Is Facebook Down for You, Too?

Just wondering. All of a sudden everything disappeared a few minutes ago, and my cell phone is getting a couple of updates, but not a whole lot. When I try to go to my page....nothing.

I've spent the day kind of defending Facebook's right to make changes. I can't say that I LIKE the changes, especially once I realized that I was getting updates on Friends commenting on their Friends' comments. Who needs that?

So I started editing what would be in my feed, person by person as they popped up. Then all it would say is (for instance) "Indiana Jane shared a link" That's even WORSE.

Many people commented on how Facebook is a free service. That's not exactly true (and I'd just got done saying this when it shut down...so maybe I'm just paranoid). Facebook isn't free. It makes a HUGE amount of money. And the product that they offer is US. They sell the information we give them, our links to our friends, our regional connections, and yes, now even the data off our cell phones. And they also advertise TO us (unless you have Adblock, which I love). We are their commodity, and they need to keep us happy in order to keep us on Facebook and not somewhere else, like, say our personal blogs.

The image that comes to mind, and maybe its fairly apt, is the human farms in Matrix. Remember when the evil cyber-agent dude said when they made it too perfect, people couldn't handle it and died? Maybe they do like to shake it up because in the end, we do need change and trouble every once in a while. And believe me, Facebook knows that with each change, people get upset for a few days and adjust. If they don't change every once in a while, something else will come along and steal us away, or we'll grow bored. If they do change a bit, they'll get some complaints, but we will settle down. But if it is too much -- then it will stay upsetting to people, and they'll go over to Google Plus, spend more time on Twitter, blog, or actually go hang out with their family, which is what I am going to do now.