Push versus Pull relationships and why I left Facebook

Tomorrow I’m going to celebrate my first month without Facebook. I’ve been using the service since it originally came out and was only offered to University students. I stuck with it when they added the news feed feature that at first was heavily controversial, yet today is looked upon as one of the key reasons why the site is successful. I even stayed with the service when they decided to open up the network to anyone with a valid email address.

No one today can deny the usefulness of what Facebook has to offer. Unlike MySpace, which was originally used by bands to promote their material, but then evolved into a place where people tried to collect friends like a 10 year old tries to collect Pokémon, Facebook is all about building a network of people you actually know and providing an easy way to keep up with what they’re doing. For me, Facebook even replaced my phone book. It didn’t matter what mobile device I was using, I would just go to Facebook’s mobile site, login, search for my friend’s profile, and then call/text them. This feature was so handy that I didn’t even bother remembering my own phone number and would often go to Facebook just to copy and paste my digits.

Somewhere, somehow, Facebook started evolving into something that wasn’t very desirable. You knew MySpace was going downhill when you logged on one day and saw that you had a friend request from a bottle of Pepsi, or a can of Axe deodorant. With Facebook, it was logging on one day and seeing your mom, and your mom’s friends, trying to become your friend that may have signaled something weird was happening. For others it was the Facebook applications that sprang out of nowhere and quickly turned people’s profiles back into the hideous malformed websites that we all used to remember as MySpace profiles. For me, it was the realization that I was interacting with all my friends in a highly efficient manner that made it just as easy to see what my best friend was doing, as someone who I don’t even talk to, yet accepted their friend request anyway as a gesture of good will.

Before social networks, and trust me, there was a time before social networks, building a relationship with someone actually required some investment of your time. I remember, as a kid, calling my friends after school on a land line phone and seeing who was free to play basketball. I remember having to make a choice about who to tell about my date last night with the girl in our chemistry class. I remember that my best friend, by process of elimination, was the guy who I spent the most time with and revealed all my deepest secrets, fears, and desires to, and he would do the same. Back then my relationships with people involved contacting them to arrange a lunch or handball game at the local park, and then catching up. Today, thanks to technology and our need as a species to be as efficient as possible, we all tell Facebook, Twitter, and our blogs what’s new with our lives, and expect the people we care about to read/watch/listen to the media we produce.

When did this shift occur and is it a good thing?

Now I’m not an old person. I’m over half a decade away from being 30, so what I feel must be felt by some of you out there. Doesn’t it feel good to get a text or a call from a friend that simply says “hey, what’s new?” or an offer for a lunch date to catch up? That person is going out of their way to see what you’re doing, because they’re genuinely interested. You can say “nothing is new”, or reject the lunch date, but at least you know that someone out there was curious as to what is going on in your life. There is nothing like that in Facebook. The person whose profile I used to check 20 times a day, and the person whose profile I checked once a week, neither of them knew that I was reaching out to them and checking what’s new with their lives. Facebook has effectively made relationships so easy to manage, so fine tuned, that a lot of what makes relationships deep and meaningful, or casual and comfortable, has been lost in translation.

In the technology world there are two ways one can go about getting new information: pull and push. In the pull model you as a client check a sever at a set interval of time for new data. In much the same way that I as your friend would ask you daily, whether it be over the fone/IM/SMS, what’s new in your life? If nothing is new, you’d say nothing. If something was new, you’d tell me all about it. In the technology world the pull method is deemed highly wasteful since making a request for new information, and receiving none, is considered inefficient. In the push model you as a client don’t do anything and just sit, waiting, for a server to contact you. We see that in today’s world where I don’t ask you what you thought of the party last night, I just wait for you to update your Facebook profile. This is deemed as highly efficient, and therefore the proper way for a data transaction to occur.

When did the choices on how we manage our lives become tied to replicating the way infrastructure is setup to reduce server load?

When I left Facebook I received a handful of emails and texts from my core group of friends. They all had the same reaction: what the fuck?! I all told them the same thing: the time I spend on Facebook is time I could be spending hanging out with you. They scratched their heads, thought about it for a few seconds, and said OK like nothing ever happened. Today, instead of getting an email from Facebook saying someone has written on my wall or someone has sent me a private message, I get email from my friends asking me what’s new with my life and when I’m free to hang out.

We do hang out, probably more so than before I left Facebook. We catch up with each others lives. We tell each other stories. We build stronger relationships. I left Facebook because I knew that a status update typed into a text field is far more interesting to listen to out of my friend’s mouth over a pint of beer, or in the sauna, than reading off my mobile phone’s screen. Facebook was the best social network I’ve ever joined, but after a few years of using it I can safely say that it is going to be the last.

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

Bessy

I can relate to this post, I also used Facebook since the University Name was a required field. I agree about the time spent on Facebook “poking” or saying a one-sided “hello” on a wall, could be spent actually on the phone or meeting up. I also am disappointed that it’s made “friendships” be simple, and not profound. You can even set your Online status for chats for certain people to see you as Offline.

However, I appreciate the service of real-time photo sharing. Before social networks, after a holiday/day trip, you got your photos developed, put it into albums, then had friends over to share your stories and experiences. Everytime you met other friends, you had to say the same stories again, and same photos. Even carry your photos with you for impromptu meet-ups. Then, to share photos with your long-distance friends you’d send them email(s) with attachments, or via Kodak Gallery photo albums. If you forgot an email address, or it changed, they never got an update from you. Also, when various people in the trip took photos, and you didn’t, you’d have to get emails from them, to keep on your own computer; that is if you remembered to ask. Facebook photo-galleries and tagging, provide me with the sense of community I want with my memories.

What I appreciate is being able to share photos, and allow comments and captions, all at once. Of course, the closer friends that meet up with you get the juicy details about the adventures. It just makes it less taxing on my own time for photo sharing.

There will always be the person who you can also see at a bar that you don’t talk to much, that you ask how they are out of courtesy. Your real friends always stand out, whether you interact via IM/SMS/SNS or face to face.
Brian

Well said Stefan.
Lucky you didn’t have both children and a host of older friends and business acquaintances world-wide.
When your kids wanted to friend you, they did so to learn more about what you did as a kid then threw it back in your facebook.
Stefan Constantinescu

If I want to share photos, I’ll use a photo sharing service a la Flickr. Facebook was trying to become my phone book, my calender, my photo album, my video collection, what next?
Igor

Same here, even though i still have my account i never put pictures or comment… and I don’t join any conversations.
Actually i only have this account so that people wont say that i am living in a stone age.
I try to see my friends often and simply don’t care for others.
I hate accepting friend request from someone who I don’t care about but I have to because of one reason or another.
I live in a small country, people talk on Facebook but they pretend strangers when they meet in person wtf…
And what about privacy?
I don’t want to think constantly if i shared something i didn’t have to share to someone.
Friendship is about the time you invest in some person.
And we do not invest nothing on FB
Arthur

Terms like “social networking” or “social media” make me wanna vomit. Don’t ask why. And no, I am not a bitter old man stuck in years gone by. Internet is my friend.

Great article Stefan.
Carol

Facebook is just a tool, like email, like SMS, like passing little bits of notes in class in elementary school. Sometimes it can be handy, like trying to organize an event for a group of friends, where emails and SMS can fall short. Sometimes it can be in the way, like taking up more of your time than necessary. But if you let a tool dictate how meaningful your friendships and relationships are, then you have failed.

Building a relationship with someone WILL require investment of your time, before there were social networks, now, or in future. The FB statuses we update are usually just one or two lines. If I wanted to share more details of it with a friend, I would call/sms/email him and elaborate. If I notice a status from a friend that I wanted to find more info on, I’d contact her and ask. And my friends do the same back. Facebook is just one of many ways we can stay in touch, not the only way. Even in the era of “push,” we should still “pull” at those we care about.

“When did the choices on how we manage our lives become tied to replicating the way infrastructure is setup to reduce server load?” – when you let it.

Did you really spend considerably more time with friends after quitting facebook? Seemed like you spent just as much time in front of the computer. FB is just one of the many things you did online anyway. At least I didn’t notice a difference…
Dr. Jim Taylor

Hey Stefan,

Very well said. I loved the pull/push analogy for relationships. It does appear that social media are relationships easier and more efficient, but at the cost of depth and intimacy. I think the term friend has been cheapened as well; what people now call friends used to be called acquaintances. Many people also seem to be willing to trade quality for quantity. In my view, better to have a few real friends than dozens or hundreds of virtual friends.

A final thought. I spent about 1000 words trying to articulate my thoughts on life disconnection and a commenter on my post, the undude, said it better in just a few words:

“turn off your computer invite a friend out to dinner and leave your mobile phone behind.

face to face interaction creates more than communication. it creates memories.

how many discernable and memorable instant messenger sessions can you talk about with your friends?”

‘Nuff said.
Martijn Brouns

Halleluja! Fully agree. Think social networks work exactly the same as youth hangouts (you know: teens on scooters meeting each other near the old oak in the park). In most cases these places are fun as long as… mom, dad, the priest, the cops, uncle Bill, the mayor and everybody else tries to ‘pimp’ the place into something the ‘youth must like’.

Simply,.. that’s when such a hangout starts to hollow out and looses its DNA (read:Friendster/MSN/Facebook).

You simply cannot design a cool hang out for youth, like Nokia tries with its Ovi. Youth will only go places nobody else thought of. Why? Youth will continuously look for places where they can stand out in the crowd in stead of being the same as anbody else: a Facebook user or … a phonebook entry.
Jeff

I was once close to closing up my Facebook account but decided there must be a compromise that allows me to utilize the network on my terms, but remove the nonsense that goes along with it. One of the nice things about Facebook is you can actually change it from push to pull, and once you make this transition, it will change the way you look at Facebook.

The only thing you need to do is hide every single friend in your network from your newsfeed. Every single one. Don’t start picking and choosing..hide them ALL. I even hid my wife, mom and best friend. There are no exceptions.

Now when I go on Facebook, I use it on my terms. I login to a blank screen once or twice a week and I check in and interact with real friends to see what they have been up to. Simple as that.

Don’t destroy your network because you are tired of hearing about your random high school friend eating breakfast. Change it to pull and freedom will ensue.
Soozie

Good write-up, Stefan! But I also agree with Carol, all is about self-control.
If you want to hangout with your friends, don’t login to Facebook, just call them by phone.
If you have a spare time, relax, bored with the TV show, just login to see what’s going on with your friends within one minute, no need to talk hours with every one of them.
I also agree that you often receive friend requests from someone you don’t know, but you feel bad if you reject them.
Sometimes you don’t want to add your bosses, your office colleagues, your business partners, but you have to because they ask.
I think a better way to solve this is, make 2 FB accounts, 1 for your best of the best friends only (that you’re willing to share your life), and 1 for networking tool, no need to update this account so often, unless you need to.
Overall, FB is really inspirational
punknurse8

“Overall, FB is really inspirational”

Ummm……did I really just read that? Really?!