Facebook is becoming less popular in the western world. In the United States, United Kingdom and Europe, millions of people have unsubscribed from the site.
According to analysis firm Social Bakers, nine million people in the United States and two million people in the United Kingdom left the social media site in the last 6 months. Last month six million Americans and two million Britons left. Users from Germany, France, Japan and Canada are also turning their back on Facebook. The amount of time we spend on the site is also decreasing.
Maybe we should say goodbye to Facebook. Here are a number of reasons why:
The unwanted new features
The commercials in the news feed, when did they come up with that? All of a sudden they dumped them on our walls. We receive ‘suggested posts’ that are only there for commercial reasons. Were we informed beforehand?
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Last year Facebook introduced timeline and the new feature was made mandatory to all users, revealing our past. Our entire history can be seen on our timeline nowadays. We received a notification about the new feature and that was it. Now we are stuck with it. Facebook wants us to tell our life story and also the story we had in the years before the website even existed. You shall be confronted with your past! Perfect for exhibitionists and narcissists who like to show of the glamorous life they are leading but a bit much for most of us. Right?
A few months later they came up with something new: the ticker. The ticker is the bar you see on the right hand side of your screen next to the news feed. The ticker allows your girlfriend to see that you recently liked a picture of a female friend and shows your parents and family that you recently made a naughty but funny comment on one of your mate’s status updates. Was the ticker really a useful new feature? Do we have a say in all this?
The Bore
We’ve all seen them, haven’t we? Pictures of food in our news feed. A friend makes an Instagram picture of his meal and others comment things like ‘enjoy your dinner’ or ‘that looks tasty!’ Bleh. Others post comments about the weather: ‘it is raining!’. Yes, we can all see that, thank you… The more eccentric friends are happy to take their shirts off to beg for likes and comments like ‘you look hot’ or ‘you are so pretty!’ to boost their fragile egos. Most of the time we see the same people posting status updates. There are the regular complainers… To make it even more negative and boring they complain about the same insignificant things: the weather, the commute, the lack of time. Of course we can stop checking our Facebook news feed to relieve ourselves from the boring or useless updates, but on the other hand we want to stay in touch with friends we don’t see every day. That’s the reason most of us decide to keep using the site.
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The social pressure
When someone wants to be our friend on the social media site but we don’t accept the friend request we are committing social murder. Seeing the wannabe friend a few days later in real life will be so awkward! It is a social obligation to accept every friend request we get. What do we do when someone we don’t particularly like starts to post comments on our wall? Deleting the comment from our wall will make our ‘friend’ feel humiliated. The wannabe friends are a hassle. But there is another group that can cause anxiety: family members. Posting party pictures is probably not a good idea when your mum also happens to be your friend. Other people can tag you in awful pictures too. Even with the privacy options available we need to be diligent to make sure we don’t hurt anybody’s feelings. Meeting friends face to face without the possibility of keeping track of ‘who said what’ is a refreshing experience at times.
The alternatives
There are indeed many alternatives available. The most trendy among teenagers are Instagram and Path. Many teenagers stop using Facebook or choose to use one of these social media platforms on the side. Instagram is a social network and photo sharing site that has been acquired by Facebook. In the one and a half years that it has been property of the firm it’s gained thirty million users. Path is a mobile network based social network app that is gaining one million users weekly. A good reason for teenagers to step over is the fact that the new services are not overrun by parents. The new cool addition to the social world is SnapChat. SnapChat is an app that allows us to send videos and photos that will disappear quickly after they have been opened. Unlike the social network giant, SnapChat is spontaneous, simple and discreet.
Reason enough to delete your Facebook account?
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[Image 1 credit: dphilipp, Flickr] / [Image 2 credit: Robby Virus, Flickr]
I totally agree with your opinions, Facebook has simply becoming a place for people to bitch about their problems.
The only reason I keep it is for an easy messaging and to create events. If it wasn’t for this I would have deleted it ages ago!
Facebook is a part of our lives. As everything in life it carries its pros and cons. It is equally difficult to quit as it is to keep up with its rapid development. I think it is here to stay, for better or for worse…
Yes, I think the problem with FB is that many people don’t want to stop using it as they have many friends who use the same social platform. But on the other hand, when people start to switch to a different social platform changes can go very rapidly.
Damn Marky Z,
This article isn’t a good sign.
Rens I think you’re on to something. I would delete my fb account but I promote websites there.
Do you think $FB will reach $38/share before the end of 2013?
One of my friends deleted his account too. He says he doesn’t miss it at all… I think most people keep their account for easy messaging. Darnell: I think Facebook has reached its peak and is on a downward slope.
Hello Rens
I am not sure that FB loosing its popularity,as according to INDIA ‘s current trends FB is on top. people like to do FB.I know personally some of my friends who are 24*7 hours online on Facebook.But I am agreed with some of its newly added features are not useful. .
Yes, in the Western world we’re getting tired of it, in other parts of the world there is still an increase in the people who start using FB.
i am totally in favor of your idea and i have got such an impact that now i am thinking of quitting facebook.. lets see..
Ads in the your timeline certainly is annoying!
One feature I cant stand is the way other people can check you in. If your out having a quite drink with friends, you don’t want half the world to know where you are.
I’d close my account except I have too many Facebook pages I have to manage.
Yes, FB is a privacy killer – for sure!
Nice one Rens.
I must say that even though today the popularity of Facebook may be decreasing in western countries but in my country it’s still on the rise. But I agree on some points like the ticker, it shows our every like and comment and anything so we can’t semi-hide anything at all!
And even I dislike some of the new features of Facebook like the suggested (sponsored) post.
Still its a 50-50 for me.
Yes, interest in Facebook drops mostly in the Western world. I also dislike the sponsored posts, the ticker and that Facebook doesn’t inform us about upcoming changes beforehand. Most of my friends are on Facebook so an alternative like Google plus is not yet an option for me as I do like the easy messaging service. Apart from that, FB is boring.
yeah many people left the facebook and they search a good one for that. perhaps they had been hacked and faces or other problems.
True story Santosh, a few of my friends left FB too.
I LIKE this post, but I definitely dislike Facebook! It is overly commercialized and can be a bit too “personal” at times. I almost feel like “Big Brother” is watching me while I’m on there…ready to suggest what I should be doing or commenting/liking. It’s really gotten bad recently to the point where I am seldom on there and very rarely post anything unless it’s something really important and/or useful…not just random junk (just went to McDonald’s and had a Big Mac) – who cares!
Thanks Mike. I believe many people have the same opinion!
Nice post Rens Van. Unlike the western countries Facebook is still very much popular in Asian countries like India & China. Facebook was introduced as a social network to connect with people from all over the world, and now they are coming up with the updates which are quite irritating. Most irritating update is, if you have so many friends you are not known, they are being tagged in their friends picture & unfortunately your account gets blocked by XYZ reasons, then its very difficult to get back access to your account. Because for authentication purpose Facebook ask you to identify picture of your friends they are tagged in. Tagged pictures will not compulsorily be picture of your friend, your friends can be tagged in a thought pic, animal pic, trolled image, animation etc. How can anyone identify these image. But still its a great platform to interact with people.
How’s Facebook popular in China? I thought China banned Facebook since 2009? Rens? 🙂
thank you for replying peter. sry for the false example. It is Pakistan instead of China along with India.
No problem, Rajneesh! 🙂
Hi Peter, yes they banned the website in 2008.
One month ago I decided to terminate my personal FB account and guess what? I have more time for my hobbies, I do not need to solve other people problems, I am not angry with hundreds of ads… 🙂 I really recommend deleting your FB profiles (the I still maintain FB account of my website…)
Facebook isn’t perfect. It’s free social media. I like it a lot but prefer twitter and linkedin by a large margin. I know FB shares a lot of information, is bloated with junk, and has too many advertising tie-ins but I don’t use instagram any longer since they said they can use “our” photos however they like. If FB did/does the same thing, I’d still opt for facebook. Myspace didn’t last forever and is irrelevant now because it stinks. FB might be on the same path. I’ll continue to use it because I enjoy it. It’s not life, it’s entertainment. I still watch network television even though it’s frequently trash…
Interesting article.
I had deactivated for a few weeks and within that time I had several articles, a PR and book trailer come out – so I reactivated my account to share the info. I did notice, however, how much “extra” time I seemed to have in the weeks I wasn’t signed in…LOL
That ticker you mention is an unnecessary invasion of privacy and the news feed certainly has become a giant sponsored sales page.
Yes Dana, Facebook is a very time consuming hobby!
I agree…I have realised lately that Facebook can be a tool for gossip and showing off! I got tired of asking my friends not to tag me on their pictures from the moments we had together. I would like to delete my account, but I have linked on my personal account, a page to promote my blog. Is it possible to delete the personal one without to delete the page? I wonder…
The only problem is that Facebook as much as some people would like to hate them just like companies like Amazon and Microsoft is the fact that they do generate real results. One can play with the big boys or spend countless hours trying to beat them.
I for one would rather pay some money, play the game, make money and then go spend my time enjoying life. At the same time, this is a great article showing that what is great today can easily be replaced tomorrow and that their are alternatives we should always be looking at.
DocLou