Facebook, take back your pumpkin patch!

In the past week, I've been poked, shown love, sent a pumpkin and asked to join five different groups. Enough. Facebook is a very interesting and valuable social networking site, but I think it's started to jump the shark. Now, it's less about connecting and more about giving advertisers, in particular, the means to target and market to people based on very rich profile information.

But it's not advertisers, brands or worthy causes reaching out to me to promote their products, services or charities - my friends are doing it. It's rather insidious - brands build widgets with cute gimmicks or fun quizzes and encourage you to sign up and send to your entire Facebook address book. Really, it's viral marketing at its best.

But it's too much. I don't like ignoring my friends' requests, but that's what I find myself doing more and more. I hate to think that soon I'll just mass delete everything that comes into my Facebook inbox...just like I do with email.

I use Facebook (and LinkedIn for that matter) to help me connect - or reconnect - with friends, colleagues and even family. And, if I could turn off the "send me that cute icon" element within Facebook, I absolutely would. Until then, I'll politely decline my friends' requests and hope I don't start receiving Christmas trees soon.