One Week off of FaceBook

[captain_slinky]

One week without Facebook.

Eight "Personal Message" Notifications

Fourteen "Tagged You In A Post" notifications

Four "Wrote Something On Your Wall" notifications

Seven "Commented On Your Link" notifications regarding cross-posted LiveJournal posts.

Three people who have come back to LJ in some capacity just so they could interact with me :)

ZERO E-mails, Texts, IM's and/or phone calls from people who felt a need/desire to make sure that the stuff they posted on FaceBook got through to me.

It's *inconvenient* to avoid Facebook, but not at all impossible. I've been laid-up all week with a sore ankle, too, and thought for sure that I was going to just casually start browsing FaceBook again out of boredom, but y'know what? Didn't happen! I even had MORE TIME for all that stuff I'm always so upset that I don't have time for any more!

I wrote stories!

I watched Mystery Science Theater 3000!

I had great conversations with folks in the various communities here on LiveJournal!

I created *content*!

Even though I mostly just sat here all week long, I felt PRODUCTIVE! It's been GREAT!

So now I have to decide... what do I do with FaceBook?

Comments

[sasjhwa.livejournal.com]

Opinions ahead. Heed or not. Up to you.

Clearly you have people on Facebook who want to interact with you on more than a meme basis. They are not going to come to Livejournal. I would keep the account, continue to cross-post, and check it every few days for personal stuff.

You use Livejournal for all the awesome stuff you love. You let your friends use Facebook for all the awesome stuff they love and to read your LJ cross-posts. Every now and then you catch up on the FB stuff. As long as your friends there know you aren't shunning them but are just doing something different all will end up happy.

It is also good to nurture the FB community every now and then because it is simply a larger audience and at some point you may want a larger audience to talk to about some project or other you are working on. That book I've been nagging you to write for years, for example ;-)

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

A bit of extra data extrapolation to further the reasoning behind my anti-Facebook position (because upon reading my post I can see how you would make these conclusions):

The 25 combined "Tagged You In A Post", "Commented On Your Link" and "Wrote Something On Your Wall" Facebook interactions were ALL Meme-related. "Brian likes Star Trek, I will tag him in this picture of the new Star Trek poster along with 27 other people I know". "Brian likes Comic Books so I will post this picture of Superman to his wall and then tag 27 other people in the post". "For some weird rason, this link that Brian posted 3 weeks ago is at the top of my News Feed, I better make a comment on it".

The 8 "Personal Messages" were mostly from Alex Weller, with two of them being from my Mom trying to figure out why her TV was broken. Alex joined LJ, my Mom is still kind of clueless about how technologies in her life are connected :)

So what I'm taking away from this experiment (this far) is that I'm really not missing anything by not being on Facebook, and I'm regaining a good hour-and-a-half of free time that I used to devote to scrolling through pages and pages of Memes in hopes that somebody had said something *real* on Facebook.

aurora77 commnted (below) in the way I'll probably use Facebook from here on out.

But thank you for the opinion! Thank you for taking the time to type it out! Perfectly legit and reasonable based on the information you were presented :)

[sasjhwa.livejournal.com]

I have a problem with Livejournal that I'm sure there is a solution that you can point me to.

I leave a comment to someone's post. Is there a notification somewhere that tells me someone responded to it? I haven't found it on the front page and I'm tired of scrolling through my feed trying to find posts that I commented on while wondering if someone responded.

I would be more likely to use Livejournal (or at least cross post here) if I had access to this feature.

[aurora77]

I get email notifications on replies and comments. You can turn them on/off here:
http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=notifications

[sasjhwa.livejournal.com]

I hate email notifications and avoid them if I can. I've burned up 3 email addresses because my email gets pulled off programs like that and I end up getting so much spam I can't use it any more.

Is there a built in notification like Facebook has?

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

I've had the email notification on for lj for 12 years, haven't received any spam yet...

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm... I receive an e-mail every time somebody comments on something I wrote, comes from a custom e-mail specific to the user. Example: I was notified that you had commented here with an email from "sasjhwa - LJ Comment" with whatever the subject line from the conversation is. Body of the mail is MY comment followed by YOUR comment, and a handy text box for me to reply directly from the email with. I'll find the setting when I get home for ya ;)

[sasjhwa.livejournal.com]

I know how to use the email notification. I just hate email notifications in general. With all of the other social media platforms having a notification tab it annoys me that LJ doesn't. It can't be that hard to add one and it is a sign that LJ is not adapting to the current social media trends. You wondered why LJ is not robust. This is one of the reasons.

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

I really have no idea what you're talking about then, sorry :( Didn't even know that Facebook had a Notifications Tab?

[sasjhwa.livejournal.com]

We must be having a communication issue between us. :D I'm sure you've seen it.

On Facebook in the upper left beside the company logo are 3 tabs. "Friend Requests" "Inbox" and "Notifications."

When someone posts in a thread you have commented it it notifies you in the "notifications" tab. That is what I want on Livejournal.

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

If I *have* seen it, I've never used it? Different tools for different types of users, I guess :)

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

Mayb this? When I visit the Livejournal Main Page (http://www.livejournal.com/), right under the "Livejournal Today" section where thy do all the Spotlight Communities, is "Journal Comments"? Lists all my most recent comments as well as comments made on my posts? Do you have that? It's the first thing I see every day when I go to livejournal.com...

[sasjhwa.livejournal.com]

On mine it only puts up comments to my own posts, not replies to comments on other people's threads.

[khristle.livejournal.com]

Ok, figured it out! On LJ go to "message" (top left hand corner right under your user name) , on the right hand side click "manage settings" click on the "Notifications" tab, under the My Account you can choose to have replies to your comments sent to your LJ inbox.

[sasjhwa.livejournal.com]

It is in a completely different spot on my page but what you pointed me to is just what I was looking for. Now we'll see if it works.

Thank you so much!!!

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

HOORAY :)

[aurora77]

I know what you mean. I gave it up and felt so free (and safer, privacy-wise!). I don't feel so tied to G+, like I originally did with FB. I occasionally look over my friends page, but sometimes I'll go a couple weeks without it, and I'm okay with it. Events end up in email. If someone messages me, I get an email and I'll check it.

I deactivated my FB account, but if you hang onto it, just set a once-a-week time for checking messages. Remind people of where they can contact you with a post now and again. Maybe once a week at first, then once a month for a few months. Reply to messages via email or another method you would prefer they use. That should give people a more-than-reasonable way to connect with you.

I'm doing more posts to try to get my friends talking again. Let's see how this works.

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

That is so very reasonable! I had originally thought that I wanted to cut FaceBook completely out of my life, but leaving it open as a way for the FaceBook Zombies to contact me if they need me is a good strategery. I'll reply to stuff people say at me - what I NEED to do is just stay away from the News Feed. The hours of scrolling and scrolling and scrolling in hopes that SOMEBODY posted something *real*...

[khristle.livejournal.com]

I would like if you continued to cross post to FB. My phone has so much FB integration that I know right away when you post something new. I do enjoy stalking you on the internet and IRL. (sometimes I watch you when you sleep. Oops, I've said too much)

[snarky-imp.livejournal.com]

Prior to comment reading I thought "duh, it's obvious. You set aside one day a week for FB checking and the other six days of the week you rejoice in all your free time." After comments I still say the same thing, only possibly without the duh.

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

It's already annoying to scroll through a single day worth of Meme Reposts in search of real updates, I can't even bgin to imagin how irritating/tiresome it would be to scroll through an entire *week*!