Quantity vs. Quantity.

It may come as a surprise to you but I'm generally not a fan of Facebook.

Okay, now that you've recovered from my obvious sarcasm bomb, let me continue.

One of the things that originally turned me off to Facebook was the fact that my feed would get bombarded with such a wide variety of information that I had a hard time sorting through it. There were funny little snippets, pictures, links, and serious updates that I really should have been paying attention to. It took too long to sort through it all and that bothered me. I can't even imagine the kind of experience that people with 500+ or 1000+ friends have; how much do they miss, or how much time do they spend sorting through it all?

Recently, for reasons more related to privacy control, I trimmed my number of friends on Facebook by roughly half. It wasn't a matter of whether or not I liked someone, it was about whether or not I really wanted them seeing what was going on in my life or felt the need to see what was going on in theirs. Of the fewer-than-a-hundred that I have left, it's either family, close friends who I see regularly, or more physically distant friends that I like to keep up with.

After I went through this process, I noticed something unexpected: Facebook had become a little bit more interesting. I didn't have to spend as much time reading, I didn't have to read as often, and what I was reading were things that actually mattered to me. If you've read any of my other entries, you'll know that I see Facebook as much more useful for connecting with people than for actually communicating with them. I'd like to change that position slightly; I think it's useful for connecting with people and for notifying them. It's a good way to send up a proverbial smoke signal to say, "Hey, I've got something to say, come listen."

One interesting aside: despite dropping nearly a hundred people from my friends list, I had exactly one request to re-friend me. Whether the others didn't notice or just didn't care, I'll likely never know. But if I'm not being missed, I can't think that I made the wrong decision.

If you take this whole discussion one step further, you come back to an age-old truth: it's better to have a handful of close, trusted friends who you can share anything with and will always have your back than it is to have a huge number of friends who barely know you. So really, given that this is something that I've always believed, I shouldn't be all that surprised. I just wasn't expecting Facebook to mirror life so closely in this regard.

And yes, I still think Facebook is bad; both the service itself and what some people do with it. I just think it's slightly more useful, and enjoyable even, if you treat your Facebook "friends" more like your real friends.