Are people finally fed-up with Facebook?

Numbers of visitors drops for the first time ever

Are people finally fed-up with Facebook? . Software, Facebook, Websites, Social networking, MySpace 0

21 February 2008 15:39 GMT / By Katie Scott

It seems that we may finally all be suffering Facebook fatigue.

According to The Times, Facebook has suffered its first monthly drop in visitor numbers since its launch.

The website, which is the most popular social networking site in the UK, had enjoyed a 17 successive month boom.

But, between December and Janaury, Facebook suffered a 5% dip in visitors - from 8.9 million to 8.5 million.

Despite this, Facebook's audience was still 712% greater in January this year than in the same month last year, and up 10% on the previous quarter.

But it seems other social networking sites are suffering too.

The UK's second most popular social networking website, MySpace, also saw visitor figures drop 5%, taking it down to 5 million, while Bebo, the third largest, dropped 2% to 4.1 million, showed figures published by Nielsen Online.

Networks on Yahoo and Google-owned sites experienced falls of 16% and 30% respectively, while Piczo has lost 56% of its audience in the past year.

"Facebook was never going to be able to carry on growing the way it has, and a lot of people - especially those who've been using it heavily - are now starting to get Facebook fatigue", Alex Burmaster, an internet analyst at Nielsen Online told The Times.

"I think when something explodes like that a lot of people check it out because they feel they should, but while getting alerts about what your friends are up to is exciting for a time, that's inevitably going to die down."

Burmaster suggested that growth on the bigger social networking websites will level out this year but the popularity of niche sites will continue to grow as their visitors are more "engaged".

He pointed to WAYN (Where Are You Now), a travel networking site whose UK audience has grown 25% in the past year to 461,000, as well as LinkedIn, the professional network, which jumped from 161,000 to 433,000.

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Comments

  • Personally I cannot stand Facebook as it does nothing too protect one's identity. Its terms of use are Rigid, Moronic and downright Stupid. I hope it is gone for good very soon.

    Everybody knows that spammers and the like, Fraudsters etc regularly carry out dictionary attacks and name searchs on social networking sites. such as Facebook and similar sites. They do this to find names and email addresses.

    I have been working in I.T for 20 years and I believe I am qualified to talk on this issue. You do not have to be a whizz-kid like me to do it either. It is so easy to do.

    Spammers then use the results attacks to trap unwary people into parting with their money.

    Curiously enough Facebook seem very quiet on this issue. I wonder if anyone has ever sued them, because they have lost money as a result of somebody seeing their name on Facebook. Proving it would be easy, you just have to know where to look and what to look for.

    Facebook would go running screaming to the hills if it ever happened. It is a very dangerous world we now live in and you have to be safe.

    If you do not believe what I say, just go an look at www.419eaters.com to see the growth of fraud, some of which is due to Facebook and similar sites. the original 419 scammers, employ teams of people to search such sites for information, So not allowing nicknames is asking for trouble. It is also taking away a human right.

    This would explain the increase in SPAM receved and logged by me shortly after I joined Facebook. Personally I think Facebook should be banned, without delay.

    It is extremely dangerous in this day and age to actively prevent users from having any sort of anominity at all.

    Both my accounts were disabled on Facebook. It is naive to even think that ereryone is a good guy on such sites. These site are a hotbed for crooks.

    I wonder if Facebook would compensate me if someone ran up a debt in my name after seeing it on Facebook. Somehow I don't think they would care less. In fact I know they wouldn't. They would just carry on enforcing their stupid rule !!

    Whenever you ask them why they do not allow any kind of user protection, you are given the run-around and eventually your account is disabled. This is their common policy. They never actually give you an answer. REferring you to their terms and conditions is not actually an answer.

    I simply have no clue as to why this is - It's wrong and Facebook should be taken down without delay.

    If I am on the net chatting away - I want my anonyminity thank you very much, it is my right and Facebook therefore are taking away my right to my anoniminity by enforcing their rule in the way they do.

    There is simply nothing wrong with having a nickname, whether you are aged 8 or 80.

    I would love to see someone sue their arses off - Bye Bye Facebook.
    Posted by John W., UK
  • I just closed my facebook account 2 weeks ago and I was a HUGE user, totally addicted, 2500+ tagged photos of myself and 254 albums. Sad I know, but then that's that name of the game over there.

    The thing that tipped the scales for me though was the rise of a new type of spamming, where people write notes and tag-spam you with them. They answer some crappy chain mail which instructs them to tag 25 of their friends and talk bullshit.

    I view tagging is a highly personal thing on facebook, and usually I presume that as I was tagged by someone who is a friend, there must be something vitally important to me in it, or perhaps I am IN the note they send me.

    But no, invariably I'm not in there at all, but it's some self-obsessed monologue or some other chain crap, that, if it were in my email I would disregard.

    By tagging me in it, it catches my attention and wastes my time. Why would people I have chosen to call my friends send me spam? I have no idea.

    As a result of this constant spamming by people I thought in real life were not morons, I decided that it was better to remember my friends as people that I actually like and respect, and not as idiots who send me crap that wastes my time, and so the decision to close my facebook account was made.

    I must admit it's been the best decision I've ever made, and although I sometimes think it would be respectful to open my account again and make it easier for my real friends to contact me again, I figure that if they really did want to contact me it's no real effort to pick up the phone or open their email program.

    Alternatively they could (and you could) send me a REAL post to post on my REAL wall, at www.myrealwall.com where I decided to post REAL letters. Anyone's welcome to post on my REAL wall, but I can almost guarantee that the cost of a stamp and the effort of having to put pen to paper will deter most people.

    now THAT's spam filtering!
    Posted by mischief, UK
  • “The Dark Side of Facebook AKA "Disgracebook," or “Facebooks Complete Lack of Customer Service”

    If anyone thinks Facebook is “listening” to it members they simply DO NOT know what they are talking about! Facebook ruthlessly, relentlessly, and remorselessly walks all over its members with hob nailed boot polices of culling members from membership for unspecified unknown reasons and then accuses the permanently disabled members as “possibly” being guilty of spamming or “possibly” being guilty of harassing other members because of asking to many members to be friends at an unspecified rate. Facebook goes on to permanently disable accounts that have to many friends, belongs to many groups, pokes to many unknown times, sends to many email messages and on and on and on. Mark Zuckerber says that Facebook members seem to take a “personal ownership” of their Facebook accounts. Well golly gee Mark, Facebook is a SOCIAL internet program that people join to meet and make new friends. Making new friends, at least to me, is personal and publishing real photographs and genuine personal information on Facebook seems personal to me. Maybe you should say in your rules and regulations that we want members to be real and genuine but do not join Facebook for personal reasons and do not expect to be treated in a true genuine caring manner because Facebook does not care in the least about what you think or how you feel. When Facebook says you are guilty of breaking polices you will be treated with complete lack of respect in a impersonal sterile manner and banned from Facbook without recourse.

    The unaired dark side of Facebook, or should I call it "Disgracebook" because of the extremely poor disgraceful way Facebook treats its members. The reason I say the unaired dark side of Facebook is I have yet to see anything announced on the prime time major news outlets about the disgraceful practices Facebook uses on its members. The Internet is bursting at its seems with unhappy disabled Facebook members who have posted thousands of complaints everywhere it is possible to post complaints about Facebooks complete lack of customer service and mean spirited disregard for concerns, questions and feedback from members and former members.

    On Mark Zuckerber's, the founder of Facebook, Facebook Fan Page Mark states "I'm trying to make the world a more open place by helping people connect and share." I am glad Mark says he is "trying etc." because, in my opinion, he certainly has NOT accomplished his mission. Facebook is one of the most closed undemocratic uncaring unsocial business operations since the formation of the Gestapo. Facebook operates carte blanche without regard of a due process of rights for members Facebook deems unworthy to be members of its social network service and therefore, disables their account. Facebook justifies its policy and actions under the euphemism of “protecting members” from “repeated actions that could be construed as spam,” and from anything Facebook makes up as a threat to its security. Facebook is an omnipotent uncaring broadly defined automated bureaucratic security service mechanism with unpublished specific rules that are violated without knowing it. If this is not Gestapo like policy, I guess I do not know what it is because it certainly is un-American to say the least!

    Furthermore, in my opinion Facebook is not a social network service. When joining Facebook you are, in reality, joining a money making “computer program” complete with automated responders but is set up to look like a social network service operated by real people. Is it any wonder Facebook members are treated with total disregard for being feeling thinking real people? I have yet to know of a computer program that is able to feel and or to reason. When someone calls Facebook you are treated rudely and crassly informed to use their computerized automated services which do not reply when used or quickly transferred to an automated answering service to which there is no reply.

    I strongly urge anyone interested to please research what I am informing you of because I assure you the situation I have explained is the truth and nothing but the truth so help me God. Until the media and or business community and elected officials takes notice of and makes public “Disgracebooks” inhuman treatment of people Mark Zuckerberg and his staff and money making computer program will continue to fill up trenches behind Disgracebooks California headquarters with unworthy disabled members.

    One final comment. If Disgracebook is treating its foreign members as poorly as it treats its domestic members Disgracebook is not only giving itself a black eye it is giving the United States of America a black eye. Is there anyone out there who cares enough to tell the world about Facebooks dark side and will hopefully help Facebook to become a user friendly Internet social service it claims to be?

    Posted by Mark A. D., United States of America

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