In an article previewing the changes Facebook recently made public, Mashable’s Ben Parr indicated that Facebook was making the changes because it wanted to rekindle an emotional connection with users.

After years of dating, the magic between Facebook and its users has dissipated. It’s a natural evolution in any relationship, but now there is another suitor vying for Facebook’s users. And a lot of people think this suitor is easy on the eyes.
That’s why Facebook launched three recent changes: revamped Friend Lists, a real-time news ticker, and the subscribe button… But these changes are just the beginning. The changes Facebook will roll out on Thursday are designed to enhance the emotional connection its users have to each other through Facebook.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but this strategy isn’t working for me! My relationship with Facebook has never gotten old because like an insecure lover, it’s never stopped demanding my attention, to the point of provoking annoyance. I’ve given it a lot of attention, integrating it into my professional and personal lives, but it’s proven unpredictable, unsure of the terms under which it wants to participate. It’s time to cool things off. Since Facebook has so few concerns about private affairs going public, how would you like to read my Dear John Letter to Facebook?

Dear Facebook, I hear you’ve gotten all dressed up and a makeover in the hopes of rekindling an old spark with us. It’s true things are bad between us, but it’s not something a makeover is going to fix. You’ve always been beautiful to me. You don’t really need new bells and whistles, either. You’ve generally been able to fulfill my needs, especially back when you didn’t take me for so much for granted as a loyal user who would stick with you no matter what you did or what you changed. Because I won’t.
This most recent bunch of changes was the last straw, especially since there are more coming. I want to cool things for a while. It’s not you; it’s me. The changes are not even all bad. I’m looking forward to checking out the timeline, in spite of the security and privacy concerns that have arisen. The thing is that I don’t even know who you are any more. You make these huge changes without consulting users and it confuses me. What does it mean for our relationship? For our relationships with other parties? Are you going to get me excited about something then decide it doesn’t work for you and completely dump it? Microsoft has made fewer changes to Office in the history of the product than you have 7 or so years Facebook has been in existence! Granted that has its origins in traditional software, but Google is known as a pretty radical innovator, and it has somehow been able to avoid unsettling me the way you constantly do!

I feel now that you are just using me to get what you want from advertisers. Who’s more important to you? What about my privacy? You host gatherings between me and my closest friends, and are privy to all my secrets, but I don’t understand what you keep secret and what you share anymore. And when I finally begin to under one set of rules, you change them again. Are you deliberately trying to confuse us?

Plus, you don’t ever give me a choice on any these things! I just wake up, look at you, and ask myself who’s Facebook today and what is it asking from me? What do I need to do to protect myself? You know what? It’s not me! It is you!

I need to cool things down a while. I don’t want to call it quits, but I need you to know I’ve been trying this other, younger site, Google+, and I like it. Yes, I know you are tired of hearing about Google, and yes I have heard that this service is just another move in its evil strategy to control the world. But it doesn’t feel that way to me, it feels like a product developed by a company that treats users as partners in product development, that is not afraid to try new things, but it doesn’t impose them.
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Instead of making radical transformations that go too far, then having to backtrack like you too often do, Google introduces changes in beta so we can experiment together. You change too much, too often, in ways that are too significant, and then you just ask, “how do you like me now!”

But be careful, it is not just about emotion. I’m not just overly annoyed that a free service has caused me minor inconveniences through some cosmetic changes, as some of the cartoons circulating last week have suggested. Those cosmetic changes are manifestation of fundamental shifts in the functionality of the product and the philosophy that guides its relations its relations with users, and it’s those that are a problem. They affect the way I can use your product.

You, Facebook, only came into existence in 2004. In 7 years you’ve has gone from a largely private network used almost exclusively to for socializing, in which one had to be a part of someone else’s network in order to connect with them, to a large, multipurpose site in which the assumption is that all things are public. The assumption is now one of publicity and privacy is opt-in. That is a massive paradigm shift. It’s the smart business move for you, to be sure. Were that not the case, then you would not be the runaway success that you are, with 800 million active users.

I can’t handle such significant policy changes, site redesigns or functional changes without sufficient advance notice or a Beta period before implementation. Haven’t you learned from so often having to reverse parts of past changes due to public outcry. Remember the controversy over privacy concerns with the Beacon advertising platform in 2008 or the controversy in February 2009 over Facebook’s Terms of Service asserting ownership over all the content people upload in February 2009. You got away with those, and I wrote them off as the mistakes of a company branching off into radically new, uncharted territory. By now, however, you should learned from your mistakes. Other companies learn from them! Here’s a good history of all your major privacy controversies. There’s a pattern here, no?

All these changes make it very difficult to incorporate Facebook in a marketing or business development strategy, especially if you don’t have a large staff just waiting to respond to the latest changes with site designs and new communications strategies. For example, I use Facebook in the fundraising I do for some of the small non-profits I work with. When I am the only person responsible for our online fundraising, I seldom have the time to keep up with the changes and implement them. For example, for a while there were reasonably good Facebook plugins that could be used by anyone in their boxes tab or as a dedicated tab in a profile, but just as these started to be effective tools for us, Facebook pulled the plug on Boxes and Tabs in Facebook sites. I don’t recall a lot of discussion in user communities, FB just decided. For me personally, it also made it impossible for me to continue using the service as an internet portal, which is how I had been using it.

The fact is that it is tedious to keep up with all your changes. Facebook is not a service offered to us for free, but rather an enticement so that we will participate in Facebook and you have something to offer to advertisers. I’m over it. I feel used. I won’t be taken for granted anymore. I don’t want to break up, because it’s not really practical. But I’m definitely reducing my dependency. No doubt you’ve noticed I’ve already have cut way back on my time with you. You’re just not that much fun anymore. I use other services whenever I can. It’s still pretty lonely in the world of Google+ and I dont know if it will be the success it deserves to be, but make me tired! Who knows, maybe we can work things out, someday, if you’re willing to change. Think about it!