I started using facebook in 2008. One of my Kiwi friends introduced it to me as the newest stuff everybody needed. Of course I was hooked as everybody else. But what makes facebook great despite its indisputable downsides?

I love it because it revolutionized the way of staying in touch with my friends. I’m also relying on it as my main news source. But it didn’t use to be this way from the start.

I’m a sceptical person, but my curiosity predominates and that way I tried out a lot of things in my life and never really regretted any of them looking back. Of course I’ve made mistakes on the way, but I always learned from them. I think you can only really judge something when you tried it out yourself. I know some people that don’t have a facebook account and some of them explain themselves why they don’t like facebook. I totally respect people who reject facebook but I’d love those to respect the people who don’t, too. Facebook has downsides, no doubt, but they are far outweighed for me by its advantages. I love to play risky sometimes when there's a good chance you are rewarded with some great stuff that spices up your life, and facebook as I said revolutionized the way I interact with my friends.

At the beginning I used facebook mostly to stay in touch with people abroad, especially as we made a lot of friends during our time in New Zealand. Of course you could write all those people individual emails but you can’t beat the fact that facebook let’s you take part in your friends’ life without emails, you just keep in touch without doing anything other than posting your status from time to time. And of course do I write even more individual messages via facebook or from my mail accounts or write sms or call my friends. Facebook just manages to keep all your friends up to date at once and leaves you more time when you actually meet in person. You can talk about different things, those very personal things for instance. One example are photos. You see holiday snaps of your friends via facebook so you don’t need to show or see them when you meet. And of course can you ask and see them once more if you feel like. Facebook is great because when you post something you have the chance to discuss with all your friends at once, you don't need to call them and explain it to them individually. It makes a lot much more efficient, same with events or groups, you just create one and invite the friends you think may be interested. Facebook has this incredible imediacy, something that's practically impossible in the real world. You would have to arrange an appointment to which a lot of people just wouldn't come. With facebook it just goes.

I didn’t really „like“ a lot or post much either when I started with facebook, partly because I knew that facebook would store every single activity of you forever on their servers. At some point I realized that there’s always private information that I still don’t share on facebook. But I didn’t mind others to know what I like in general, what I think politically and which organisations I’m supporting. It’s like in the old days where you had a Greenpeace sticker on the back of your car. Why not like them on facebook now. I do that with Greenpeace or Amnesty, Attac, Campact, a lot of museums, some environmentally concerned companies and much more. I don’t mind people to know that, I actually like it. Same with posts, I changed my behavior when Fukushima happened in March 2011. I was so shocked and also so angry about how public media dealed with the facts that I wanted to share my thoughts and talk with my friends about it. I never stopped since then and I was very active at the beginning of last year. It was right after my Postcard Project 2012/13 for Christmas where I’ve been in touch with hundreds of people via facebook anyway. What may have looked weird for some at the time was just normal business for me, plus I was quite angry a year ago and I needed to explain some things and make my position clear, especially with the founding of my environmentally friendly company NIKOLAIKIKI ahead.

But to bring it back to facebook I still write down what I think and keep everything off of facebook what I consider really personal, that’s most photos of myself, my family and close friends as long as they don’t agree. I don’t really post emotional things and all the other stuff that you would only tell best friends. It’s the same as with documents in the Cloud, I don’t mind them being stored somewhere, although I strongly oppose the worldwide surveillance by secret services. But even knowing that, there’s nothing that I wouldn’t have written anyway.

As I said facebook is my main news source and also my main communications vehicle, I’m writing far less mails via my mail accounts, it’s just so much easier via facebook. And the NSA is reading your mails anyway unless you have individual websites with dedicated servers out of the US. But when you use Mail on a Mac or Outlook in Windows the NSA is reading them, too.

Anyway, if you "like" a lot of news sites and organisations that have proven to supply reliable information facebook is just the easiest way to keep up to date. You just get all their information on your news feed. And I think a lot of the success of today's movements like Occupy or Blockupy has to do with facebook and its instant ability to connect with others. I love facebook for that.

What’s the downsides? Well, as I said, you need to be aware that facebook stores everything, they even store things you write down but delete again instead of posting it. That’s quite spooky, but hey, Snowden and all the other great whistleblowers have shown us that everything you do on the internet is stored somewhere, even your mails and even your sms, everything. All the sites you visit are stored somewhere, even very personal stuff like erotic images, films or porn. You can’t do nothing about it, you can only hope it’ll stay private somehow. At least if it’s legal what you're doing on the net you probably can get used to those facts without being too worried.

What you also have to be aware of is that facebook is a big business. You won’t be able to advertise for free and facebook is filtering your posts the way that not everybody of your friends can read them, they only appear on some of your friends’ newsfeeds, not all. If you really want some friends to be always on your newsfeed you need subscribe to those friends, otherwise you miss some of their posts. If some friends annoy you on the other hand you can always ban them from your own newsfeed. You stay friends with them but you don’t read any of their posts anymore. I do that with some friends, especially those who play games like Farmville, but that’s just me. I never really leave a friend as long as they don't post stuff that is really worrisome, like right-wing political stuff. But I wouldn't be friends with those ones in the first place.

Ooh, we’re getting to the positives again. Facebook is great because you can customize it to any taste, you can control what you see and what not. You can control who will be able to see what you post, same with all information you publish on facebook. You can set facebook up the way that nobody can see anything, you will only be friends, nothing more, if you feel like. You can "like" millions of things or nothing at all and control which information you get from who. You can upload photos or leave it, comment or not, check facebook every ten minutes or only once a month. You can write mails via facebook or leave it completely. There are millions of different ways to set it up.

I customizeed facebook exactly to my taste and I love it, you will probably use it completely different and love it, too, or hate it.

Or you may leave facebook again or even never ever have used it, but you won’t be able to deny that facebook has become a part of our modern world and its communication between humans. And I’m pretty sure it’s only the beginning of something that can’t be imagined to be absent anymore in a couple of years, just like cellphones or television are nowadays.

But never ever lose your skepticism towards new things, I just think it’s worth trying them out after a careful consideration.

Keep it up

KIKI