The social network of the decade may find itself fading from previous addict’s News Feeds in their re- prioritized lives. Facebook, the vast Internet nexus that has enticed trend-chasing teens since 2004, is steadily kissing users goodbye. Nearly 6 million Americans deleted their Facebook accounts last month, begging the question of whether the U.S., and ultimately the world, may be on its final page of the Book.
The 6 million people who declared themselves “too cool to click ‘like’ “, lowered the number of American Facebookers from 155.2 million to 149.4 million last month. The USA isn’t the only nation to de-friend the former favorite social fiber; Canada also lost 1.52 million users, and Russia, Norway and the U.K. each shed 100,000 friends.
No one truly knows why nosy snoopers and priers are leaving the site with the most intrusive ‘stalking’ capacity. Tracking service Inside Facebook’s Eric Eldon explained the inevitability of the swing in the number of Facebook stalkers, “By the time Facebook reaches around 50 percent of the total population in a given country (plus or minus, depending on Internet access rates in that country), growth generally slows to a halt. So far, Facebook has been able to make up stalls and losses with big gains in heavily populated developing countries like Mexico, Brazil, India and Indonesia.”
Rather than arguing that a social network’s destiny can be forseen according to some statistical formula, CEO of Law360.com, Magnus Hoglund suggests that Facebook simply lost its hot fad status, “From my experience, I get the sense that being on Facebook is not cool anymore. The early adopters and trend-setters are moving away. [But] these are also exactly the type of people brand advertisers want to reach; if they are leaving, it doesn’t look good for Facebook.”
In a matter of time, the Book may loose its label as the virtual meeting place for the global population and the breeding ground for pop culture. To us, the explanation seems simple; fbook’s losing friends to hip converts who’d rather follow trending topics on…#Twitter.