Why I Do Not Facebook

I mentioned on Twitter the other day (last month) that I do not Facebook and have no plans to ever Facebook.

Why?

Just a couple of pretty straight forward reasons:
1. Mark Zuckerberg is a thief and a schmuck. He stole the idea from Facebook and has a clear history of not giving the first shit about Facebook users' rights or privacy.
2. Facebook regularly far oversteps its bounds and presumes rights and ownerships that are simply powergrabs with lots of dollar signs attached.
3. Facebook would sell your organs right out of your body while you slept if they thought they could get away with it.
4. I've got plenty of other time sucks in my life already without adding one more.
5. There are only a couple of people I'd be interested in reconnecting with on Facebook and hundreds of other people I, sadly or not, just don't give two shits about.
6. Ubiquity equals conformity. I am not a sheep and I have no need to do what the rest of the herd is doing.
7. Facebook is a haven for malware, spyware, spamware and all kinds of other digital nastiness.

I could keep going on and finding ever more reasons why Facebook and I will not ever be BFF's and why Teh 'Zuck and I will never be sending each other tagged drinking photos (that Facebook will presume they own the rights to in perpetuity). But the end result is the same, I won't ever be signing up for Facebook and I've got some reasonably good reasons why not.

Are there friends I'm probably missing on connecting up with because I refuse to use Facebook? Yeah, probably. Are there non-friends I'm probably avoiding altogether by not being on Facebook? Abso-fucking-lutely.

At the end of the day, there are already far too many distractions on the internet for me to even think about adding one colossal new one in Facebook. Maybe once I've finished up all the other things on the internet then I'll come back and have another look at Facebook. But I kind of doubt it.

Google Does Its Best Imitation of Microsoft

There's been quite alot of justifiable furor over Google's latest offering, Buzz. It appears that Google stole a page from the Microsoft playbook, the evil playbook. You see, Microsoft has a long and painful history of release and patch software publishing. They'd push an almost done piece of software out with the intention of using early adopters as unpaid and aggravated beta testers.

From a business standpoint this is a solid tactic. Microsoft has grown into the de facto operating system and office suite on the planet largely due to the release and fix philosophy. The only thing is that end users hate being used as non-volunteer guinea pigs. End users just want their shit to work, they don't want to help Microsoft figure out what's wrong and then have them fix it weeks or months later. Its part of the reason I do my best to avoid Microsoft products as much as possible.

And Google has done the same stupid, stupid thing with Buzz, their attempt to destroy Facebook and Twitter. Only they rolled out this new service without bothering to code in end-user controls, important end-user controls like, oh I don't know, privacy, notifications and other pretty basic service requirements. Google has taken information that many people don't necessarily want made public and went ahead and made it public without regard to their customer base's wishes.

And when a company starts acting without the slightest regard to its customers then they are strolling the fine line between good and evil. And Google has publicly stated their philosophy is to not be evil. Well, Google, Buzz is perilously close to being evil in addition to being non-intuitive, oddly slapped into Gmail and in desperate need of some end-user controls. Without some controls on my end, I'm liable to shut if off altogether.

I don't get why Google, ostensibly a very well run "smart" company, would risk pissing off so many users with this half-baked offering. Much like I don't get why Google decided to change how information is displayed on my Google home page where they forced me to put up with a huge space wasting gutter navbar on the left side of the screen. Its only through the use of an extension have I reclaimed that space. Google is well aware of people's hatred of this stupid, unnecessary space waster and yet they do not appear to be planning to do anything to fix it.

How many more missteps will Google make before people really do start think they are just another evil corporation bent on nothing but shareholder profits and maintaining their market shares? Many people already consider Google the next great big evil internet behemoth and its hard to argue against them lately.

Google needs to pull its head out of its ass and realize that end users can be fickle and, when pushed too hard, will just leave Google altogether.

Google needs to fix up its shit before pushing out any more partially finished products like Buzz. Until then, it will flounder and fail.

Wal-Mart Gets Faced by Facebook

Facebook Users Hijack Wal-Mart's Roommate Style Page

Woops, guess they didn't really think that one all the way through either. Just like hiring a PR firm to make a "grassroots" blog about how great a company they are.

Until Wal-Mart stops treating the web like a bunch of fools, they'll continue to get pwned. Which is, of course, fine by me. I like seeing them look like the terribly uncool trying to come off as cool.

Nice to know that Facebook's got a vocal group happy to expose corporate megaliths for the discriminatory and exploitive juggernauts they are. There's no reason to shit all over the world, you can make a decent buck and be a conscientious corporation too. Yes, your margins may shrink in the short term but you'll make far, far more longterm.

And they'd shut me up, which would, also of course, be fine. I have no axe to grind with Wal-Mart, all they have to do is change how they operate their business from supply and manufacturing to employees and customers. Revamp it from the bottom up or top down and I'll be the first in line to applaud.