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FaceBook opened its APIs for third party developers last year, opened its registration to all and saw a meteoric rise in use.
The developers started creating all kinds of applications for FaceBook and the FaceBook Platform was pronounced as the next big thing! And an investment by Microsoft putatively valued the website at $15bn.
However, of late a lot of the sheen seems to be coming off FaceBook. Privacy concerns started raising their head and were given significant credence when FaceBook launched its ill-fated (and short-lived) Beacon project.
Users discovered just how hard it is to actually close their accounts and more recently the New York Times reports that FaceBook has had to implement a procedure for people to have their accounts closed. Closing the account and deleting the information which was in the account are two different operations however.
Listening to the conversations on Twitter it is pretty obvious that people are tiring of FaceBook.
I have a huge concern over what is happening to my information on FaceBook. Not just what is FaceBook doing with it but every time you add an application to your profile, you are giving that application developer access to your FaceBook data.
Personally, the amount of completely frivolous emails and requests I receive from the site (Vampire bites, Human Pets, Pokes, pointless quizzes, etc.) have completely turned me off it and I may log in now once a week just to check my Inbox. Then again I may not!
Are you experiencing FaceBook fade?
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I’m Tom
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18 responses to “Are you experiencing FaceBook fade?”
Never saw the point meself Tom. As far as my usage of FB is concerned, Scrabulous is its only saving grace.
Connecting / Re-connecting with people is a snap, but I see no reason to then follow the minutiae of their lives and I find it hard to believe that any of them would be interested in following the minutiae of mine.
As for the apps that seem to exist solely to spam people who are supposed to be my friends. It’s bad enough that I have to share my data with the app developer, but all of them seem to want to spread like ebola through my address book. I deleted almost all the apps on my account just yesterday – but not scrabulous.
Linkedin is far less intrusive and potentially far more useful. I laughed like a drain when I read the supposed value that Microsoft’s stake place upon FB. Show me the value! And I have been laughing even louder now that I read that quitting FB is like trying to unsubscribe from the Reader’s Digest.
Gargantuan, valueless waste of time.
Tom,
Some of the various issues with the zombie type of apps that people found annoying are going away. Facebook is working hard to limit that sort of communication noise and apps are going through rule set changes that are pretty significant.
forced invites are dead; this was a cause of a lot of the application communication noise that users found annoying. Facebook is trying hard to bring better apps to the surface (some are already there).
I don’t see a fade at all. In fact some of the noise you hear is by the noisy bloggers and leading edge tech people (not the mainstream).
cheers!
Rodney Rumford
>In fact some of the noise you hear is by the noisy bloggers and leading edge tech people (not the mainstream).
Those are the first people off the ship before it sinks Rodney. But yeah Tom FB is a bit lame but then looking at Google’s stock price it loos like the bloom is fading on that rose too.
And that’s no harm.
Fade in? or Fade out? I know what you meant by it but the title / word you chose is ambiguous IMO.
I never got the attraction to facebook in the first place (yes, I did sign up and I still don’t get it – its a very very lame premise), so for me this is just a “told you so” moment 🙂
Yep I’m sick of it now. When I first joined I thought it was great and very useful for getting in touch with some lost friends but once that was over it had nothing to offer. I had enough of X wanting to compare movies with me or Y wanting to give me a smack or Z wanting to know what I thought of them. It’s cluttered with pointless crap and serves no useful function
Certainly seems that way to me, although I have friends and colleagues whose social circle is in FB and for whom it has become the primary method of comms, replacing email and IM. I guess it has sufficient scale to give it time to settle down now that the hype has begun to fade away.
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More web centric people are certainly seeing the sheen fade from facebook, but most of my FB ‘friends’ are, shall we say, normal people – and they are not even aware of privacy issues, nor are they particularly bothered by zombie requests and the like… So I wonder whether there will be any major exodus. FB seems to be making efforts to put things right, probably thanks to the vocal minority, so will they have things sorted by the time concerns filter down to more regular type users?
Tom and all, I think Facebook is no longer really a pro application, and that’s what is interesting. No mix with pleasure, keep it for entertainment, and by opportunity, for business touch. But there is to much “noise” today, because this is the way it became : a “friendly” app, social but not to be compare to blog, Twitter or linkedin like apps.
This is my opinion, actually.
L.
I love Facebook. I have many friends living abroad and we share photos, recipes, World news, gossip.
As a professional application I think it is gaining ground and will be used more and more as time goes on.
Good to open a debate on this topical subject.
Apologies for a double post.
My web link did not appear in the previous comment.
M Buckley – not sure why your link isn’t appearing. Do you want to try emailing it to me and I will edit your comment to add it?
Thanks for taking time to reply.
Don’t worry about the link, as it would be time consuming to sort out,
I expect.
I blog at: http://moderntwist2.blogspot.com/
and have had reason to think about the difficulty that
posting comments can pose, now that security systems are
so strong.
I enjoy your blog a lot.
I still like Facebook. When you get all the spammy invites for pointless apps, instead of clicking Ignore, click Block Application – then you won’t get swamped with requests to be a Vampire Ninja Pirate having a waterfight whilst poking, hugging, throwing food and comparing everyone.
All profiles on social network sites will eventually become dormant, people will simply not have the time or the inclination to continue with it and the only people who will continue to log in will be those with two much time on their hands……1) students 2) people who work online (spammers/hackers/IT people/internet business 3) housewives/househusbands 4) people who are housebound 5) perverts 6) unemployed etc. These 1-6 will soon form the core of the facebook users. Facebook used to be for middle class educational institutions only, but it has since open the floodgates to allow these types of people (1-6) to join it (mainly those from lower class networks such as bebo/myspace etc), it is necessary because these are the types of people who have the time to use these sites on a regular basis.
To Chav Chavette. Hi I have been a regular user of facebook for the last nine months. I have used it to meet interesting people around the world and catch up with some old friends. I have been using it because I have been off work waiting for a back operation which I am now recovering from. Not because I am a class 4 person.
I hate to think that Middle Class Education is teaching it pupils that there are different standards of human beings.
QUOTE: Facebook used to be for middle class educational institutions only, but it has since open the floodgates to allow these types of people (1-6) to join it (mainly those from lower class networks such as bebo/myspace etc), it is necessary because these are the types of people who have the time to use these sites on a regular basis
That is such an arrogant comment. Do you know what Chav stands for in England. I personally think that you are lower than the lowest Chav for making this disgusting comment.It because of people like you that there is so much poverty and mistrust in the world.
I, like many, tried Friendster when it arrived, got all into doing-the-profile, spying on old schoolmates, etc.
The buzz wore off, and I have since “erased” my accounts on Friendster, MySpace, and definitely on Facebook.
I find the interface lame, the privacy invasion issue positively infuriating, and just really don’t see the point of it, beyond that initial rush of… (above).
Chav: I agree entirely with your comment.
Paul H.: He should have qualified his statement with a “most” or even a “some”, instead of categorically declaring what every kind of person is like. Don’t get lost in that and miss his point, which is prescient and dead-on.