Pure Facebook? Those days are but memory.

Moving right along from all the OiNK hooplah, I'll turn to something I recently discussed with a a friend. Without warning, she turned to me and said, "You know, our children will never experience pure Facebook." I thought about it for a moment, and then agreed. Though I've never been a fan of Myspace, I was a big Facebook advocate initially.

I jumped on Facebook sometime in the summer of '05. I liked it because it was clean, simple, and uniform. No one was allowed to clutter their pages with huge swathes of copy-and-pasted code (read: Myspace). Everyone had their little place, and everyone's little place looked the same. You distinguished yourself with your words. In short, it was brilliant. It looked something like this.

Now, Facebook is a mess. I'm almost afraid of it. Facebook now embodies nearly everything I've always disliked about Myspace. The applications were neat at first, and now they are ubiquitous. I really don't like them, and I even have one or two. Everytime I log on, I see something like this:



Yet nearly all of Web 2.0's social networking communities are becoming this way. The more popular something becomes, the more complicated it becomes, but not necessarily in a good way. Myspace and Facebook seem to have fallen prey. Though I'm not a member a quick look at Friendster brings back nightmarish flashes of Myspace's homepage. Orkut is owned by Google, so that could be very good or very bad.

I think the phenomenon started occurring when marketing entered the picture. When Facebook was just some student's side project, it was more innocent and welcoming. But once folks started realizing the untapped revenue-generating power of these sites, the gloves were off. Ads now plaster most of these sites from floor to ceiling. Surprisingly, Facebook doesn't seem to be too bad about it. Their marketing is more subtle. Offering to sell prints of users' photos or having an Apple plug in the newsfeed are a few ways.

The point I'm getting at is this: Nothing is free. Facebook is no exception. We have to decide what is acceptable when it comes to the "payment." Are you willing to be solicited for money in order to browse your friends' profiles? Do you mind the clutter of the applications, enough to stop using Facebook? The answers are likely "Yes" and "No," respectively. I'm willing to bear it as well. I'm not ranting so much as I am lamenting the passing of something that was good, and free. Our children may not be able to experience Facebook in the sort of pure form that I did, but hopefully they'll be able to be a part of something new and innovative for their generation. It may even be in virtual reality.