I feel like my social experience has been A, taken for granted, B, my information misused and C, hours of my lost on superfluous dribble. We need something new as i`m not alone in this thought. 
I don`t know about you but I am over Facebook. The same old stuff all day every day with nothing new and I feel like my social experience has been A, taken for granted, B, my information misused and C, hours of my lost on superfluous dribble. We need something new as i`m not alone in this thought.
How I got onto Facebook will forever be etched in my mind. I heard the rumors and friends talking about it and how amazing it was to find long lost friends, old girlfriends and how it was the antithesis of MySpace. But I had put so much time and effort into MySpace I didn`t want to waste it, so I hung on. The rumors become conversations and conversations became heated debates “dude you`re not on Facebook yet common!” So I moved over to Facebook.
Forced into Facebook
I registered and instantly I was taken back to my high school days, lost loves and the instant possibility to connect with other people in my network. Three years later I am having to change my password every day because of Trojans, I have 2200+ on my friends of list of whom I have no connection or interest and if I get notified to one more lost sheep on someone’s farm or asked to answer ten questions about myself I will scream! AAhrrr!, sorry, another lost sheep was found, block application!
Let me speculate to what is on your newsfeed, the feed that gives you all the latest “interesting” and “engaging” information about your network. 14 people have changed their profile, Miss X has gone into a complicated relationship and now has every male on her profile commenting “if you need a shoulder to cry on, i`ll gladly get you naked as quickly as possible”, your mate just uploaded some more drunken picture and there is a new secret video of Osama’s execution that when clicked will then infest your entire Facebook account with a virus. Boring!
Devolved into Dribble
As a person who loves the online world I respect the ideal of Social Media Networking, in essence it is an exciting possibility to connect to people all around the world with similar interests and something to say, however these people seem to be fewer and far between. Not because there is a shortage of people but that the quality of their interactions with Facebook are diminishing because of how the Facebook user experience as devolved intro dribble.
I am a member of the Web Standards Group and it is a barren waste land of a group, I am a member of a group of Bangkok expats with over 1000 members of which do not contribute to the group because it was setup for the main purpose of advertising the administrator’s new financial advice and travel service. So much possibility with dwindling results.
So what do we need?
This is a difficult question to ask because everything online evolves and changes. Once we thought customizing our homepages was the beez knees but quickly realized this was a recipe for disaster and animated GIFs, now we feel limited because our Facebook profile remains the copyrighted blue with a constant garbage river of news flowing through the centre of it.
Oh, wait! 15 people just updated their profile pictures! Thank, insert chosen deity here, I know that as I will sleep better.
We need a social network that:
- Is about real connections. How about something that requires us to really interact with people and not just “thanks for adding me” and never to be heard of again.
- We can feel safe about sharing our lives on, that the information is then not sold for others to sell us more.
- That interacts with us, gives us advice about what is possible and a friendly tap on the shoulder when we do something that is not.
- Spam is banned. I know this is hard but it is the duty of the network to ban spammers.
- Good integration with other websites. Yes Facebook does this but have you ever tried reading the developers section? It is surprisingly difficult to find what you need, but maybe they planned that so people write tutorials on how to do it properly?
- Is founded by a group of individuals in this for the good of connecting real people and not making a billion. It may not be realistic to think this but this is my article and I will say what I want.
- No annoying applications or ways of 3rd parties getting access to our information.
- Gives businesses a good platform in which to reach people on a personal level using real interactions. Again Facebook does this, fair play and I have nothing to say other than this is also needed in our hypothetical social network.
- Enables us to own the rights to our own content and delete our profile completely whenever we want!
- Keep developers happy and give them a way of creating games and applications but limit how much information they get about us and how much the can interact with people. Sorry but I find lost sheep annoying not cute, I don`t want to be part of your mafia gang and I certainly don`t want to answer 10 questions about you to see if we really know each other!
- A healthy engaging community.
Essentially we want a Clean, engaging and safe social network that helps us connect to others. I am sure you, the person reading this, also feel the need for something other than Facebook, or do you feel Facebook is alraedy giong to die? I would love to hear your comments below!
Facebook Marketing Course
Despite the need for an alternative, businesses cannot ignore the power of the Facebook platform. Right now it is still one of the best ways to connect to new customers and as we mentioned above their advertising platform is actually very good.
The Facebook Marketing Courses are aimed at business owners wanting to gain more customers through both paid and non-paid methods such as running events, embedding custom web pages in their fan pages and really engaging with their customers.
23% of our customers at WCB come through Facebook and we can show you how to achieve even more.
Click here for information on our Online Marketing courses which include Facebook Marketing.
