i am not sure if you are like me who is tired of using facebook and their blatant breech of privacy. and for allowing the spread of blatant lies

i understand that it is difficult to police what anyone says and yes i do believe in free speech. however allowing abusers to take advantages of their system to reach vulnerable people.

so let's start with what is good with facebook. and what needs to be replaced.

i like connecting and socialising and in business they call it networking. i guess thats where the term social networking came from, but the connotation of it, means different things to different people but the objective is the same. to connect to people, to make or keep old and new friends.

i once heard and read that when craigslist decided to abandon their personals section, the world went into a frezy and wanting to move away from craigslists. craigslist's business model wasn't in personals anyway and interestingly enough from very nobel business practices. they only made money from real estate, and it was cheap to advertise on craigslist. they had a huge userbase and somene considered that in order for anyone o any company to replace and unseat craigslist. it would take close to 500 different websites, from amazon to match.com. they are a force to be rekoned with. although a little dated now but their notoriety is still very much alive. and unlike the big boys they didn't start out to create a billion dollar company but to give back to the community. today they make 690 million and from what i remember they only wanted to only make enough to keep the lights on. only what is enough. so they charges very minimal to a very limited set of listing. they set out only focus on user experience and kept it to the minimal. i like it's philisophy and they have pushed back on banner advertising and capitalising on user profiling. i want to go back to those simpler times. yes it has advanced a lot of technology. but i think somethings are meant to be locked up until we understand how to use these powers responsibly

the manifesto

so learning from that lesson of craigslist i want to take a page from craig newmark's approach.

• 1.focus on the customer
• 2. make just enough money
• 3. don't let advertising be the sole source of revenue

using that as a manifesto. now let's list down how facebook can be useful for us and not let creating an influence or an audience the sole purpose of our existence in the era of the social network

to be continued