Yesterday marked “Quit Facebook Day” thanks to a website which called on users to protest against the company for violating users’ trust and not providing sufficient privacy controls. The day came and went and the vast majority of users logged in to the site rather than deleting their accounts. While we can’t say that it wasn’t expected, the movement didn’t go unnoticed by mainstream media who took every opportunity to cover the event.
The timing of the “Quit Facebook Day” was what helped drive the media attention. For the past month Facebook has been the subject of intense scrutiny by the media, and even folks on Capital Hill who would like the company to be more transparent with their privacy system. Last week Facebook responded and so far the privacy advocates have been relatively silent.
For those anticipating some sort of privacy scandal climax that would result in a mass exodus or legislation of online privacy rights, you will have to wait. Instead, Facebook is slowly rolling out their new privacy settings, and many are waiting to see what the impact is. One thing is clear: despite the media backlash against Facebook’s privacy policies and methods of making changes, most users are willing to stay on the site, even with Facebook’s controversial products, like “Instant Personalization”, and open settings.
For now, the “Quit Facebook Day” movement appears to have been insignificant, but there is at least one sign that some users have turned away from the site. Alexa, a site which monitors internet traffic around the globe, shows a slight decline in traffic to Facebook over the past two weeks. Such short-term trends are not out of the ordinary however, as Facebook has seen such shifts in the past.
For those who are looking for more ominous signs that users are heading for the exits en masse, you’ll have to wait as yesterday was not the day the mass exodus took place.
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Well, at least the lack of a mass exodus will leave Facebook staff enough time and resources to deal with my delete request. But I left on the 30th so that doesn't really count, does it?
Comment by Mavro — June 1, 2010 @ 6:06 am
I don't think people quit. If traffic has been done the last couple of weeks, it's probably because summer is starting and people are actually going outside for a change.
Comment by Kim Woodbridge — June 1, 2010 @ 6:34 am
I've been to your page but I don't see where to sign up.
ps, I was so glad to see you ask people to email you. That the one thing I don't like about facebook, there no way to email them.
Comment by dean — June 1, 2010 @ 8:50 am
It seems that many people are feel angry/annoyed/betrayed at Facebook but are also frustrated by the lack of options.
Looking at the reaction to the Diaspora project, more people had signed up to give money to them, then agreed to quit facebook. I think this backs up the story.
I'm working myself on a project (shiftproject.com) which hopes to provide people an alternative…
Comment by Alex — June 1, 2010 @ 10:43 am
I think more people quit Facebook than is realized because those who had already quit didn't pick May 31st to quit, though the numbers don't reflect the many people who stayed on. And what numbers are we going by — Facebooks' reporting of itself — come on? I agree though that the numbers of people leaving were pretty small compared to the 400 million on the site.
I quit a few weeks ago, and then was curious enough to see why other users were going or had already quit when the Quit Facebook thing came along. Fed the stream to my phone for a few days to see why. For those who had already quit the reasons were privacy and hacking concerns, feeling drowned in this huge market place, feeling a lack of control over their information, anger that the site owned their information and could use it without consent of the user forever, a waste of time that could be better spent doing something else. Time waste was a common theme. Users felt they were letting more important aspects of life go. Some of the more thoughtful comments on the Quit Facebook site included the realization that very few people on the user's site were actually friends, willing to keep in contact, send an email, pick up the phone, text… This left some users feeling isolated. So it seems there were a variety of reasons, and the reasons for those who quit and those who were thinking about it were pretty similar.
The interest in the Dispora project suggests that people want alternatives. Pipio, which is much farther along in the development stage, is another one, but thus far it seems to mainly attract the technically oriented. The question is if another product takes off, how long will it be before the owners of the new product do the same thing to its users/commodities that Facebook does? The money is pretty tempting.
Comment by KH — June 1, 2010 @ 9:41 pm
I think a mass exodus failed to happen partly because people aren't *that* fed up (yet), but mostly because Facebook president-guy has promised to change the privacy settings.
I think it's great that people are working on Diaspora and, I suppose, shiftproject. I'll probably check those out on of these years.
However it's hard for me to conceptualize Diaspora ever being anything more than Ogg Vorbis is to mp3.
If Diaspora can be relevant enough to connect using Facebook connect, then that's about as far as it will ever get.
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Furry cows moo and decompress.
Comment by Wyrd — June 2, 2010 @ 5:36 am
We develop a metaaplication
so users build their own application
Facebook does not allow platform admins to leave so they must delete their apps first
we see LOTS OF PEOPLE leaving Facebook these days
Comment by Justin — June 2, 2010 @ 8:53 am
For all of those who have left Facebook,
1. Do you feel a little bit "out of the loop" now?
2. Will you ever rejoin?
Comment by Bwizzle — June 2, 2010 @ 3:53 pm
Out of the loop, not particularly. Did fine before Facebook and am doing fine now. I found that Facebook took up too much time without giving anything I found meaningful back. There are better ways to spend my time, and much better ways for me personally at least (not speaking for those who wish to stay on Facebook because I respect that choice) to connect. Will I ever rejoin? Who knows? Ever is a long time. I'd like to have more control over my personal information and don't like it being in the hands of a third party to own and use as the third party chooses. Even if I were on Facebook now it would be kind of pointless because I would no longer share anything, but merely follow what others have to say.
Anyone seen Pipio? Nice site, good clean design, has potential. It can be fed into Facebook, as well as Twitter. It's hard to say if it will catch on in popularity, and even harder to see how it could reach that critical mass everyone talks about. Still, in 2004 the same thing would have been said about Facebook.
Comment by KH — June 2, 2010 @ 7:49 pm
i want to delete my facebook
Comment by rona — September 8, 2010 @ 12:08 am
I am a journalism student and a freelance writer from Tenn. Anyone, who has recently deleted their Facebook account please e-mail me at melissac@southern.edu. I would like to interview you for a piece I am writing. You privacy will be respected.
Comment by Melissa C. — October 5, 2010 @ 8:43 pm
i want to quit facebook, not interested anymore
Comment by Debbie pradin — January 6, 2011 @ 3:17 pm
great info, wonderful information for myself..
I desire for every person can easily take this info
most persons use facebook but just a small number of persons right now depth feature of facebook.
Comment by gadget | technology — November 16, 2011 @ 9:09 am