New Waver’s Weblog

Here is an interesting blurb from Metro— the UK’s best free trashy-tabloid-cum-newspaper— that I came across today on my ride to work. Apparently Facebook, which a rather clever friend of mine once christened the ‘Ninth Circle of Social Networking’, has peaked in popularity and is currently facing a decline in users in the UK. This comes just six months after another blurb which declared Facebook to be more popular than Myspace (though not as popular as something called ‘Perfspot’, which I’ve never heard of before) and two months after it was announced that ‘Facebook’ has entered the dictionary as both a noun and a verb.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a troglodyte and that to me Myspace is a confusing and nigh-unnavigable sea of bulletins, blinking text, smilies, and half-naked 14 year old girls posing with their chins attached to their cleavage. I will also admit, however, that I’ve had a Facebook page since around the time it came out, which has been quite a few years now. I submit that the reason Facebook has declined in popularity is not because the internet is a fickle and cruel mistress, granting worldwide popularity and then snatching it away 36 hours later when someone posts a video of two guys engaged in questionable acts with a watermelon (oh, what I wouldn’t give to unsee that). Well, not entirely for that reason. I think Facebook’s popularity has declined because it’s become too much like Myspace. It used to be that Facebook was the simpler, cleaner, easier-to-use of the two, without any big distractions from its main purpose of finding and, you know, networking with people. It was sort of a one-stop-shop for checking in on people who you didn’t normally have the chance to correspond with. You spent five minutes on Facebook and you were reasonably up to speed on your extended social circle.

Currently on my Facebook profile I have 76 requests for things. Some of them are quite clever, like the Oregon Trail or Scrabble applications. Some of them seem pretty noble, such as the Breast Cancer Awareness application. Some of them are telling me that I’ve been bitten by a zombie. And a vampire. AND a werewolf. I’m a walking Laurell K. Hamilton character, apparently. I also have random people poking me, which probably isn’t wise, given that I’m a vampire zombie werewolf.

The thing is, I like the people who send me these things, but 99% of the time I’m not interested the things they’ve sent. If I want to raise breast cancer awareness, I’ll do it in a real-world setting, by donating time or money. If I want to become a werewolf I’ll—well, I haven’t figured that one out, actually. But the point is most of the new improved features of Facebook, the ‘FunWall’ and the ‘SuperWall’ and the ‘WonderWall’, the Superpoke and the glitter graphics, actually detract from what was so good about Facebook before. Namely that it wasn’t Myspace.

I do like the Scrabble application though. I’ll give them that one. Triple word score!