Why is Facebook abandoning all its virtues in favour of the MySpace treatment?

You can't move this week for articles about Facebook and its stereotypically nerdy creator, Mark Zuckerberg. Even the free London papers have been heaving with mentions, from a roundup of social networking sites to reports of offices where a mass revolt led to access to the site being unblocked again.

Facebook can be fun. We know that; hell, we've written about it. So in light of today's myriad announcements heralding a new era of development and customisation I have to ask myself why it's abandoning all its virtues and turning into MySpace: The Revenge.

I have a MySpace page. I update it once in a blue moon. As a tool for an individual, I can't be bothered with it. As a tool for a business, I understand it, as it is through Shiny Shiny's MySpace page (and our forum) that I can freely communicate with our readers and ask them what they want to see on the site. As a professional, I love what MySpace can offer in terms of getting to know our audience and letting them get to know us.

We have a Facebook page too. Given the burgeoning popularity of the site with even the likes of Orlando Bloom, Peaches Geldof and a royal Prince or two joining, it was only sensible to give Shiny Shiny fans another way of accessing us. But I also have a personal Facebook page and I actually use it. I check in once a day to see how people are doing and show off to the world how successful and important I'd like them to think I am.

Why the difference between this and my attitude to MySpace? Because it feels like I'm surrounded by grown ups (Peaches Geldof notwithstanding). There is no sparkly customisation, annoying background music and none of the relentless personalisation of MySpace. Facebook strikes a balance between the exhibitionist in me and the crashing bore in everyone else. It lets me tell every girl I went to school with that I have the coolest job in the world and a gorgeous boyfriend without leaving me with the guilty feeling that I should paper the walls with stripes, have Nick Drake serenading every visit and include a massive emotional outpouring in my blog.

Facebook status feeds my Twittering tendencies, the Wall is a chance to slightly expand on that, but that's it. If I need a public emotional outpouring then I can use one of my personal blogs for the purpose, all of which are privately linked only to friends who might actually be interested in what I have to rant about.

And now Facebook is going to get the personalisation makeover. It started with the Marketplace, but that was unobtrusive enough not to matter much. Zuckerberg's understandable ambition is the driving force; he foresees Facebook becoming an "online operating system" where tools, applications and activities collide to make the site a central reference point. How long before my weak will gets drafted into joining in games that I'm not really interested in, or relentlessly recommending music to friends (who, if they'd wanted music recommendations, should have joined Last.fm)?

All Facebook's minimalist virtues are about to get flushed down the toilet like so much iGoogle. Why is it that two of the sites I most enjoyed for their simplicity are getting so overcomplicated? I don't want Google to tell me what I should do tomorrow any more than I wanted Microsoft to get me there today. And I'm definitely going to start whinging if, in the course of catching up with what's happening in a few friends lives, I'm bombarded with every book they've ever read and endless videos of their last holiday. I always thought that keeping in touch online was a way to avoid the dull bits - instead, it's refining them and letting Emo-madness take over.

Alex is disillusioned with social networking. Add her to your friends.