Facebook is one of he most popular web services nowadays. It has surpassed Myspace and Friendster in dramatic ways. Facebook entered the social networking arena late. First it was friendster and then myspace and several years have passed before facebook rose and eventually surpassed the two pioneers of this field. When facebook became popular, friendster and myspace didn't have this microblogging functionallity which let users post updates or post whatever is on their minds. This breakthogh functionality made facebook popular and even more useful. It gives users a way to shout out their feelings and thoughts to their friends in one or two sentences. When this was introduced, I was so addicted that I even post my private activities. I was also addicted to reading posts from my friends.
It was fun until I I got tired of scrolling, clicking and following my friends' messages. I realized that I had so many friends already and no matter what I did I could no longer read all of their messages. I even felt that I was already wasting my time. Yes, it is really a waste of time reading posts from your friends because most of them just post whatever comes to their mind. However the main reason why ths update functionality of facebook is doomed is the fact that a single user has limited capacity. A user can only read no more than 100 messages per session. This is called information overload - the classic problem humans suffer in the nformation age. Though computers are fast and have large capacity, humans are so limited. We don't have the energy and time to read all the messages of 500 or more friends. Today, I no longer open my facebook account to read those messages. Even the last time I checked it, new real time messages from my friends come up almost every minute. I just don't have the time to read them. I believe that in years to come there will be no one using this facebook functionality.
