I logged on Facebook today and without touching a single button, I was granted with the screenshot above. You’ll notice 6 ads to the right (all of which are based off my history and that I’m mostly already a part of) and a huge sponsored AD by US Weekly about some Will Ferrell event. Over time I’ve tried to give Facebook the benefit of the doubt but they’ve crossed the line. I think the turning point was when they went public and they’ve had incredible pressure to meet monetary expectations. They’ve succumbed to bombarding their users with ads at the expense of a pleasurable experience. Ads are acceptable if you actually LIKE (see what I did there) what you are about to do and herein lies the problem with Facebook, its grown stale.

I haven’t had a new friend request in the last 5 years. An exaggeration perhaps but the thrill of Facebook was initially framing your social circle. Now all I get are married, pregnant, or stay at home low life’s updating FB with the latest snorefest. It’s still a fine place to set up events because everyone has an account but in terms of anything new or significant, Facebook is old and irrelevant. What I believe happened here is that their demographic switched over time. They went from the new, hip thing to be a part of 10 years ago to catering to parents and infants and anyone else who could click a mouse. I don’t think Facebook is going anywhere but its definitely lost its glimmer. So what is trending?

As much as I’d like to think I’m on the ball, I know I was well behind on Twitter and I recently signed up for Instagram which would make me a dinosaur by tech standards. I know Instagram was bought by Facebook but the simplicity and focus of Instagram separates it. A quick way to upload pictures and video is the heart of Facebook. Meaning that without that you have pointless text updates. That’s why Instagram has stolen Facebook away from Facebook. I think also the fact that anything I post automatically uploads to my blog makes me want to use it more often as well.

The same idea applies with Twitter. Keeping updates to 140 characters limits what you can write but it also makes you be concise and hopefully more entertaining. I still haven’t figured out how to gain followers but I’m hoping in time and with this blog, it will come. I know there are tons of people who use Vine and the amount of likes is overwhelming for certain videos. Where Twitter shines though is that if you want people to view your Vine, you’d tweet the link because it’s a better, bigger platform. The idea of Facebook and having “friends” is what limits Facebook from the snowball effect of Twitter. Knowing that you are tweeting things and there is a potential for mass hysteria is what I think is appealing. This is why I really hope that Twitter doesn’t go through with the IPO even though I know they will. More business leads to more ads and more bullshit to sift through.

You won’t see rnningfool have ads until I start landing 20,000 unique visitors a month. You can see from my handy counter down below on the right that I get somewhere between 250 and 300 a day which gets me to almost 10k a month. If I can double that, I may have to start trying to pull some money out of this site and sell out. The bounce rate on this new theme is also remarkable as its been below 10% the last 3 days. I have a feeling that’s not accurate but something I’m monitoring. I’m still hoping that someday someone who reads this site will also be a twitter follower but that seems like a crazy stigma from this audience.