Earlier this week I deleted my Facebook account. If we were friends on the service and you can no longer find me, this is the reason why. 

Part of why I did this certainly had to do with privacy. I read Brian Acton’s (WhatsApp cofounder) account in Forbes this week. And I have been following many of the discussions over the past year:

Privacy legislation is perhaps the only thing that could pose an existential threat to a business that’s entirely powered by watching and recording what people do at vast scale. And relying on that scale (and its own dark pattern design) to manipulate consent flows to acquire the private data it needs to profit. -Natasha Lomas

But at the same time, I’m still on and use Instagram and WhatsApp (both Facebook companies), and I use Twitter pretty much every day.

So I am certainly not in a position to be smug about this decision. Hopefully this post does not come across that way.

The simple truth is that I had more or less stopped using the service. I had long ago turned off mobile notifications and so it had become more of a hassle than anything else.

Every now and then I would go on and find notifications and messages that I wasn’t responding to. 

So it had finally reached a point where I thought to myself: Why keep my data here (by the way, you can download all of your data from the site) and why check it sporadically if I’m not really deriving any value out of it? Simplify.

I enjoy Instagram because taking photos is one of my primary passions outside of real estate and design. And I enjoy Twitter as a source of news and mostly civil conversation. 

I am easy to get ahold of. I don’t need Facebook for that. Any of the social links at the top of this page (if you’re reading this post on the web), will get you there.

Forbes recently pegged social media influencer Kylie Jenner’s net worth at somewhere around $900 million. That makes her the youngest (she’s 20) person on Forbes’ annual ranking of “America’s Richest Self-Made Women.” 

And if the trend line continues, she’ll be the youngest self-made billionaire, ever. Mark Zuckerberg apparently holds that title right now. But he was a classic underachiever and only became a billionaire at age 23.

Most of Kylie’s net worth is derived from Kylie Cosmetics, which launched less than 3 years ago, but did an estimated $330 million in revenue last year. Forbes values the company at almost $800 million. And Kylie owns every bit of it. 

The reason I am mentioning this today is because I was fascinated by the above Forbes article. It’s such a powerful example of social media leverage.

Those of you who know me or are regular readers of this blog, will know that I’m an avid social media user. 

My favorites – judging by battery consumption on my phone – are Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat (donnelly_b). I think it’s incredible what these platforms are doing to branding, marketing, personal connectivity, city building, and the list goes on.

To that end, the March issue of Harvard Business Review has an interesting article by Douglas Holt called, Branding in the Age of Social Media. Whether you’re running a company, a city, or a real estate development project, I think you’ll find the information relevant.

The article starts by describing a shift, brought about by social, whereby big brands are now struggling to capture the attention of consumers. Instead, consumers are listening to individuals and more grassroots movements.