Garrett Kelley

I have quit Facebook. Why, might you ask? There isn’t one answer or one reason. Truthfully, it is a collection of reasons and a decision I came to over the last several months. The one conclusion I came to which actually allowed me to delete my account is the realization that I do not need it.

MySpace is a cesspool of degenerates, shoddy html, poor design, and oh yes…music. I believe this is the direction Facebook is heading. Facebook users are now facing an onslaught of friend requests from people whom they causally know (at best),  shady applications, pointless quizzes, and let us not forget status updates which you MUST repost if you support the cause of the hour. Not to mention that you have to read every couples love fest back and forth to each other. This is one problem I really do not understand. There are several options for communicating PRIVATELY to your partner how you feel. Email, text message, instant message, or even a private Facebook message are all excellent choices. If you and your partner feel the need to constantly inundate your Facebook friends with lovey-dovey public messages to each other, perhaps you should re-evaluate your relationship. Are you trying to convince each other you are in love or the public at large? Ether answer is cause for concern. The friend requests. Oh, the friend requests. These come from people you casually meet in the journey of life, friend’s parents, or people whom you have not talked to in a decade. The problem here is that EVERYONE is on Facebook these days. That being said, Facebook does not make it easy enough to share what I want to with only the people I want to.  I wistfully remember the days when Facebook membership was limited to college students.

Another problem is that Facebook is becoming too large for itself. Facebook is attempting to do everything. The problem with doing everything is that it does nothing well and everything mediocre. Take Twitter and Foursquare for example. These two companies offer a core service which they excel at. So far they only offer their respective core services and I hope they stick to them. Facebook is stepping on everyone else’s toes by trying to integrate other companies’ offerings into their product portfolio. Facebook is on a path to follow Microsoft in their footsteps. Becoming a company so large and unmanageable that it cannot offer a quality product customers can believe in and rely upon. The current similarity between these two companies is that their product is so widely used that people use them simply because everyone else does. Note: While I am a user of Microsoft products, they do have their issues.

Perhaps I just have a different idea of what Facebook should be used for. I would like to use it to communicate with my friends without all of the fluffy nonsense. I would like a simple and straightforward service to share my random thoughts, useful things I find while browsing the net, or  other things I believe my friends would be interested in. I do not need or want requests to join stupid causes, take some pointless quiz, or become “friends” with someone I have not talked to in over a decade. Especially those people that send me a friend request, but after becoming “friends” never actually communicate with me. I do not want to read your pointless status update about how you support some random cause or how much you love your partner. I simply do not care. I will stick with Twitter.

All of you have several other ways of contacting me: by phone, SMS, email, Google Talk, Twitter (http://twitter.com/neuor), or this site.

I do not consider leaving Facebook a loss, but rather liberation from a self-serving company.

I’m thinking about quitting Facebook and you should consider leaving too. My reason is simple: I do not trust Facebook with my information. More importantly I do not trust Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have repeatedly demonstrated their disrespect for their users and their privacy. Facebook touts the granular control of their privacy controls. Sure, they are there, but for the average person are almost impossible to use or understand. Furthermore, Facebook on multiple occasions has experienced privacy leaks. For example, earlier this year a glitch caused private messages to go to the wrong users (link). Zuckerberg himself has demonstrated disrespect for Facebook users’ privacy and his own lack of moral standards. For example: when Zuckerberg was building The Facebook, he was also allegedly working on a competing project, HarvardConnection, with other students. Instead of building HarvardConnection Zuckerberg stole their ideas and built his own social network (link). Another example is his instant messaging conversation (link) where he labels Facebook users as “dumb fucks” for trusting him with their private data. More recently a New York Times blogger shared that Zuckerberg does not believe in privacy (link). Clearly Zuckerberg’s interests, company, and money come first. The safety and privacy of Facebook users are of little concern to him.

Facebook needs to restore trust in their company. To do this Facebook needs to make a couple of changes. First, change the default privacy settings for user data from public to private. ALL of my information on Facebook should be private until I expressly change it to become public. Not the other way around. When I delete my Facebook account ALL of my information and data should be COMPLETELY and PERMANENTLY deleted. Rather, Facebook holds onto your data for 14 days in case you change your mind. I can see this as useful for people who are unsure they want to separate from Facebook, but there should also be an option to delete my data instantly. Making the situation even worse is the fact that if you delete your account not all of your data is removed. Facebook Help states “Copies of some material (photos, notes, etc.) may remain in our servers for technical reasons…” (link). What is SO hard about deleting my data? Please, just remove it from your servers!

The one thing we all need to remember is that Facebook’s goal is to make money. To make money Facebook sells advertising space. Facebook uses your information to show you advertisements you might be interested in. While Facebook states that no information which can identify you is used for this purpose, there is nothing stopping them from using identifiable information. Combine that with Facebook’s demonstrated disregard for user privacy and I believe it is only a matter of time.

Do I trust my information with other companies, to some degree I do. Can I actually trust any of them? Maybe, maybe not. The emphasis here is that Facebook and Zuckerberg have repeatedly demonstrated a blatant disrespect and disregard for their users’ privacy. This we cannot ignore.

A couple of more applications I have found handy:

LED Light: This app turns on the camera flash LED making it a flashlight. Can be used as an app or widget.
Key Ring Reward Cards: Key Ring stores your reward cards for stores such as Kroger or CVS and displays the associated bar code on the screen. The bar code can then be scanned from the screen at checkout, thus eliminating the need to carry the reward cards themselves.

I know, I know. With the release of the EVO 4G every website out there is doing a top apps post. I’m hoping to offer you all a top app list from a different perspective. Not one of a seasoned Android user, but from the view of a new Android user and technology enthusiast. I’m not going to include all of the Google apps or social media apps. Half of them are included on the device, and the others most of you are already aware of. Without further adieu here we go.

Utilities:

aCar: aCar allows you to track your vehicle’s (or multiple vehicles’) fuel mileage and maintenance schedule.
Advanced Task Killer: Android does not include a utility for managing running applications. You can use ATK to manually kill running apps or ATK will automatically kill them on a time based schedule or automatically when the display turns off. You can maintain an ignore list of apps you don’t want ATK to kill. I’ve used this one for a short period of time, but thus far it seems to have improved the battery life on my EVO 4G. Read this article on why you shouldn’t use task killers.
ASTRO File Manager: Android also does not include a good way to browse files on the installed SD card. This is a good file browser and included some other handy features.
Bubble: Bubble is a bubble level. You can calibrate the level and it includes both a plumb/level and 360 degree level.
Keeper Password & Data Vault: This is a United States government certified encrypted password and login data vault. It is similar in function to BlackBerry Wallet.
MyBackup: This is a backup utility for your Android device. It allows you to backup all of your device data and settings to the developer’s secure servers or an installed SD card.
ConnectBot: A telnet and ssh client.

Financial:

Bank of America: The Bank of America application will help you find banking locations. It will also all you to view transactions, view and pay e-Bills, and transfer funds between your accounts.
Mint.com: If you use Mint.com to manage your finances, this app will keep you up to speed on your financial portfolio when you’re on the go.
State Farm Pocket Agent: If you have State Farm insurance this app allows you to view your policies, document an accident, and help you find auto related services while on the go.

Sports:

The Hockey News: THN provides all of the NHL news, scores, stats, and standings you can digest.

One Google app that I believe is worth mentioning and is my new favorite: Google Sky Map. In Google’s own words: “With Google Sky Map for your Android phone you can discover and browse the night sky just by pointing your phone to space.”

Since 2005 I have been a devoted and loyal BlackBerry user. No phone could part me from my beloved BlackBerry devices. That is, until now. Over the last year I have witnessed people use their mobile device to surf the web quickly and easily, playback smooth video, and enjoy large high resolution displays. My BlackBerry started to make me feel left behind. Where BlackBerry excels at messaging, it falls flat on its face when it comes to a rich media experience. Strong messaging capabilities are exactly what many people are after, especially the business types. To that I say great! Continue to use your BlackBerry! I, however, want more. This lead me to researching new phones and platforms. Where I landed is Android. Yesterday (6/4/2010) I picked up the HTC Evo 4G from Sprint! So far this new device is everything I want. It integrates tightly with all of the Google services and includes push Gmail support! My Google contacts sync effortlessly over-the-air with my Evo. The UI is fast and responsive and video playback is smooth. The Android Market has thousands of applications which I have only thus far scratched the surface of. My initial impression of this device is that it is simply amazing.

The one feature that only BlackBerry offers which I will truly miss is BlackBerry Messenger. It really is the best at what it does. There is no replacement. BBM alone though is not enough to keep me with BlackBerry. I believe that if RIM does not step their game up, BlackBerry will be left behind. I understand that they are a secure, corporate devices but consumers want a rich media experience. That is a fact RIM cannot ignore.

I’ll post additional thoughts after I have more time to become acquainted with my new device.