Position statement: Facebook (June 2010)

I remain a Facebook user grudgingly. Very grudgingly. It's easy to use, popular - probably the closest thing to a universal "social medium" we have yet seen, almost a replacement for email and instant messaging for some people, and great for group expression. But it has serious privacy issues which are not helped by the constant tinkering by its owners. Settings are complex and cryptic to remove, though Facebook have clearly in recent times listened to public outcry, if not totally embraced it.

Apart from the privacy issues, some friends of mine have left Facebook for other reasons of principle, including its poor record on sourcing energy for its servers. I am still on Facebook, but I tend to wish I wasn't.

May 31, 2010 was designated "Quit Facebook Day". Out of 500 million Facebook users, about 23 thousand people registered with the Quit Facebook page before quitting Facebook. Yes I think that's a bit of a contradiction too, and I wouldn't be surprised if many times more than 23 thousand actually did the deed. I chose not to for reasons I gave in my blog on May 20, 2010.

I have abandoned Facebook as a networking tool - I have around 22 friends, most of whom I have met in real life, many of whom I see regularly in real life. A while back I unfriended all the people I didn't know outside of Facebook. I am happy to accept new friends if I know you outside of Facebook, but I have removed all my work and scholastic history from my profile. I have removed myself from fan pages, but am returning to some on a case-by-case selective basis.

I no longer use "Facebook Connect" to log into other websites. There is no obvious consolidated list of sites that have been permitted under "Facebook Connect", but you should be able to find them all under the "application settings" for your account.

I have set Facebook chat permanently to "offline". I had never bothered to pay attention until I got the shock of my life the other day when someone (a high school colleague who had recently friended me) actually tried to launch a chat session with me! No offence intended to the chap concerned, but Facebook Chat is now switched off.

I am currently using LinkedIn experimentally as my primary business-oriented social networking space.

I have ceased to give links to my Facebook profile on my website footer, however if you want to link to any of my web pages from your Facebook account, I won't stop you (actually, one way or another, I can't).

I recommend Mashable and The Guardian for following the continuing saga of Facebook.