Ted's Take

I am spending more than 30 to 45 minutes per day on Facebook now. I get “friended” a lot and I am getting many, many wall postings: some with curse words that I then have to delete and many messages from new “friends”. Most of these messages are asking me for meetings; for charitable contributions; for employment opportunities; for investment advice; for investment into their start-ups; for loans; for help; and for inspiration. My favorite was, “Thanks for friending me. I am a first time filmmaker and I need $ 850k by end of the week. Can you help? Do you use Fed Ex or can you wire me the cash?”

I have more than 3,850 “friends”. How can that be? Everyday when I sign in, I literally get 25 to 50 notifications - someone ”compared me to someone”; someone ”owns me”; someone wants to “play a game with me”; someone wants to “test my Caps trivia knowledge”; someone wants to “buy me a drink or a beer”; someone is “sending me good karma” or a “piece of a little green patch”; or something and on and on. I get friend requests at least 25 times per day.

I also get about 20 invitations per day that I have to “ignore” to attend parties and events that I have no interest in attending.

I have too many “friends” and because of it, Facebook is becoming something of a nuisance for me. It is a lot of work to keep up and it is a lot of messages per day from folks who all seem to need something and ASAP! Very infrequently are old friends finding me on Facebook. And very infrequently are really good friends talking to me on Facebook. They come see me. They call me on my cell phone. They IM me or they send me email.

I made a mistake in using Facebook as a public forum and allowing anyone who knew five friends or more in my network to come on in and get acquainted. As the denominator increased, that barrier of entry soon became moot. I understand that when you reach 5,000 friends, the network shuts out new friends. At the rate I am going, I will probably reach the limit in less than 75 days. That will be a good thing as far as I am concerned.

I should have been more selective in how I used Facebook. It is becoming unusable for me and not a utility. Am I too old for Facebook? Is it being abused by others? Or did I just mess up in allowing so many people to come on board? What do you think?