The Facebook wall is not for personal messages
The messaging module of any social networking site can be a tolerable pain, but for some reason, the Facebook wall has become an alternate email for some users.
Oh sure, a birthday wish or praise for a new job or even just a simple hello is fine. Perhaps the announcement of a party or some other sort of fun event. After all, it can brighten up a person’s day to see such greetings.
But then there are those other messages. The kind that should’ve been sent as an email or, at the very least, to a Facebook inbox. The kind that include a myriad of personal information — even phone numbers!
What I find odd is that my other social accounts do not suffer from this problem. No one tries to start conversations by posting comments on my MySpace page. Shouts on Digg are kept to what they were meant for — the solicitation of diggs.
So, what’s the deal with Facebook?
I think this phenomenon of posting personal information stems from folks believing Facebook is somehow more secure than anything else. Of course it’s really not. Wall postings with your phone number, home address, embarrassing exploits or whatever else can be seen by all of your friends and all of the friends of the person whose wall you’re posting it on. And do you even really know all of those people?
If you’re one of the wordy wall posters, please stop it. Stick to sending messages to inboxes. This is not only for your own safety, it also pisses people off.
A fairly easy way for Facebook to help out in this matter would be to allow for the moderating of posts. That way I could approve or deny as I see fit. However, since Facebook does not allow for moderating posts (which I find ludicrous), I just turned off the ability for people to post on my wall.
I hate that it has to be all or nothing like this, but I’ll turn it back on when both the users and Facebook get their shit together.
