Secondly, the Hangouts feature is quite cool.  Basically, Google made a group voice chat that fits efficiently in the browser, and that can have other elements in there, too.  It’s Google-centric in that YouTube is somewhat randomly in there; and that the design elements of this area feel more 2001 than 2011.  What’s truly impressive is the voice and video quality.  Video chat is eventually overrated, though the fact that it works seamlessly is impressive.

It seems like Google+ is fundamentally more a communication platform than a social network.  That side of it can work for me, and it can cause some real disruption for the freshly anointed Microsoft + Skype + Facebook (MicroSkyFace ?).

I’m a web developer, and I sign up for about every random site out there just to figure out what it is they do.  Google+ is in a way easier in that I already have a Google account.  Honestly, though, I feel like putting less and less into Twitter.  Facebook is there, too, and I refuse to interact with it much because of their crap and creepy policies.

Maybe part of what I’m saying is that all these free solutions to attempt to make it easier to email your friends are eventually just a fad.  Sure, most such services are free, because they want you to use their advertising or mine your habits in order to spur future purchases.

My real point is that as technology advances, and as open source projects get more tidy and tight, there’s really not the same need for these third parties owning all our data.

Roll your own

Take Linode.  I think it’s safe to say that the average user will not have the patience to roll their own Linux build, to tighten it down, and to then maintain it with upgrades, disk management, etc.  What is entirely more significant is that for $20/month, there is  an awful lot of potential for some very powerful software running on super powerful hardware.

In re-organizing some of my photo albums and batch processing an awful lot of data, my Linode didn’t even blink.  Gigabytes of image processing and it ran quickly, without even hitting half its max load, continuing to provide the rest of my running services without a hiccup.  That is significant.  It also, importantly, means that for $20/month, there are services out there which can handle a reasonable number of people and a whole lot of content.

Then there’s the actual software: WordPress, Vanilla Forums, Zenphoto, and for those who want to get their hands dirty and still write clean code: CodeIgniter.  I know everyone doesn’t have the time for it all, but it only takes a few admins who do, who can connect to the people who need it.

The hardware and the network are here; we just need the movement and the (internalized) motivation.

Yes, I said exposure, as though it were some sort of bacterial infection.  There’s a bunch of information on the Internet; the one that caught my eye in a big way was Dan Yoder’s Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook.  The EFF also has a number of great articles related to Facebook on its Deeplink Blogs related to Social Networks.  I highly encourage everyone visiting this page to dive deeper into these articles, and for those that come in the future.

Look, but don’t touch

My advice to those who aren’t already in Facebook is that it’s best to stay away.  You’ve done alright by this point without it, and there are enough snags that it’s worth keeping away.

For those already in the system, I’m not sure that deleting your account makes all that much sense.  In many ways there is a lot of concrete value in having a Facebook account, connected to your friends and family.

With that said, I do think it’s best to not put any more information into the system, and to remove what Likes you have left.  Think of Facebook more as a read-only system, not as read-write.

Alternatives

In truth, there are countless reasonable alternatives to each of Facebook’s features, and you can rather easily find the same value outside. This may be the time to start a blog, a website, a Twitter feed, a flickr or Picasa account; or, sans all that, to just go back to email as a primary mode of communication.

There are countless other options where you can get out what you put in, without the same threats of privacy or lock-in.  Don’t click on any of the Facebook ads, and if there are people whose content you really like, softly encourage them to put their efforts somewhere else.

I’m not particularly pushing Google, though their Data Liberation Front is a wonderful initiative which puts the power back towards the user.  WordPress, additionally, makes it easy to export all your content in a couple of clicks.  Twitter has an option of protecting your content from anyone beyond the list of those who you accept.

Final thoughts

In the end, I think the solution is by a number of small movements.  With my Facebook account, I may still “Like” someone’s status from time to time, though I’m done with Community Pages or Pages.  I’m no longer letting Facebook import my data from Netflix or Twitter.  I’m no longer going to use its messaging, instant messaging, status updates, notes, wall posts, etc.  It’s up to you to decide where you want to go with all of these decisions, though I certainly do recommend less over time rather than more, in terms of any kinds of Facebook interactions.

Overload

At this point in the game, of the three big offerings out there listed above, Twitter is currently winning my heart for top spot.  Perhaps the rise of Twitter has spurred on Facebook and Google in a space which perhaps may not exist in the same capacity as they do today.  Fundamentally, though, the end result in all these networks come to a matter of data overload.  Twitter’s 140 character limit occasionally looks silly; the result, however, is that it’s forced its users to reduce the amount of data, which in turn lessens the load on our collective brains.

Tying down big bundles of data

Facebook, on the other hand, works with highly structured data.  Google, on the other hand, has worked on finding structure in huge masses of data, attempting to give a flexible, working structure for all varieties of content.  Now that Facebook has so many users, it’s begun to take the Google-like approach: I have more than 600 contacts in Facebook, though I contact nearly zero of them on a regular basis through that particular service.  Facebook’s recent redesign, emphasizing the search bar to be both larger and front and center.  Google, now with Buzz, is looking to very slightly structure the conversations it previously only attempted to catalog.  The two, then, are on increasingly intersecting paths.

Twitter, on the other hand, has avoided both of these traps: it’s a self-contained cataloging and reduction service, by which information is captured in a headline and a link.  Twitter is not self-sufficient, and their business model has been to allow for open access and extension by third party developers.  Search functionality has long been a central feature; and while the recent lists and retweet modifications are certainly more structure than was there a year ago, these are both features which are first non-essential, and secondly were largely supplied by third-party apps such as Tweetdeck who had their own RT and groups functions.

Back to Buzz..

My first problem with Google Buzz is in its approach towards privacy: by default, all Buzz content is made public. The only way you are allowed to post privately is if you first specify a Google Contacts group with which you want to share.  In essence, Buzz is copying functionality from Twitter in order to bolster its under-utilized functions.

Buzz as a commenting service rings rather clearly of Google Friend Connect.  Friend Connect has been around for a little while now, though it never quite took off.  Largely, it’s JavaScript-based systems were a bit awkward, both for display purposes and for the webmaster / developer.

Buzz as a Google service seems to also try and fold more users into both Gmail and Google Chat.  I’ve had a Gmail account for years, and I never at any point felt any real desire to utilize the Contacts groups.  There’s just not all that much reason for it, even though it’s been there for a while.  Indeed, the main difference between Google Chat and Google Buzz is that most conversations in the latter are not implied to be private, and are thereby more accessible to both search and data-mining.  It’s a brilliant, subtle spin headed towards putting our conversations out in the open.. where, I may argue, they don’t necessarily belong.  Moreover, Buzz does not seem to employ length limits for each post; and its public nature again heads more towards overload from all sources.

At this point, it’s hard to say where “social media” is headed, and how it will transform the way that we humans will interact with each other.  Community as a service is a bit of a new concept, and in this digital world it’s a tad scary to think to what degree fads and corporate market shares play a role in these interactions. Perhaps what’s most important is that we are able to forget the websites and the branding and eventually settle on the humans we care about more than the technology that connects us together.  I wish everyone the best of luck in accomplishing if only that.