????Ever-increasing Facebook partnerships means I need to be careful about the content I consume. Because I naively clicked on an online Washington Post story a Facebook friend read, all the stories I read from that outlet are automatically broadcast. With other apps like Spotify, Facebook integration is mandatory, meaning half the time, I enter a "Private Session" so others can't see which songs I'm listening to. And while I get that targeted advertising can be a win-win for marketers and consumers, I don't know whether to be amused or uncomfortable with recurring "Sponsored Stories" like the one to your right. (For the record, Facebook, I neither like guys with tattoos nor cedar enzyme baths.)
????Facebook has also given rise to user etiquette unique to the social network -- and not all of it's good. The same way behavior in the movie theater has gone downhill -- cell phones ringing, people chattering mid-scene -- I'm noticing some users becoming less polite. People bug me if I don't "Like" something they put up. ("Dude, 'Like' it!") Others expect me to know what they've been up to because we're Facebook friends. (Well, you saw on Facebook... right?") And because Facebook nurses our propensity for immediate gratification, we expect things to happen even more quickly there than in real life. Wrote one friend un-ironically on another's wall: "Why haven't you poked me back yet? It's been 20 minutes!"
????That may be why several current and former users I've spoken with continue to steer clear of Facebook, deactivate their accounts, or ratchet down their usage. The evolving Facebook experience has either turned them off or the social network increasingly drew them away from the real world, breeding a false sense of intimacy where following friends and family on Facebook displaced deeper, quality interactions with them.
????Of course, all of this is the result of Facebook's genius and I won't be deactivating my profile any time soon. But, I will try using it less. I've invested so much in my Facebook profile, spent countless hours building it up with friends, photos, links and status updates, that the idea of unplugging seems like the less attractive option. As I try to find a happy medium between gym checks and deactivating, I'll remind myself of Facebook's virtues. That it connects me with old friends. That it does expose me, through equal parts social recommendation and serendipity, to new bits of information. When really at the core of it, whether I'll say so, I still want to be liked, however fleeting the online equivalent of that may be.
