuck, grow a friggin' spine and stop selling out to The Man.  Or at least have the courtesy to give us a little more advance notice before you start messing with our accounts.  I mean, you don't just randomly overhaul someone's car, computer, or house without telling them first and convincing them that what you're doing will actually make things better for them.  So why would you do the same thing to the Facebook accounts of millions of people you don't even know? 

Okay, I'm done ranting... at least until the next major overhaul of Facebook happens.  As a final note, I humbly ask everyone who reads this and is friends with me on Facebook to please do me a favor and take just 15 seconds to unsubscribe from my "Comments and Likes."  (I outlined the steps a few paragraphs earlier.)  I'll do the same for all of you, even if it's only a few friends at a time. 

Stay frosty, y'all! 

B-)