Facebook is a persistent Julie McCoy

I was trying to figure out why I can’t seem to get into Facebook. Now I think I know why.

I don’t like how Facebook is an annoying persistent overly intrusive Julie McCoy.

For those not in the know, Julie McCoy was the activity director on the TV show ‘The Love Boat’. As activity director, her job was to get people to mingle (and, apparently, fall in love).

Well, most of the Facebook apps that I’ve seen or been invited to join have been gimmicky like a cheezy-activities director. Also, all, All, ALL of them seem to make it way easy spam anyone I have ever sent an email to, like a client or some unknown sucker on an organization mailing list whom I do not even know.

<dripping sarcasm>Wow. That’s proper social etiquette.</dripping sarcasm>

I understand that Facebook wants to be the electricity that fuels all these cool apps (oooh, oodles of comments there, too). But, really, they should have some standards.

And don’t give me this ‘openness’ krap. Facebook shouldn’t mar their brand with krappy stuff.

Example: If I said that I was going to build a pork-fat rendering plant across your street, you’d freak out and wave the zoning laws in front of my face, right?

Same here.

I never used Facebook ‘in the day’. But, I spoke with a lot of users early last year (pre-platform) and all they spoke about was connecting to people through various forms of messaging, direct human to human communication.

And these post-platform apps don’t even act as useful social objects that trigger conversations, either.

I’ve been fighting starry-eyed Web 2.0 wannabes for a long time to get them to realize that the wildness at Facebook is not something to emulate. Sure, openness is great, but let’s not let the developers build willy-nilly and mess with a brand we are working hard to build and keep.

Zoning laws can be helpful and stimulate, too. I made the mistake of calling it ‘curating’. That smacked too much of untouchable objects behind a window. A colleague suggested ‘steward’, promoting the good and discouraging the krap.

What do you think?