I freely admit that I am teetering on the edge of being a FB junkie, but I actually have a love/hate relationship with it. There are a lot of folks I'm "friends" with that share a passion for parchment crafting, and because there are few folks in the US that know about, or want to take the time to work on this art (it's not instant gratification), I go where the people are for support and information. I watch for FB changes, and make sure that with each change I tweak my privacy settings. And ad blocker is always on. Those ads can try chasing me all over the net but I'll never see them!

As for AOL, years ago, I was an AOL (AOHell) Host, dropping out of hosting duties when they started disengaging with their partners (i.e. the pets area was once brought to AOL users by VIN -- Veterinary Information Network), to provide their own "content". Some of the communities on AOL were actually started by individuals (here I'm thinking of the Homeschool Community, which was eclectic, diverse, NON-religious, and 15+ years ago one of the premier sources of information including lesson plans), who spent thousands of hours and dollars building these communities. There were a lot of niche communities on AOL, and in the beginning years, regular folks were (somewhat) encouraged to create and start communities for their favorite topic. It brought folks into the online world, at an hourly rate.

But, AOL's demise is not just tied the emergence of broadband. AOL's demise is also tied to their bottom line and their choices to increase their bottom line. At one point, in the earlier years of AOL, one rarely found ads on pages within communities if at all. In fact, I don't remember ads within communities back in the early days of AOL, when you paid hourly. Once AOL went to a base fee of $23 per month, they started losing money. So they looked to ads to increase their bottom line. Then, they decided that they would take over and run the communities that had been started by small groups and individuals. (perhaps that was the other way around, I've slept a few hours since then) The last major step was to disengage with partners, most rather abruptly (i.e. 30 days notice). (As a side note, I believe that communities was a way for AOL to compete with CompuServe back then?)

As these steps were taken, there were a lot of revolts by users within these small specialized communities. For example, someone homeschooling would be inundated with ads from fear-mongering, religiously based H$LDA, as they were looking for science lessons. Sorry, AOL, but that crap didn't fly for a lot of folks, and they left. Of course, that was after AOL threw out/banned the folks that started these communities in the first place (as they were banned, folks followed them out into the net). While a few thousand folks leaving AOL in one community was a drop in the bucket, start adding up those few thousand people in hundreds of small communities, and, well, that's a lot of people that were very dissatisfied with the changes, and turned to using AOL as simply access to the net, if they stayed with AOL.

FB & Blogs: I've run into an interesting situation. As I said above, the main reason I'm on FB is to connect with others that have a passion for parchment crafting. A lot of these women (and a few men, but mostly women) are at least 65 years old. Many that are online can be found at one of only two message board forums or on various yahoo groups, but have been migrating to FB. Now, almost 2 years ago I had started a blog that is completely dedicated to parchment crafting -- but didn't touch it for about a year. When I went back to it earlier this year, one of the gals I had met in a yahoo group for the art, finally commented on one of my blog posts that she rarely "accesses blogs because she doesn't trust them." She'll share all sorts of personal information on FB, but doesn't trust blogs. Go figure!

I always hold out grocery store discount/loyalty cards as exhibit A. Some database at Kroger is tracking every purchase and creating a very detailed and valuable profile about you.

I've always refused to get a card until somebody gave me theirs. So now I get the discount and she gets tracked.

Am I missing something here, or is the issue that you really are concerned that data miners might discover what kind of bread that you eat? By offering discounts on your purchases, they in effect are paying for the use of that info. Of course that info is sold as many times as possible, but as for my bread ($), I'd rather be spending considerably less (in my opinion) on groceries. Also I find that the $8 I save on every tank of gas is substantial. Maybe you could bring me up to speed on this one.