Facebook is not all it was cracked up to be

Samuels: if Facebook is more addictive than crack, I am pushing for reclassification of the drug to the equivalent of a cup of tea

Nagged by colleagues and contacts, I signed up to several social networking systems last year. Several months on, what have I gained? Nothing.

Take Facebook, for example. Oh the excitement in 2007, as everyone rushed to find their primary school mates and add time-wasting applications.

Now in the cold light of 2008, the Facebook hype looks a bit silly. In fact, can I be the first to say Facebook is the new Friends Reunited: a rush to play with an exciting new internet toy that allows you to find old flames?

I now log in infrequently to Facebook to check I have not missed some life-changing message.

Which I haven’t ­ but you never know, do you? Because some people are still using Facebook alongside email and the phone.

Ah, yes ­ email and the phone. They were rubbish last year because everyone was social networking.

Now, however, users are beginning to recognise the inherent values of phone and email ­ and the flaws of social networking.

Unless everyone you have ever met is part of the network and can be contacted through the technology ­ as they can with the phone or email ­ people are excluded.

Many of my colleagues and contacts are not part of Facebook, so we cannot keep in touch.

Social networks are cool for Generation Newbie, the up-and-coming graduates who are already on Facebook. But for me and Generation Email, forget it.

And the same is true for LinkedIn. “Relationships matter,” says its tag line – ­ yeah, relationships do matter, but only if all your contacts can be contacted ­ and if half the business world is giving social networking the swerve, something is wrong.

Loved-up critics rushed to make statements last year about how Facebook was set to change the world and was more addictive than crack.

If crack is that bland, I am pushing for reclassification of the drug to the equivalent of a cup of tea.

But if a load of loved-up critics look crazy, what about Microsoft? It paid $240m (£122m) for a 1.6 per cent slice of Facebook, last year’s most popular social networking phenomenon ­ creating an implied valuation for the total business of $15bn (£7.6bn). Good luck and all that.

What do you think? Read the blog at: http://knowledge.computing.co.uk