Must I really elaborate? Doesn’t the title say it all?
Most people I know in both my virtual and real lives hate Facebook. I’m not talking about people who don’t use social media, I’m talking about regular Facebook users.
Facebook users hate Facebook. Let them count the ways! Everything FB does, every new feature they introduce, becomes just one more way in which they annoy their loyal users.
But they don’t care what their customers want. This is how Facebook does it, take it or leave it.
In addition to the clunky and annoying features, Facebook wants you to use your real name. And they want you to have just one account. And if you are known by another name, they want you to connect the two in one account.
Just one. No alts.
That doesn’t work for a lot of people. Writers and Avatars among them. This “Real Names Policy” or “One Account Only” policy just doesn’t work for many of us who fall into one or both of those groups. Or for those who legitimately use more than one identity – one for their public life, another for their private life.
Facebook has every right to operate as they do. But its users don’t like how Facebook works, they don’t like all the info-gathering that is going on and they don’t like the real names policy.
How many reasons do you need to leave a service behind?
I just needed one.
Facebook doesn’t want me.
I began using Google+ in the spring of 2013. Until I recently cancelled my Facebook account, I used these two services side by side. There is no comparison. Google+ is soooo much better than Facebook, particularly for users of virtual worlds, I can’t begin to tell you. I find g+ extremely useful and user-friendly. Facebook was neither of those.
I signed up for Avatar Social Network in August. I have to admit I wasn’t expecting much. But I have been very pleasantly surprised by this year-old service. Such a friendly and helpful community!
I see the Tweets about people joining Ello. Maybe I’ll be there someday, we’ll see. Right now, I don’t see any reason or feel any need to join another social network.
After one month without Facebook, there is no void to fill.
Journey To The Center Of The Metaverse 
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A couple of things. The characteristic of consistently and continually releasing new updates that seem designed to annoy the users? That’s not only Facebook, it also rings true as my experience of being around Linden Labs. In fact, I’d put Facebook firmly in second place on this matter.
I personally have a much higher regard for G+ than for Facebook, but Google also employs a “real name” policy and they alienated a lot of people early on with robotic enforcement of this policy.
Just as Second Life continues to (barely) exist IN SPITE of Linden Labs poor decisions, Facebook will continue to be valuable in spite of their management greed. It’s because WE are there. Even as much as I like G+, my friends are on Facebook and to the extent that I want to stay in touch with them, I will want to continue reading FB and interacting with them.
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Vincent — Google Plus dropped their real name policy in July:
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2014/07/google-plus-drops-real-name-policy/
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I’m with you. I’m not deleting my Facebook account — my mother-in-law and my stepmother are both on it and my son posts pictures of his rabbits there.
But for public, virtual reality stuff, I LOVE the Google Plus communities. My favorites are OpenSim Virtual and Hypergrid Destinations. In particular, I like the fact that they are public — you can link to the posts, or Tweet about them, or whatever. And people can find them if they search for them.
Meanwhile, if I had a private social avatar life (I wish!) I think something like the Avatar Social Network would be a good fit. In particular, it’s members-only, so the posts don’t come up in a regular Google search.
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