There’s growing talk lately – which I hadn’t honestly noticed until after I said it myself, but there it is – that Facebook and other social networks have “peaked” and are on the fade.

Facebook may have peaked, but it's probably never going to go away.  Neither will MySpace, or Google Buzz, or Yahoo Buzz...they might shift, one brand or another might drop, but ultimately the "social network" is here to stay.

I mean, you're here, right?  Why?  Because other people you want to talk to are here.  Same reason I am.  Does it make me nervous to expose any sort of potentially private information to some big corporation?  Distinctly so, which is why I limit the information I reveal.   Of course I get to be a "special case" because I'm a deliberately public person, but the point remains - I'm as paranoid about the privacy issues as anyone.

But I still want to be in touch with people, and more or less importantly depending on one's priorities, I need all of the friends I can get, to help spread word about the work I'm doing and drive traffic to my site and hopefully garner contributions from like-minded individuals who appreciate my work, since this is the only "job" I have (Going back to college soon; that and the whole money thing will be a different video/post).

It's no secret that I want to change the world; what better way to get started than on a computer network devoted to restoring old friendships and acquaintances, as well as making new ones? And then get them all to connect backwards to me, and then outward from me again through Twitbookuzzle accounts, and suddenly I have a "network," and people are using my forums and watching my videos and buying my books and calendars and thing if I ever actually get them written and/or assembled and they're contributing cash to help me do my thing and suddenly instead of being a homeless moron babbling into a vacuum I'm a net.legend breaking ground, innovating, and educating.

I think Facebook has peaked, will hold a fairly steady plateau for a long while.  People will drift off and stop using it but not actually delete their accounts because hey, they want to stay in touch right?  But they'll stop checking it every day and start checking it every week or every month.  They'll think more about what they reveal here or there, but you know what?  Ultimately it's all just about advertising. 

I happened to catch a great little piece on NPR today (August 4, 2010) addressed this very thing.  I thought it was pretty cool that a day after I said FB was peaking or had peaked and let people know I'm working on a way to rely more on my own space rather than this for communication and networking, here's a "media expert" saying the same thing on national radio.

What this more open online society is creating is not some insidious invasion of privacy that will drag the skeletons out of your closet just as you're about to score that 250K job. it's more of a "Minority Report" world, where the ads that pop up are tailored specifically to your interests.  The example used by the correspondent was a gay person writing about a breakup might suddenly find themselves - rather creepily - seeing more advertisements for gay relationship counselors or homosexual-specializing psychotherapists dealing with depression. 

Is that f'king creepy?  Yep. 

Is it ever going to go away?  Nope. 

Is there a way to avoid it?  No. 

You can reduce granularity - the 'creepy' factor - by detaching from the grid or using a pseudonym everywhere you go online, but you still get targeted ads and you always will, as long as you have a mailing address and any kind of public identity.  Education.  Job.  Memberships in professional organizations.  It's all part of "how to figure out the kind of shit Mr and Mrs. Consumer McBuyitnow wants to buy so we can more effectively advertise to them."

It's really just the same marketing it's always been, just that instead of getting advertisements for the local BMW dealership because you live in an upper middle-class neighborhood and graduated from a four-year college and maybe have other public affiliations from which consumer assumptions can be drawn, technology and our own inevitable drive to talk about ourselves has allowed for much tighter granularity in targeting. 

Now instead of getting an ad for BMW cars because of your zip code and education, you'll get an ad for a red BMW convertible with a black leather interior that prominently features an 18 year old model with prominent nipple hard-ons showing through her little black dress as she stretches out over the hood because of your zip code, your education, your single relationship status, your age, and that subscription to www.greedy-college-girls-with-no-marketable-skills-who-schtup-middle-aged-guys-for-money-but-don't-call-themselves-hookers-because-that's-just-not-cool.com that you forgot about.

You can cancel the subscription and yank out your modem cable...but you'll still get the BMW ads.  They just won't be as PRECISELY targeted.

So yeah.  Facebook:  probably peaked and in for a long plateau.  Probably not the exodus like you saw from MySpace, just people logging in less frequently and moving toward smaller, more closely targeted websites...sites that will inevitably and ironically be defined by demographic information culled from places like Facebook.

I don't think FB or Google Buzz and so on are quite the boogey-men that they're given credit for, but they're also not particularly concerned about your privacy.  That's YOUR job.  Here's how to stay online, stay accessible, and stay private on ANY network, in a few easy steps:

1. Use the most restrictive privacy settings that are useful to you.  For instance you can find me and my website addresses on Facebook with nothing but my name, but you can't find anything else out about me because there are things I discuss there that are just for family and friends.  On Google, you can see quite a bit of my profile information, but that's because *I made it that way*.  I'm one of those types who wants to be found.  Most people, even if they want to be found, don't want to be found and tell people what city they live in or what their hobbies are at least before they've said hello.
2. If you want to write about private things in public but you want them to stay private, use a pseudonym.  "Kink" sites, LiveJournal, and similar places that allow you a measure of anonymity are good for this.  NB:  Use your head - posting a photo of your face on www.spank-me-for-money-you-big-stud.com isn't going to keep your secret very well.
3. Don't sign up for free mailing lists and magazines.  Maintain a couple of different e-mail account for registration on sites that you don't really trust or don't want associated with your offline identity or otherwise aren't sure about.  I'd use a "real" address for anything that I'm going to associate my "real" name with.  To register for a pudding-wrestling fetish site just to see what all the fuss is about, probably not.
4. The most important thing:  DON'T TELL THE WORLD WHAT YOU DON'T WANT THE WORLD TO KNOW.  If you're gay and in the closet, don't put "gay" as your sexual orientation on a public profile that can be tied to your real world ID.  That's just dumb.

As always, thanks for reading/watching…and don’t forget to tell your friends ;-)