In the past months I spent quite a lot time on building up my web profiles, always keeping them up-to-date, opening groups, searching for new people. Today something happened. Something big. Just like with hanging out in online chatrooms in the late 90s I decided to get my real life back and to quit most of the platforms. It turned out that sometimes to make the decision is easier than the final execution of it.

My experience so far:

• MySpace: Perfect. They have a fully automated process of deleting the account permanently. After verifying the wish for deletion via email myspace says it will take up to 48 hours until my account is gone.
• Facebook: Seem pretty straight forward too. The automated process says that my account is in deactivated state for another 14 days. If I do not login in the meantime it will be removed permanently automatically.
• Xing: I guess the deletion process would be quite easy for non-premium-members. In my case I had to contact the support team. My premium account still lasts until the end of april. But I want my life back now. Let’s see when I get feedback.
• LinkedIn: I always hated the clumsy interface and I even hate the process of account deletion even more. The only way to delete the account is to send an email to the support team. Funny thing is that I got an error when sending the support form. I tried a second time and the system said there was already a message from my email address within the process queue. So I guess my first request got delivered although there was an error message. We’ll see.

To find the “delete account” option on the platforms I mostly used google to get hints faster on how to do it. For every platform there are good pages online giving the right directions.

Before deleting your account be sure to remove all your personal information. On some platforms it seems as if not all your information gets automatically purged. Especially LinkedIn seems to be kind of funny. I don’t know if it is true but it is rumoured that they remove your login but keep your data publicly. So please remove everything personal and change what is not removable to something different.

Especially on LinkedIn again there were several things I was not able to remove. Maybe you can remove everything somehow but with my constant struggle with the interface I decided to overwrite some entries. Luckily removing the connections to other people is pretty easy. On Xing for e.g. you have to remove all your connections manually. Removing about 150 links eventually takes up to 3 minutes.

I am still keeping my twitter account. I really like the concept of the global shoutbox and I am using it’s content on some mashups. Also all my instant messaging accounts are still valid. I expect to gain an additional one to two hours per day which I will redistribute to my own online projects and my real life.