When will we stop using Facebook?

I help run an open studios event in Massachusetts. We in the last couple years have recently started using more social media.

Facebook has been useful for us. It drives a lot of traffic to our site and presumably some of those people come to our event (we made an official facebook event so that we don't have a bunch of unofficial ones).

Oddly its a difficult way to communicate with members and build community. Facebook also requires payment to guarantee showing up in feeds now, for a non-profit its not worth it. A fair number of our younger and older artists just aren't on it (myself included). We're finding email is the best way to communicate whats going on with our members.

Facebook works best if Everyone is on it. Once fewer people aren't on it becomes less useful. I think thats its staying power currently. Its actually amazing that it runs at its scale. Myspace was popular, but it didn't have the nearly the volume of users as facebook (plus facebook is better at sharing photos, seemingly its reason for existing). If your not on it and your friends use it as an organizing tool, it can be a little isolating (Don't be that guy/gal who they have to go out of the way to invite to things...), but with more people not on it email seems to be returning as an organizing tool.

By that logic, if people started leaving Facebook for another service to post their photos, the older crowd would follow them in order to keep seeing their grandchildren.

I use it for:

- Informing old friends about so-called "Life Events" - not by actually posting, but by private messages

- Private groups of separate friend circles, mostly for sharing cool news/websites or music

- My facebook newsfeed mostly constitutes local news, international editorial/opinion pieces and lots of pictures of nature stuff which I like. I've unfollowed most people so I don't get their posts.

I don't have a one-stop shop for all the above except facebook, so I think I'll definitely be using it for a while.

I would hesitate to say it's very, very bad. I don't filter people on Facebook only because I disagree with them; I filter people on Facebook because, at one point, I really enjoyed the company of that person and their current tirade of hating (the police/minorities/the west/the east/obama/republicans/etc) stands to slightly jade our friendship. Anyone who can actively filter ALL opinions they disagree with is either delusional, locked in a cabin in the woods or much more active at filtering than I am.

I used to actively post on facebook a lot through college and a bit later (joined when I started college, the year before facebook opened itself up to non-college accounts). For the last 2-3 years its been an idle account. Used to make several updates a week, now I make 2-3 updates a year. I removed the app a long time ago from my phone because of privacy reasons.

I've noticed I get bombarded with far more notifications as an inactive user than I was when I was active. I get emailed notifications far more frequently when I used to never have them emailed.

A friend posted on your wall? Notification. Someone liked a post on your wall? Notification. A friend is having a birthday? Notification. A friend's birthday is coming up? Notification. Invited to an event? Event coming up? Event tonight? Notification. Someone with no connections in common commented on a post you've never read on a large public group that you have never contributed to? Notification. Someone completely unrelated to you LIKED a post you've never viewed on the same large group? Notification.

Facebook gets desperate when a user starts churning, but holy crap I just do not care. The only reason I keep this account is because of close family on the network. I could divide my friends list by 40 and I don't think I'd miss any of the lost content.

All the stream ever shows is shared posts from Buzzfeed-clones. It's not interesting. It's a feed of spam with a very, very rare text post or meaningful photo.