• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, February 15, 2008

Multibillionaire Bill Gates, whose company invested $240 million in Facebook just last year, has already abandoned his Facebook account. A Microsoft spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that Mr. Gates hasn't deleted it, but that he has stopped using it because he was inundated with friend requests. More likely, he tried to delete it and found out it is nearly impossible to do so. Even if you deactivate your account, according to The New York Times, Facebook still keeps a copy of all the information you ever posted. And, it's still possible to contact people through deleted Facebook pages.

Not to pile on, but according to MSNBC, Facebook-types are turned off by too much advertising on social-networking sites--one reason the amount of time the average person spends on a social-networking site has dropped 14% over the last four months, according to comScore.

Did we just hear the death-knell of Web 2.0? Probably not, but I think we are seeing a divide between those who have a life and those who invent a life online. You don't have to be in freshman-level Psych 101 to understand the attraction of living the "enhanced" electronic life, where there is little nuance and no accountability for truth, accuracy or intent. Online, you can be the wizard behind the curtain wielding power that you haven't earned and do not deserve. A cottage industry is already growing up around "managing" negative information posted by the previously powerless so that it doesn't show up high in Google searches.

Like you, I get a half a dozen invites a week to join this social net or that one, and like you I have joined a few only to quickly let them die because I have a life and can't spend it responding to questions from folks I hardly know--or, like Mr. Gates, don't care to know. I frankly don't care who just wrote what on someone else's Wall or who just joined the Carbon Foot Print Group. And if I ever get a notice that someone I hardly know bought a shoe or a book, I will stick my hard drive in the Kitchen Aid and hit the puree button.

I see my kids spending countless wasted hours on social networks of all kinds keeping up with the minutiae of their friends' lives. I understand that knowing what everyone is wearing to school on Dress-Down Day is vital intelligence to a 12-year-old, but little has crossed my social nets that is anything approaching vital. I suppose if I had a hobby other than annoying my friends by randomly inserting them into this column, then I might enjoy being part of an online community of people who also did something other than annoy their friends.

To me online is a tool. I spend nearly all day, nearly every day working with this tool. It is a miracle. It puts information at a click that would have taken me hours to track down in the "old days." I read far many more perspectives than those tossed onto my doorstep every morning (when they actually hit it) or from the broadcast "news" operations that have become as vapid as local news. I buy almost everything I buy online. I communicate with nearly everyone I know online. I occasionally take a moment and watch stupid videos online. Thanks to the Internet I can get directions to some obscure high school where my kids have away games, and I can find a vet who makes house calls.

But that's where it ends. Virtual sex lost its appeal in the first 30 minutes of the Internet. Just as I prefer to have real sex, I prefer to have real friends, and not necessarily networked together. I like to keep my work-related friendships separate from my coaching friendships and those separate from my dinner-party friends. There is a lot to be said for seeing facial expressions and body language and hearing rather than reading conversations.

I think Mr. Gates has the right idea. Unplug. Delist. Erase. Take Down. Do NOT Friend. Your life will be better for it.