The Facebook Diet

It's Friday, May 18th. Facebook stock, through an initial public offering, will be sold for the first time today. This occurrence will make a few Americans ultra wealthy - those that helped Mark Zuckerberg build (Or swipe, whichever you believe) an extraordinary platform for advertising and marketing. All under the guise of friends and family!

I won't be buying stock today, quite the opposite, I'll be divesting some of my interest in Facebook. This is ironic because at work, I help instruct and guide our franchisees to use Facebook in their business. Facebook does help bring more awareness to what you sell or service, because so many people use the service. I'll go further and state that you'd be crazy as a business owner not to have a strong online presence and Facebook Business Page. But I'm referring to personal Facebook, you know, the reason we all went and set up our own walls and profiles in the first place? I've been a user for 5+ years, before the fad hit many. Now I'm going on what I call a "Facebook diet."  I am cutting way back on my personal use of Facebook, primarily because unlike a business, I stand to gain little by pouring more of my time into the exercise of keeping my page and profile updated along with checking the never-ending flow of status updates that come from my group of Facebook friends. I like my collection of friends and I have enjoyed looking at their pictures and their posts. My friends are great! I just find I'm not getting enough of what I want to warrant the time I spend on the site, so I'll be doing less of it. Maybe I'm leading the trend of folks who will find that like American Idol, The Biggest Loser, and other pop culture sensations, at some point, it's just not important anymore.

Diet may not be the best terminology to use, but it sure gets attention as a blog title. Most people look to "lose" when they take on a diet plan. I'm on the other side of the coin, I'm looking to "gain" by virtue of my Facebook diet. Personally, I look to gain back the time I would be spending online for more worthwhile purposes. I'll use this time to better myself, my family and my friends. Just like Facebook said would happen :)