Today I abandoned a social networking site I had hoped would make Facebook obsolete for me.

When Niume, the only known major United Kingdom based Social Networking site first launched, it looked like the answer to a dream. Originally one could found an interest group, (then called a “circle” but later renamed to “sphere”) on any subject one wished to.  My only problem with the original concept was there was no provision for moderation of such a sphere, and they could not be made private; thus everything would be search-engine visible.  I’d wanted to found a discussion group for female based hypnotherapy practices; naturally one would not want the inner workings of such publicly visible.  As that failed to be an option, I decided to found several spheres to share hypnotherapy, dressage and experimental music based media; as it turns out, everything shared through Niume must have some form of media attached to it, whether photographic or video based.

In October of last year, the site owners began a Crowdfunding effort; the site had grown far faster than they had envisioned; and thus it needed more robust hosting.  This was successful; and in a few weeks the site underwent a makeover that in my opinion, ruined it.

No longer could users speak on any subject they wished. the Circles became Spheres, and user creation was dumped in favor of a fixed set of general topics under site owner moderation and strict posting guidelines. Promotional posting was also banned if it was connected to any type of commercial enterprise. All of my hypnosis/hypnotherapy posts were summarily removed and placed into my “Workshop” section as not meeting the guidelines; read this as they no longer fit into any existing genre, or they were seen as commercial, even though I was promoting no product or service (I no longer see clientele face to face).  I had a few clips of female stage hypnotists from YouTube whose skits I enjoyed; my own hypnotherapy videos are always freewill gifts; perhaps they were dumped due to the fact I am a YouTube Partner and all of my videos are monetized?

I tried to post my latest Hypnotic Soundscape to the Music Sphere today, only to have it sent to my Drafts section within two minutes of posting. Niume is now to me about as useful as a pair of child’s water wings would be to a person about to be dumped into the sea from a sinking ship and in need of a full life jacket.

So much for replacing Facebook; I may visit once in a while, but only as a viewer from now on.