I'm putting this out there. I'm sick of Facebook. It used to exist permanently amongst the various tabs in my browser and in my bookmarks but now going on Facebook is really something I need to be in the mood for. Like being in the mood to go to the gym and have your butt throttled by threadmills, ellipticals and bicep presses simultaneously. Or to go to a buffet and stuff a bushel of every single cuisine down your throat so your belly now has a hodge podge of mush which quite literally amounts to nothing in a few hours.

Just too bored

Facebook used to be fun and effective. I got on it a year after it launched, while I was in college overseas (hence Facebook actually worked on my campus). It was a really good way of getting in touch with classmates whose email addresses and phone numbers were not available. It was also very effective to maintain communication within various college groups like for instance, the TaeKwonDo team, without having to create a group ID on the college's domain (that process sometimes could take forever). Also, while we were younger and more immature, it was the perfect medium to stalk potential crushes and/or enemies of the crush. Photos and wallposts were fun and without overload.

Moving onto graduation, Facebook had already started to get annoying and Twitter was starting to become the 'in' social network. Everyone and their mother was on Facebook at the time (they had finally opened out to the whole world by then) and while it was handy for things like birthdays of high school friends and family, it started housing fan pages and status updates. As an out of college, working adult, it didn't make sense to belong to too many groups. Fan pages were cool to get involved in because they helped you express your likes beyond just your profile. Plus, they hadn't been used as marketing tools yet. However, the newsfeed of statuses got annoying because, quite honestly, I would rather view the information people change about themselves than "what's on their mind". However, Facebook had to compete with Twitter somehow so status updates were it.

Now my Facebook consumption is quite possibly at an all time low. I think the problem is 'too much'. I don't take pictures at every single event I'm at (after a certain age, maybe you learn to experience events instead of photograph them?), so the thrill of going to Facebook for the photos has lost its value. I prefer keeping in touch with old friends and new friends over Twitter, because on Twitter I can actually make new friends in not as creepy a forum. Also, moving away from Farmville and Cafe World updates is very refreshing. Sending and receiving messages is actually painful because of the millions of 'spam mail' groups and fan pages send out. Plus, when someone sends a message to a group of people, you don't directly have the option to reply only to sender, it's reply all by default. What it comes down to is that Facebook has lost the novelty it once had. It's still useful for creating events, but really, we're bogged with so many events from groups and fan pages already, who actually checks personal events?

And now this Facebook email is supposed to roll out. It does seem like the company wants to be your one stop shop for your internet needs but honestly, there's a shift in the type of content and information people want to share and receive. Facebook, for me, is slowly becoming the old company trying to keep up, jumping sharks along the way. While I shudder to think that Orkut could be the future, it still has potential to grow out of the small corner of low-quality it's currently sitting in and overtake Facebook. Granted, that's if Google can figure how what content we want from the digital avatars of our friends and how we want it.