Hintonblogger

This is, for me, the "Ultimate Syncing Solution" and I've found it. It allows me to do the following things:

In a post back in December, I compared Google and Microsoft's offerings for the Web 2.0/mobile phone realm and how they were stacking up for me.. At least two significant things have changed since that ranking. The first was the release of Google's Gdata API for Contacts. While I'm excited about it's potential, it still has very few any real products using it and the one that I tried (which I like for Google Calendar sync), I was less than impressed.

No, I'm not actually going back to Facebook yet and yes I did actually "deactivate" my account with them. As far as I know I should be "unreachable" in Facebook (someone tell me if I'm a wrong). Rather this post outlines what I wish I could see in Facebook (and other social networks) to help remedy the problem I described earlier.

Images

Dealing with offensive images is actually the easiest part. The first step Facebook (or again any social network) could take would be to simply allow users to mark an image explicit or suggestive. Maybe an AJAX-type control that appears when you mouse over an image for example. This control should be available universally for images (ads, uploaded images on pages, profile images, etc). Likewise, whenever an image was uploaded the opportunity to mark that image as explicit or suggestive should also be presented. These images thus marked would then not show up for me, perhaps replaced by a generic image icon saying it is a blocked explicit picture or perhaps rotating to another ad or piece of content depending on the situation. As a basic level this gives me control over what I see in my social network (that sounds reasonable doesn't it).

I'm member of many different social networks (Classroom 2.0 on Ning, LinkedIN, Twitter, Facebook, and other communities like Drupal.org and Moodle.org among others). Social networks, like other mediums of media, are successful that more people view or participate in them. In large part they are judged successful by how capable they are of connecting you with people or things that you are interested in. Likewise, they tend to fail when they are unable to help you make those connections. One of the powerful new "technologies" is that ability of these social networks to suggest people, events, or other resources based on what it knows about you. I think this is a tremendously useful tool in helping us connect with things or people very easily. So why am I leaving Facebook - especially when I would maintain that it does or has helped me connect with people and things that I have an interest in (family, friends, people who share my interests, etc)?

The ultimate reason is that Facebook, in connecting me with my friends, family members, and other events and subjects I was interested in, also presented me with things that are horribly offensive to me. So offensive that those things completely outweigh the other things it was doing well. This lead me to the decision that my only choice was to choose not to participate. So I'll be closing my Facebook account (which I hear is not that easy to do actually). In the final judgement, Facebook failed me, it connected me to things that I didn't want exposure to often enough that it wasn't worth continuing my participation. My only question (which I'm going to Twitter and email to friends shortly) is how they put up with the exposure to pornographic images as they use Facebook - do they encounter them frequently? I would be doing unrelated things and then BAM! an add with a slew of pornographic images would appear on a sidebar. Once a event that was advertised in the Phoenix, AZ network had a very objectionable picture. I couldn't get it off my page until I changed networks, completely leaving the Phoenix, AZ network, even then the Phoenix, AZ network info (including the picture) didn't immediately disappear.

I'm not a novice to the Internet or social networks here. I realize that occasionally, no matter how skilled or wise an Internet user you are, that you may run into an image or two, in those cases you ignore it and just move away from the pages. I tried those things with Facebook, I even used Firefox's ability to block images from certain URLs and still ran into things that were objectionable. I wanted to use it, I really did. I think Facebook has value - but it simply wasn't worth it for the content I kept running into.

Allowing users to contribute content is a powerful new tool provided by the Internet today. Social networks success will depend on their how well they let users (and the social networks) select content that users want to see and avoid people and content that they don't. I have some ideas on how Facebook could get me back, which I think would hold true for many others as well. That post will have to wait until after work however...

Until then, for now, goodbye Facebook......