TechCrunch has an article on a decline in the number of visitors to Facebook. 

Since I posted that I deactivated my Facebook account yesterday, a number of people have pinged me on exactly why I did so.

I thought I take this opportunity to explain.

First, most of what is on Facebook is a completely waste of time.

Zombies, Vampires, whatever.

I am getting really strict with my time (On the Shortness of Life), so I am not going to do another movie trivia quiz.

Second, the stuff that is not a waste of time (my contacts, my photos, my contacts photos, etc.) are things I don't want on Facebook or any other of these social networking sites.

Rather, I want there to be a way for me to host my contacts, photos, etc. and then share them with whoever I want using a standard identity mechanism (OpenID, etc.).

Since I have my own site, I can just do this or Google/Microsoft, etc could host something like this too.

• www.douglasp.com/friends (returns a feed with my contacts, provided the caller has the rights to view my friends)
• www.douglasp.com/friends/AddFriend (post with your OpenID, tell me that you want to be my friend...)
• www.douglasp.com/photos (returns a feed with my latest photos, provided the caller has the rights to view them)

You get the idea.

Liberate your data...