Is Facebook still our Friend?

If you are like me, you loved Facebook at this time last year. It was a great place to catch up with friends (some close, some not), post pictures, spend a little time and feel like it is a useful tool. But over time, Facebook has changed. Some of it has come from internal forces. As FB has had to change to keep advertising clients happy and stay ahead of competitors, the site has become more difficult to use from a consumer standpoint.

Some of the forces are also out of their control. It has to do with the loyal FB users. FB has become like that college bar that was fun to go to all the time, but then you started to outgrow it. The same people were there every night and fewer and fewer were people that you would actually want to hang out with. And as the smoke cleared (literally), you would see the loud, annoying guy in the corner, the girl who was into everyone else's business, and that the place wouldn't necessarily pass the next health code inspection.

Well, the FB equivalents are the strange "Friends" from high school who have now hijacked your home page with updates on the every detail of their lives, the people you thought were normal but who constantly post passive-aggressive comments and polarizing opinions, and virus-laden spammers who push out messages through unsuspecting user accounts.

In the meantime, sites like Pinterest are gaining a foothold in the social world, and Google is trying everything in its power to make Google+ its next golden goose. While I still log-in and use FB, I have to wonder if there is a giant-killer around the corner to knock it down to size.