FaceBook finally too evil?

Is FaceBook trying to take over the world, and why is Leo Laporte the only one deleting his account? It seems FaceBook have been pissing a few people off lately, after their latest "opt-out" enhancement. Not only that, they are blowing off the same valuable users they are milking for data and being totally arrogant in their responses.

So why don't we all delete our accounts? The answer is simple, we need FaceBook for one service: networking. As FaceBook is providing us with three vital services: networking, identity and publishing, quitting is hard.

The FaceBook focus was initially on networking. It was the place to connect with old friends and meet new ones. A great side-effect was that FaceBook turned us all into publishers with their wall concept that even grandma could grasp. No-one worried, since the stuff was controlled by youself inside your controlled network. FaceBook also provided a needed identity service for to maintain a public profile. Then as blogging and twittering became main-stream, FaceBook slowly tried to expand your controlled network using obfuscated privacy controls and new default settings. When the market space for online profiles and identities seemed to open up with Google's failed attempt at Buzz and Gmail profiles, FaceBook was at it again, this time with a vengeance.

So what do we need? There's plenty of twittering and blogging services on the web, so that is not the problem. There's also alternatives to maintain a public profile on the internet. What we don't have is a good networking alternative.

And that's where there is home. Hold out for a couple of months and see what happens with Diaspora. I for one will finally delete my FaceBook account as soon as this viable alternative takes off later in the fall of 2010 (consider this the prediction of the month).

http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/12/diaspora-open-facebook-project/