When Facebook Becomes a Nuisance!

Like many people I joined up on Facebook a couple of years ago. At first I found Facebook kind of fun, after all it was an easy way to track down long lost friends (unless they were female and might have married since I knew them last so changing their surname). I found it amusing to be able to "throw a sheep" at someone metaphorically speaking, and the whole set up could be quite entertaining.

Sadly I have over months found myself with rather a quandary. I don't want to leave Facebook because I might find a lost friend re-discovers me through Facebook, (or me them). I also have genuine friends on Facebook who tend to use Facebook in preference to their email, therefore I risk losing touch with them if I cancel my Facebook account.

On the negative side I am totally fed up of finding my email inbox crammed with invitations to Facebook events I have no interest in, friend's requests from people I do not believe I know, but am too worried I might have forgotten who they are to risk not accepting their friendship request at the risk of offending them, (especially if I do know them), friendship suggestions from existing friends of mine, not to mention invitations to join groups or many applications such as "Hatching Eggs", "Farmville" etc. I do know that I can block invitations to individual applications, but as fast as I block them I receive more from new applications.

When I log in to the website I find numerous friend suggestions, and I can easily find I waste an hour going through them approving them, (even though I don't know if I know these people or not). In fact, right now, the best thing I can say about Facebook is that it helps me to promote my hubs as I can announce on Facebook every time I publish a new hub.

I am somewhat bemused as to why Facebook is therefore so popular. After all, is it just me that finds the sheer volume of rubbish they receive from Facebook tantamount to receiving huge amounts of SPAM mail? Wasn't it just so much easier to use old fashioned emails to interact with our friends, and what was wrong with using "Friends Reunited" to find long lost mates?

Right now I am rarely logging in to my Facebook account because I know I will instantly lose at least an hour of my life. I log in now about once every two months in order to preserve my precious time for gardening, hubbing and having a life! Any emails I receive from Facebook are instantly deleted on the basis I shall deal with the invitations etc the next time I log on to the actual Facebook site itself. The only exceptions I make to this rule are if I receive a direct message on Facebook from someone I know. If I recognise the person and read the message that is shown in the email, I will log in so that I can reply.

Surely other users of Facebook get equally frustrated by this too, and isn't it about time Facebook addressed the problem and included user settings that allow us the option to block application requests and event invitations completely. Additionally I feel Facebook should find a way to ensure that friendship requests include the requirement for the person making the request to state how they think they know the person they are requesting friendship approval from. This might at least give a clue to the recipient as to if they genuinely know this person or not before they accept or deny any friendship requests. My last suggestion would be that Facebook ask women registering with the site to list any former surnames (if they wish to), which would make it far easier to track down women friends that had either married, been widowed, or divorced and re-married since the person searching for them last knew them. After all, if I am looking for a Nikki Smith who was married to an Adam Smith, but since then she has been widowed and re-married to a person with the surname "Yates", any search I do for a Nikki Smith will not offer results, but a search for a Nikki Smith who had "Smith" listed as a former surname would turn up her name.

I reckon Facebook need to make a whole load of improvements before they can totally relax in what they might feel is a true success story.