Before reading this post, you may want to see my other two posts:
So, let’s say you’ve asked for your Facebook account to be deleted and you’ve gone through with the 14 day waiting period and didn’t get cold feet, and now your Facebook account is GONE! Now what? How do you communicate with your friends on Facebook? Here are a few suggestions:
Facebook Messenger: if you created that second account, or even if you didn’t, Facebook has recently updated it’s Messenger app so that you can use it without having a Facebook account! You will have to put in your phone number, but once you do, you can still invite your old Facebook friends to chat with you just like before.
Instagram: Yes, I know this is still a Facebook app, but it’s essentially it’s own independent social media entity, and you can be on Instagram without a Facebook account. You can post your photos and short videos there, and all your friends can see them and comment. You can even send private messages, and tag people in posts.
Twitter: Not quite as chatty as Facebook, and you still will get some of the same divisiveness as you did with Facebook, but it’s a good way to stay in touch with those friends who use Twitter. You can also post photos there, and links to quizzes about what your spirit animal is, if that’s what you really want to do.
LinkedIn: It’s kind of like Facebook for business, and you can add people and post photos and chat and stuff. I’m not a huge fan, but it’s another good way to network with people.
WordPress.com: If you are feeling particularly chatty, you can open up a WordPress account and have your own online Blog! With WordPress you can post whatever you like, and allow people to comment, (or not), and moderate those comments. There are an infinite number of plugins so that your WordPress site can do just about anything you might want it to, including having your own private forum, if you’re really ambitious.
You might also want to think about where to store all of your media files that you saved when you downloaded all your files from Facebook. For photos, there are many free alternatives:
Google: If you sign up for a Google email account, Google will add in their “Google Drive” storage plan for free. Along with “Google Drive,” comes “Google Photos” where you can store all of your photos and videos if you choose. You can also share those photos and videos with anyone you wish. If you already have a Google account, you already have Google drive and Google Photos.
Flickr: This service is owned by Yahoo, and it’s a great place to store photos. With a free account, you have 1,000 gb of storage for your photos, and that’s plenty for most people.
Amazon: If you have an Amazon Prime account, Amazon will allow you to store ALL of your photos on their servers for FREE. That’s right. An UNLIMITED amount of photos stored on Amazon’s servers for FREE. The only downside to this is that I don’t feel Amazon’s user interface is as good as some of the other sites, but it’s still an amazing deal.
For videos, most people know about YouTube, but there’s another video service that you should take a look at as well: Vimeo. If you have the “Basic” free account on Vimeo, you can upload 10 videos per day as long as they don’t exceed 500mb of video per week. That’s not a bad deal.
There are so many other places you can go to interact with people or upload your media, too. It’s just a matter of looking for them and utilizing what is out there. It may not be the same kind of “One Stop Shop” as Facebook, but there’s something to be said for diversification!