Response to "Facebook Suicide"

I, like most other people, have a facebook profile and check it regularly...too regular would certainly be the most honest answer. I've attempted facebook suicide multiple times in the past, and I've been dead to the online community for weeks at a time, for two months even on one occasion. My personal revelations about facebook center around the fact that the entire thing is a corporate scam, and I hate that the information I input into a site that should be about social networking is essentially sold out to advertisement agencies who then try to market their worlds to me based on my own interests.

I certainly wouldn't agree with the author of this article entirely; I think facebook can be used pretty responsibly. I may be spending a fair bit of time on facebook these days (still less than average I imagine), but it's always just there as a type of Internet background noise in my life. I don't find myself consciously "facebook stalking" any person(s) or, quite honestly, even caring very much about all of the garbage that people tend to post about themselves. In my opinion, the primary issue with facebook and its user base isn't necessarily the narcissism (for some percentage of users it might be), it's the desire to pile friends on left and right, and then try to find out what any of them are doing in the constant stream of posts - posts from people who you really don't know that well, nor will you ever. I think striking a balance in managing your community size is the key to a good facebook experience, and having 700+ friends as a normal human being isn't the way to go.