I use LinkedIn for my professional networking. If I want to stay in touch with friends I use old school technology like the phone, email and instant messenger.

This is great if you haven’t seen it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi4fzvQ6I-o … puts the ridiculous value of Facebook into perspective as well as the next bubble breaking for all these companies that have no hope of creating true revenue models.

.. and then they added the Application *SPAM* API.

I choose consciously and intentionally to share my personal info and derive immense value from having my family, university friends and business contacts all inside a secure environment and it is fun and i spend all my time on there and nowhere else

if they need to share my birthday with coca-cola for me getting all that value FREE then go for it by all means

call me an Ayn Rand fanboy but I am disgusted with bashing anyone that achieves success and all the bottom feeders trying to run up hits for their own mediocre attempts by linkbaiting with insincere sensationalist garbage

in fact, facebook unique visits are up 20% in November

there’s many alternatives out there, I am sure a couple of envious losers closing their facebook is not causing any sleepless nights in the Zuckerberg household; cutting off your nose to spite your face

go and excel in the world and build your own successful startup, otherwise use ning or myspace or whatever

Some of the flack is envy, while some of it is part of what’s absolutely necessary to keep them in check, and not abusing their power (and you can bet your tooshy that information IS power).

Oversight is key. Like good government, the only thing that keeps it honest is if it’s done in the light of day…

Wish we’d have taken that approach in the lead-up to the Iraq war and all that talk about WMDs that ended up DEAD WRONG.

Also, I think that it has become everyone’s favorite blood sport to kick companies who have excelled. For instance, the same has been true with Google. I read all the time of people scared that Google is going to take over the world. I think at the heart of a lot of criticism is that companies such as Facebook and Google has knocked it out of the park and others suffer from envy.

My life has become easier with tools such as Facebook and Google.

I am sticking with them.

I ultimately decided to stay on, only because I use it now and then just to keep in touch with some old school-buddies.

Lord knows, I use it FAR less now than I did. Only to send an occasional “What’s Up?” to a friend now. FB’s privacy violations have left a seriously bad taste in my mouth…

While I wasn’t personally affected by Beacon (nothing about my activities was posted, etc.), I don’t need to wait to be punched, to duck.

Now, if it was EquiFax we’re talking about. . .

In a living, growing organization it’s easy to go off-course. As outsiders with our hindsight at 20/20 it’s easy to say that they are evil, full of hubris, or whatever. But what we should remember is that smart companies are always experimenting with new ideas. Some of those ideas pan out, and some don’t. It’s the nature of life as well as business. Rare is the time when a single mistake will take down an entire company.

The real gauge of a business (or a person, for that matter) is their behavior over time.