Nishad's Blog: An open letter to my Facebook friends. I am sorry!

Dear friends.

I know I have not been a model Facebook user recently. And I am sorry. If at any time in the last few years my actions in social media have upset you, I apologise.

I know, it’s all my fault and I have to take full responsibility. Friends have been deserting me. I don’t know if I they want to call me a friend anymore. Why will people want to be my friend when I have been spamming their walls with useless junk? Random pictures, empty rumours, videos of Ronaldo’s goals, I know you hate that guy, but please, please don’t hate me.

Don’t unfriend me and head over to Pinterest. Please! I will behave.

I know Facebook has amassed over 800 million users and Twitter just hit 500 million. And I won’t post such facts on my wall to impress you. Nor will I repost the story of how social media is splintering. How from the social web that we all so love and spend half our lives on, we are now moving on to the interest web.

To Pinterest, yes it’s been the darling of 2012. Haven’t you see all the stories I posted about Pinterest? If you haven’t, you won’t see them from me anymore. I know many of us have gone beyond friending and on to social curation having understood the possibilities when people get together and pool their cognitive surplus. Hey Wikipedia was made that way.

Please don’t give up your Facebook photo albums yet because I tagged you with random people or downloaded your pictures and used them in my PPTs without your permission. Please don’t head over to Instagram, I don’t have an iPhone and will never be able to chat up with you over there.

Don’t abandon your feed readers for Zite because your walls have become unwieldy with the gunk I compulsively post. I give up.

Between you and me, secretly, even I want to move on. And maybe you won’t see me being as prolific on FB ever again. I must say the interest graph has caught my interest.

On the net I have never been loyal. Honestly. From Hotmail, I moved on to Yahoo and G Mail. From Bloglines to Google Reader to Netvibes to Flipboard. From Yousendit to Drop.io to Dropbox. There’s been little friction to stop me from moving on from platform to platform. My loyalty to ideas that I once so loved have wavered and often died.

Oh how I left all those friends, now acquaintances, I had met up on Orkut. Switched to Facebook one cold chilly morning. Someone could rehash a Hitler video of my moves I am sure. But I promise I won’t repost that one.

I know I must reform my ways. From amassing friends and annoying them with odd, unrelated things that they have no interest in I must move on.

New friend requests, annoying pop ups that invite you to join in circles. Not from me, ever again my friends. I have reformed my ways.

As I leant on Path. It’s not about how many friends and how many posts you have up there that count anymore.

I need to do new things. To be relevant to the world I need to get more interesting.

Yours Sincerely

Nishad Ramachandran