Bill Gates, the uber tech figure of this era says he recently quit FaceBook because, according to him, “too many people wanted to be my friends.”  Gates,  who was honoured Saturday by India for his charity work, told an audience in New Delhi he had tried out Facebook but ended up with “10,000 people wanting to be my friends”.  He complained that he had difficulty figuring out if he really knew these people who wanted to “friend” him, and it got out of hand, so he quit.

Coming from any other person, this wouldn’t have registered a blip on the world wide web.  But Bill Gates?  The guy who practically invented personal computing, and has a natural gift for evaluating anything tech?  It’s fair to say this is an omen for FaceBook.

Right now, my FaceBook account is a mess.  I have to admit I was resistant when I signed up for it a couple of years ago, as part of a StomperNet course I took on Web 2.0.  The course required us to sign up on FaceBook and “friend” all other course members (several hundred).  Well, I really haven’t met these people; I have not developed a “real life, person-to-person” relationship with them, so therefore don’t really care to talk to them.  Since then, my “real” friends found me on FB, and I friended their requests, so now my FB account is a mish-mash of real friends and not-real friends.  I log on about once a week to see what some people are saying, but I must say, for me at least, FaceBook doesn’t inspire me to participate.  It’s just another thing to check besides my four email accounts, which take up a significant amount of time.

Gates, who sought to drive a vision of a computer on every desk and in every home, said the information technology revolution had been “hugely beneficial” but added: “All these tools of tech waste our time if we’re not careful.” (my bold).

This is something to take seriously.  I wrote previously that internet marketing can be like getting caught in a spiderweb.  Make sure to stick to one thing, and don’t spread yourself too thin.  Get away from the computer every day and spend time with your loved ones.