Facebook. The time suck of all time sucks. A recent study revealed that the average American spends 40 minutes each day checking their Facebook news feed. Since I work at home, I weave Facebook throughout my day in small bites. In between calls, when I am through checking email or while I am nibbling on a snack, Facebook is an easily accessible distraction. And Facebook is making an absolute killing. Laced with advertisements, Facebook’s coffers are getting bigger and bigger. Recently, a writer at Wired.com documented what happened when he liked everything he saw on Facebook for 48 hours. The result was that his feed turned into nothing but an ongoing stream of advertisements. No big surprise. If you click like on everything, including ads, you become Facebook’s favorite target. So I thought I would do a similar experiment. Only in my case, I would be hiding EVERY ad that displayed on my feed. Whether it appeared in the feed or in my sidebar, I would click “Hide all ads from ______” I kept doing this every time I visited until there were no more ads to hide. What happened next? Well, it’s not really mind-blowing. But with all the linkbait articles promising to blow your mind, I didn’t want to be left out. Facebook stopped displaying ads on my feed. In the last 72 hours, I’ve seen zero ads on the right sidebar and only an occasional ad in my news feed. Naturally, I hide it. So what happens down the road? Will I become the target for untargeted ads? It will be interesting to track. All I know is I don’t mind my feed consisting only of those I follow. Oh, and that spammy title? Facebook is cracking down on these starting immediately according to their statement on Click-Baiting Headlines. So I guess this will be my first and last attempt at it. As a Facebook user, do you like the advertisements you see? Would you rather have an ad-free Facebook experience? Feel free to post your comments below!
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