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For the first time in my life, I’m down on Facebook.  I’ve always been a fan and staunch supporter.  I believe it has helped me better stay connected with friends than I ever would have without it.  I didn’t get upset over the various changes, privacy and layout, over the years.  I just liked Facebook.

That was until recently.  It seems like less and less of my closer friends are as active as they used to be.  Some are more involved, but it seems for me that Facebook isn’t providing me with the diversity of friends’ activity as it used to do.  It’s seems like I’m hearing from the same group of people a lot and others a lot less.

I’m not sure why some of my friends aren’t as active as they used to be, but I can tell you why I use it less.  From a technical standpoint, Facebook is ruining its own product.  Considering the fact that it has 800 million users, Facebook’s mobile apps are buggy and the actual website itself is getting clunkier.  Any of you who use Facebook from your iPhone know these pains.  At least half of the time, the app crashes on opening.  Plus, there’s the weird glitch that pulls up a wrong picture or places your comments on the wrong photo.  The last two times I tried updating my profile picture, it didn’t choose the one I wanted but instead selected one, seemingly at random, from two years ago.  It’s easier not to use Facebook than to deal with the frustration.

Beyond my personal use of Facebook, I’m experiencing new problems using it organizationally as Church Juice.  Our content is getting less exposure, resulting in less interaction, because of how Facebook decides who sees what.  The number of impressions, or people reached, has taken a dive.  And like other aspects of Facebook, features that were there one day are gone the next—only to return a few days later.  Facebook is notorious for making tweeks along the way without notice or explanation.  They’re equally famous for announcing new features but releasing them late or not at all. Timeline, anyone?

As much as it may sound like it, I’m not trying to make a curmudgeon argument.  I’m not shouting “give me back my old Facebook layout.” Nor am I saying that change by itself is bad.  My simple point is this: Facebook, which has to be social by its nature, is making it hard to share.  By trying to make it a hub for everything you do, Facebook lost what it was best at: sharing what you’re doing with friends.

Lately, I find myself spending more time on Twitter, a service I’ve openly bashed on multiple occasions.  I have a new appreciation for its simpleness and ease of use.  I also like new up-and-comers like Path and Pinterest.  They’re visual and simple to use.  Instead of copying Facebook, like Google +, these social media start-ups are thinking about new ways of sharing.  Especially when you look at something like Path, it takes the best of social media (visual sharing, updates and location tracking) and puts it into one easy to use app. It’s still unclear—especially for Path—how organizations and businesses could use it.

While I’m personally suffering Facebook fatigue, let me make one thing clear: I’m not abandoning it.  Facebook is still the biggest, most-used social media tool out there.  And while I’m having some personal fatigue, I know it’s still an incredible tool for Church Juice and other organizations.  Using Facebook fatigue as an excuse to keep your church or organization from utilizing Facbook is a lazy.  Like any communication tool, you have to look at what makes sense to accomplish your goals.  And if you want to use social media to better connect with your congregation and their friends, Facebook is still the best to do it. 

For years, I didn’t like using Twitter on a personal level, but I knew it was an important tool for Church Juice, so I embraced it for work.  And now I’m sort of in the same place with Facebook.  While it’s not my favorite thing personally, I know it’s still important.  Our job as communicators is not to abandon a technology that can be good for us.  Instead, we have to realize where that technology is weak or where it is changing so we can best use it to reach people.