In 2010 I decided to stop using my google account. In 2011 I decided to leave facebook, twitter and other $cool stuff. This was a hard decision. Not because email migration was annoying, nor because I liked to do social networking. It's hard because most of friends depend on either google or facebook to chat. Since I moved to another country, phone calls and presencial meetings have been substantially reduced.

So we keep in contact by using IRC and XMPP. I have good friends who use IRC, mostly Debian people, which is great. I also have lots of friends and contacts not using IRC. In the past they used ICQ, then moved to MSN and now they are using google talk and facebook. I used to explain them that we could talk by using their google account and my Jabber account due to an open standard called XMPP. I enjoy having short conversations in random times, which sometimes takes hours and helps us to keep affectionately connected.

It used to work so well. Now it seems to be gone. I've noticed that I can't connect anymore with contacts using google talk, probably because google has finally put into action their decision to abandon open standards for instant messaging.

I'm not going to list here all the good things that happened in my life when I stopped using all this crap services. But I have to admit that it really hurts to see my contacts disappearing day by day, feeling like my friends are being devoured by these companies, with zero critical sense. You'll say that good friends won't disappear like that if they are good friends. I agree, but the convenience of having people from one-click distance in random hours a day makes a difference, mainly when physical distance is a blocker.