My dear friend Gerrit Eicker tweeted Dave Winer’s blogpost in which Dave announces he deleted his Facebook account. A decision that I’ve been toying with these last few months. A while ago Gerrit already invited me to Diaspora, a privacy-friendly alternative to Facebook, and he keeps asking me why I didn’t become more active there, instead of Facebook.
I can name one reason in particular. I have connections and interaction on Facebook with people that I don’t have elsewhere, nor can I easily migrate those interactions easily to a different channel. For instance the people related to my fencing club, the fencing community in general, old schoolmates that reconnect with me, members of my youth orchestra. Those connections are recent additions to my Facebook-experience and I’m not ready to let go of them.
Diaspora is a wonderful initiative and maybe I should give it a better try, but for now it feels too much of a YASN (Yet Another Social Network). There’s a limit to the spaces I can take care of and I prefer to take care of spaces where others talk back to me
At the same time, I truly believe that Facebook is heading for a drastic decline in activity and membership as soon as the general public starts to realize how much information Facebook unrightfully gathers (about their kids). However, people are now so accustomed to having online interaction that they’ll be looking for alternatives. Perhaps this is the time to start inviting all my reconnected friends to Diaspora. That’ll be a first for me, usually a passive networker.
Still undecided, so I don’t delete my Facebook account yet, will enjoy the conversations there and keep my eye on Diaspora’s development.










Weekend experiment
I created a little movie for the international fencing tournament my club organizes every year. Recognize its style?