No More Facebook Fun Wall!

I just deleted Fun Wall from my Facebook profile. I remain a user of Facebook and have made a number of good connections with and have renewed others. For the most part I like it. However, the Facebook business model is to increase traffic so they make it easy to accidentally broadcast out messages. Today, I accidentally broadcasted a video I did not like to all my 190 Facebook friends as I was trying to delete it. The default is to send it to everyone and it is hard to avoid the forwarding process. They seemed to have recently made it even harder to avoid forwarding. This is the case with many of the widgets so I just avoid them.

I like about 30% of what I get from Fun Wall and sometimes post about it on my blog. However, it has added an extra step. I used to just get an email from a friend with interesting stuff. Now I get an email from Facebook and have to there to get what I used to get directly. Then I have to be careful not to broadcast it and I cannot archive it as easily as I can with email. I have also started to get multiple emails on the same Facebook Fun Wall notice. From now on it you want to send me some interesting news, just email it. If you do not have my email it is on this blog. If you do not agree with this post, please add a comment. You can also comment if you agree with me.

I know Facebook as become the poster child of social media with close to 70 million users. I remain one of the 70 million for now but I hope they do not mess it up by getting to greedy with ways to increase traffic and ad revenue like they did with Beacon. See Will Facebook Make a Big Mistake with Beacon and Other Bad Navigation Practices?

Tomorrow, I will post the results of a recent survey of Facebook users. I am trying to open minded here.

Comments

[Dan Keldsen]

Bill - Amen, I loathe the Fun Wall, Super Fun Wall, and any other Wall I've seen on Facebook. I understand the desire for virality, but yeesh, come on!

[Michael Clarke]

I've gradually stopped using a lot of Facebook apps - fun for a while but the constant level of "forward to a friend" pestering is diabolical. Though Facebook are nowhere near as bad as the appalling Naymez (or however you spell it). Approximately two out of three screens seem to be advertisements for 'added-value' services. Dreadful.

[Bill Ives]

Michael - yes and yes - I have stopped using most of the Facebook widgets while I still use the core functions for social networking and like that part. I also agree that many of the others are worse. I do not accept invitations from any of the new social network systems as I had bad experiences when I did. Besides LinkedIn and Facebook are enough. I like the name of your blog, as well as the content and have had it on my list for a while. Regards, ,Bill

[Eddie]

Myspace is now at over 130 million users also. Stunning for a social media/social networking site. I guess the world loves interacting away from 'normal' life. All I know is I have a hard time getting the computer off of my son at times!

The sheer volume of use these sites get makes you wonder at the technology they use to keep them going....not to mention the revenue they are generating.