I went to grab a coffee this afternoon at Blue Bottle in Oakland and the barista let me know a celeb was in the area - Mark Ruffalo. I have no real opinion about him as an actor. I think I've seen two movies he was in and thought he didn't add nor took away from my enjoyment of said movies. However, I'm always curious when movies or TV shows shoot in Oakland (Moneyball, Matrix Reloaded, etc) so I went to rusty-trusty Google and typed in "Mark Ruffalo Oakland". Nothing remotely relevant came up. Tried a few variations, adjusted some search parameters (only searches within 24 hours - one week) but still nothing that explains why Mark Ruffalo was in Oakland. I then popped over to Twitter and typed in the same keywords "Mark Ruffalo" and got these results:

As you can see, the 5th result down mentioned Mark Ruffalo and Sungevity, a solar startup down the street. Clicked on the link and BAM!, Mark Ruffalo sitting in a Tesla Roadster wearing a Sungevity hat. Looks like he was in the area not to shoot a movie but to pop into Sungevity for something or other.

Now these are just two specific instances and of course, I still do most of my general search on Google but it's been a long time since I last found the answer to a query outside of Google. It's a death by a thousand cuts for them as Facebook, Twitter, and others start chipping away at their defenses. Google looked unassailable, much like Microsoft 10-15 years ago. Today, there's only one product of Microsoft's that I use, Office. I've switched from Windows to Mac for my hardware, Windows Mobile to iPhone for my cell, and even Exchange to Google Apps for my businesses. The endless cycle of rise and fall in tech is unrelenting and no one is immune.

Over the past few months, I've slowly started feeling as if my privacy controls on Facebook have been slowly tinkered with. Maybe it's because I've started getting a lot more friend requests from folks or maybe the latest Zuckerberg news got me skittish but I went to my privacy settings and sure enough some of my settings (or new settings) had been changed to "Friends of Friends" or "Everyone" from "Friends Only". It seems I'm not the only one either. To clarify, I won't deactivate my Facebook profile as I think it's still a great way to connect with old friends. I just won't be updating any more photos, statuses (stati?) or posts. I'm sure my Facebook contacts will appreciate having one less thing to read in their ever growing feeds.

A few articles came out today re: why teens don't use Twitter. You can read the articles for yourself and I think they raise some valid points. Most of the folks I follow (and who follow me) on Twitter are people of my age group or older. I only have a handful of people in their teens or early 20's category who I follow and vice versa - all of which are family. My own humble opinion on why teens don't use Twitter? They just don't have the bandwidth (mental not data) to deal with yet another social network. Facebook (and before them MySpace) came on the scene before Twitter and people jumped in and love it. I know people who spend hours a day on Facebook. Adding another social networking site that somewhat does the same thing is just extraneous.
 
Now, for the second part regarding why I think I'm the worst customer for Facebook. I post to Facebook often via Posterous. That means I'm posting updates, pictures, videos, etc. However, I rarely actually go to Facebook (about once a month, maybe). All that media takes up space and when people view it, that takes up bandwidth. But I've never clicked on a Facebook ad once and it's probably looking like I won't any time soon. I don't "interact" with the service in a way that might derive revenue for them. Who knows, maybe they've baked people like me into their model but I'm sure they would prefer it if I was spending more time on the site itself.