Facebook was still good when:

• it didn’t become like Myspace with all those ugly apps. Yeah some of them are useful, but do you really need to give each other plants and write graffiti on each others’ walls? They just add way too much clutter.
• it didn’t try to copy Twitter by having everything in feed format. The more Facebook hates Twitter and tries to emulate it, the more it makes me want to quit. Seriously. Facebook is and should be completely different.
• it was exclusive for students. I really liked it when it was college only, but it’s even ok with highschoolers. Nowadays even my grandfather, aunts and uncles have Facebook. I’m not saying that I don’t think that they should have Facebook, its just that it feels that they have encroached on something for my generation. Facebook used to be clean: devoid of 43 year old stalkers and whiny pre-teens. It used to be only for me and my peers.
• it still showed how many wall posts someone had. I found it fun to look at that little wall post count. You could pretty accurately tell if someone was really popular, a complete Facebook addict, or too cool for Facebook just by looking at their wall post count.
• it didn’t take over people’s lives. It hasn’t taken over my life, but I know plenty of people who wouldn’t know how to react if Facebook suddenly got shut down.

I don’t really use Facebook anymore as you can probably tell. My profile automatically updates when I favorite a video on Youtube, tweet, upload pics on Flickr or post on this blog. I do appreciate that it gives all my stuff greater exposure. I definitely don’t expect anyone to subscribe to my Youtube favorites or my Flickr RSS feed.

I just wish that Facebook didn’t suck so much. I really saw it as a useful tool that I would have paid to use. Now I just see it as another account on just another site. I understand that they changed many things in order to gain wider popularity, but when do you stop? It seems as if they are slowly trading quality for quantity and are just leading down the road that ends with a big bloated business like GM or Ford that has no focused direction. Maybe I’m wrong. Hopefully I am wrong.

Update: Sylvia has pointed out that you can still filter friends by network by editing the preferences. It is just not enabled by default.