Solving My Facebook Problem

My Facebook page has recently become noticeably harder to use. It’s too busy with distractions that some people seem to welcome, but I don’t. Here’s how I’m fixing it. (And please see another suggestion at the end of this post.)

First some background. Please don’t get me wrong — I like Facebook. It’s amazing, and my participation brings wonderful benefits in the form of breaking news, as well as deeper personal and professional updates, from my over 180 Facebook friends.

Of course, some of my “real world” friends (that is, people with whom I talk or meet regularly) are not on Facebook, but many are. And some of my Facebook friends are people I see only occasionally, though I care how they’re doing.

Being self-employed, my business looms large in my thinking, and taking care of business is my focus on Facebook. I have plenty of personal friends, and I’ve found that nourishing these social contacts is best done face-to-face, and less well by telephone, email, or on Facebook.

I realize people are using Facebook many different ways, and for me, it is primarily a business tool. Like with any tool, I aim to use it effectively and efficiently. Here’s my problem, and maybe yours, too: Facebook’s new format litters my home page — particularly “News Feed” — with every post from every friend, and it’s become too distracting.

I regret that some of my friends are so adept at the “Hey Dude, Way Cool.” kind of post, that I usually lose focus while reading my page. So here’s some general advice for everyone: Please keep your posts concise and interesting, and they will hold my attention. Otherwise, I’m gone. Reasonable?

For me, and maybe you, too, the benefits of Facebook lie in letting me, in just a few focused moments, track the personal and professional doings of those friends with whom I regularly work and network. I’m less interested in the daily doings of those friends I seldom, if ever, work with.

I’ve always been able to handle a few occasional trivial posts, but I’m now receiving a flood of them. Where are the “privacy” controls and filters to prevent those “Oh, My Gosh!” posts from displaying on my News Feed?

So for now, here’s my response. Until Facebook gives me controls to filter out those posts that don’t relate to my business interests, I’m “hiding” the posts of those friends who most consistently make comments I find irrelevant and uninteresting, often both.

All I’m saying is “Yes, we’re friends, but if you’re in the top 10%, pal, I’m blocking all your posts on my page. You might offer one gem every hundred posts, and I’m willing to miss it, if I can also miss the other 99. I’m not saying all your comments are worthless — just that they’re not helpful to me right now — and for me, life’s too short to become distracted when it’s time to work.”

Hey, wait a minute. Aren’t we trying to expand our connections, and not constrict them? I recognize that hiding a friend’s posts is a pretty brutal tactic, but tell me what else I could do. If Facebook’s new flood of comments is a problem for you, too, how are you solving it? Like with radio or TV you dislike: Turn it off?

So, I hope Facebook creates the controls we need, and soon. And if the controls are already in place by now, I hope they’ll tell us how to use them. Listen, Facebook, please stop distracting me. I firmly believe that a healthy view of life’s “big picture” requires our curiosity and playfulness, as well as hard work, but please let me choose when to relax my focus. THAT would be Way Cool!

P.S. By the way, my friend Andy Ebon just sent me a link to a blogpost by Adam Ostrow that offers a very helpful suggestion for solving my Facebook problem. Nicely explained. Check it out.