Dec 13 2011
The Beginning Of The End For Facebook?
Most of my friends know that I’m their friend in real life, not on Facebook. 🙂 I’ve never joined that service, initially through lack of interest and later on through genuine concerns over their privacy issues and how much data people are seemingly willing to give up for a web site with, frankly, fairly minimal appeal, at least to me. I have also wondered in the past why corporations are so quick to give up control over their own content (replacing www.product_name.com with www.facebook.com/product_name). MicroStrategy offers a social media plugin that can pull in Facebook data, and of course SAP offers various methods to acquire and process unstructured data via their text analytics options in their Data Services products.
But this morning I read an article from Time.com suggesting that we might be looking at the beginning of the end for Facebook. I am not going to summarize the article here, but I would like to run an informal poll.
If you are a member of Facebook, are you using it:
- More now than you did last year?
- Less now than you did last year?
- About the same as what you did last year?
Please use the comment form below to enter your response.
About the same as last year.
I use facebook daily but I have a very strict FB policy. I only “friend” people that I’ve met in real life, who I intend to continue to carry out an active relationship with and can confirm that they are not assholes.
I also have disabled all FB apps and locked my profile down to friends only.
I probably would not be as active as I am but several friends who I regularly see were using it and it has become a very useful way to organize gatherings.
For the sake of demographics, I’m 43.
I actually use it more, but I must caveat that I post to the site a lot more than I read from it. I’ve started a personal blog, which fits in quite nicely with my Facebook audience.
Man do I sound like an abhorrent human being.
I use it much much less than the last year or even the year before. In short, FB does not bring me any real value.
Anyone predicting Facebook’s impending death is unaware of how embedded it has become (and is continuing to become). People are not moving away from it. They’re just getting over the initial hype and using it more “normally.” Facebook is the greatest CRM system ever built, and I believe it’ll stick around for the long haul.
Also, I met with MicroStrategy and reviewed their Gateway (Wisdom) product. It’s very clever, and far different from how we typically percieve BI.
Also Dave, why are you asking a structured question with an unstructured input? If we were on Facebook I think you could ask more effectively using its “Question” feature 😉
Am I the only one confused by the opening paragraph of the Time article?: “My friends at comScore shared with me that, in September 2011 in the U.S., the average number of minutes that each Facebook user spent on the site was 410. Last year, that month’s average was 287, signaling a 42% increase.”
42% INCREASE? When a number goes from 410 to 287, I call that a decrease 😉
Oops, I just re-read it. Increase is correct 🙂
I looked but didn’t have time to add a poll widget to my installation of WordPress before I put the post out. 😛
Less now than a year ago
I at least log into Facebook every day. It is a good way to keep up with friends and family. I actually have two accounts. One I only use to play games with and it only has the minimum required information about me on it and what is there is locked down so that only I can see it. This allows me to be friends with any one on that account and not worry about what they may find out about me.
My other account is the one I use to keep in contact with friends and family who are scattered all over the US. It’s a great way to share pictures and happenings in our lives.
I just keep in mind that the information I post there is public domain. I don’t put anything on there that I really wouldn’t want every one to see. That being said, I do have restrictions in place as to who can see it.
All said, I guess I am on more now that last year. Mainly due to I’m involved in too many games again.
I log in everyday at least to stalk Michael. 😉 (More than I did last year) It helps me to be in touch with my friends even though I stay very far away from them.
Less now than you did last year?
About the same. I also have two accounts – one that I use for family and friends which is locked down so that only friends can see it and a more public one that is for “professional” use. For several months last year I was paid to provide content for the SAP Crystal Reports and Dashboard Design fan page on FB, so I created the professional account to use for that. I also use that account to connect to the folks I work with or whom I’ve met through some sort of professional connection. This way I’m free to respond with my true political and religious views on my personal account while not doing much posting at all on the professional one.
I find that I am using it less and less all the time. It was fun and interesting initially, but then I found hat it was time consuming when I had many more interesting and important things that needed to be worked with instead.
Additionally, the massive increase on privacy issues, focus on games, and virus issues left me feeling that the product was not something I really wanted to work with.
I use Facebook as a way to keep up on what my friends are up to. I use it about the same this year as last year. I am keenly aware of the security issues, and am careful to make sure I take advantage of the security settings built in to Facebook. I’m also careful not to post anything that I don’t want made public.
am using it more compare with last year
Much less then last year.
Much less then last year… almost once in 2 weeks… just to get update about others.
I’ve never used it, and I’ve considered signing up to keep in touch with old friends. But I don’t have a lot of free time and I’ve decided I will use it in other ways. I’m 44.
wow, almost 5 years later . . . it would be interesting to revisit the issues raised in the article back in 2011 and see if the issues are still valid today.