Ditch Facebook & a new key blog

Sara witnessed a violent robbery at knife point.  And if you believed in the fates or divine forces you might think this event was designed to inspire her to finally start a blog.  She is exactly the kind of personalty who should be visible in the world thru this media: upbeat, daring, motivated, funny – her Pittsburgh Project is a crimethinc kid’s bright dream.

I encourage you to subscribe.  And more than that i want to encourage you to comment on the blog.  My theory is this: we are looking for some collective communication which inspires daring behavior in ourselves and others.  We blog to re-write the narrative and share our experiences to that end.  It is a richer, more intimate sharing setting than the current regime of social networks. And of course it is decentralized.

Friendster was displaced by MySpace, MySpace lost its crown to Facebook and FB will fall to…

I used to think that the demise of FB was something like inevitable.  That a more open system, with users being able to enhance the social network and link to each other in more complex and powerful ways than just to friend or not.  One day the cool kids would shift over and run limp robots of themselves on FB to catch the most important information and forward it along and ultimately pull everyone with them.  Now i think FB is spreading like a cancer.  It is often the only “like” option on many newspaper pages.  Increasingly sites are letting you log in thru only facebook as another option to their own system.  My certainty that the many failings of FB (suck email system, personal data sold endlessly to advertisers, gravity towards erosion of privacy) would be it’s down fall has been displaced by a nagging feeling that like Microsoft did, they have rebuilt the world around them, with them in the center.

i appreciate FB and it scares me at the same time.  i did a bit of research for this piece and found some pretty compelling horror stories encouraging folx to ditch FB. And i have to tell you i am not ready to yet personally.  And like one would monitor themselves around powerful addictive substances, you need to make sure this tool is not poisoning you.  If it is redeemable it will be in part if we use FB as a platform to promote other blogs: friends blogs, intimates’ blogs and so forth and facilitate a more collaborative dialogue.  Let’s challenge each other to live more boldly!