Story Time:
Recently, In one of my many impromptu social media discovery sessions I was covering how social media is changing and what has changed over the past 6 months. Naturally, in these sessions there is no way around NOT talking about Facebook and how it is dealing with the monster it has created.
The fact will remain clear for now businesses and business people have to be on Facebook if for nothing but the validation their exist. The question will always be if Facebook will survive the changes being made in social networking.
As I showed my Facebook account to the group as a demonstrate how Facebook should be used, one of the gentleman remarked he is on Facebook all of the time and really likes the ability to broadcast business realated information out to his friends. When I asked how his interaction with his friends on Facebook was going naturally I got … “Outstanding..I love the site and my friends.”
I inquired if I could see his site. He graciously signed in and here we go. As usual, there is always something I see the owner of the site or page or account has not seen.
In this case I saw where he had posted regularly on his Facebook Wall providing his friends with content on his whereabouts using Foursquare; a couple of comment or two on sporting events and remarks on some events he had attended. Pretty average posts. Of course I took a moment to warn the group of the dark side of the ‘location based’ platforms like Foursquare before I moved on to reviewing the gentleman’s site.
Out of the 25 or so post he made over the past month we could only find two responses and those were from someone he did not know hitting the “Like” button.
After making a comment about his Facebook Wall looking to had a slow month of responses and then showing him where he was not getting very many responses to his posts, nor were his friends, I then asked if he knew why he was not getting anyone to make remarks or comments. The usual shrug of the shoulder and the remark.. ”I guess people are just busy”.
I replied, …or they have left Facebook.
Shock Factor
This kind of statement always arouses people who live and die on Facebook. Many of the people who are today very active on Facebook have been there for years. They have accumulated vast numbers of Friends to their account mostly in an effort to market to the masses. A few stay true to their personal cause of visiting with Only Friends and Family but overall even interaction is brief and sometimes not what anyone would call being social.
However, for the addicted Facebooker, just the mention that someone they allowed to be a Friend on Facebook would even thing twice of leaving the site is to them a form of blasphemy. The fact is, more and more people are leaving Facebook for social networks with greater social capability.
In an attempt of being fair, and to prove me wrong, I suggested we take a look at the gentleman’s Friend’s list to see how his Friends are doing with their Facebook Account.
I asked him to look at his most popular Facebook Friends. After looking over more than 25 of his ‘A List’ we found 20 had not posted anything on Facebook for over two months. Several had not posted in over a year. And a few had not even finished setting up their profile. This was just 25 of the over 2500 Friends he had accumulated. The rest of the friends in his community he did not know well or at all. He was just accumulating as many Facebook Friends as his friends told him he needed to do to be influential.
Naturally this was rather embarrassing to the guy but illustrated the change Facebook is going through and will have to deal with if they plan on keeping their advertisers happy.
More and more people are just walking away from Facebook for a number of reasons. Rough estimates show over 85% of the Facebook populations is getting less and less interaction from their Friends and only around 5% are seeing the same or more interaction in their Facebook Community. There are still a large number of posts made on Facebook seemingly to appear purely for promotional reasons which also is another reason more and more people are leaving Facebook.
Realities
The main reason given from people who have left Facebook deals mostly with the lack of response and interaction from their friends. The large number of Location Based posts are sited as being some of games people play with those platforms to gain some swag or goodies.
Other reasons given for leaving Facebook have to do with the intrusion of privacy and the limits Facebook puts on what can be posted. Many leave because there really is nothing being said in their Facebook community that is of real interest anymore. Several remark they leave due to their attempts to be social with the people in their Friends list does not get any response.
I have heard from many people who are very frustrated with the many posts their Friends make to their Facebook feed but do not respond to any comments made to them. The most frustrating example given was when their friends post to Facebook from third party platform and do not actually go to their Facebook account for days to see what anyone was saying. Then they post a response back to a remark made days earlier which just causes confusion and does not make sense.
Still others are not finding anyone of interest or those they found to be interesting a month ago now post only Blah Blah self promotions; photos of stuff they are not interested in or just other content only a family member would appreciate.
Just like the gentleman attending my session, there are many who have found the people they have Friended have left Facebook for some of the many reasons given.
Change Is Here
All methods of social networking change frequently and Facebook is not immune to people loosing interest in the site. Facebook will still be a site for the people who are not out for adventure or interaction. However, as the consumer’s demand for interaction with their community increases they will eventually migrate to sites that offer that interaction. Facebook is quickly loosing ground to other sites that make it easier for people to interact socially and professional with each other.
As a result, businesses are going to gravitate to those sites where they can interact with their consumers. Then where will the ghost town be? Things are changing in social networking which will change social media…just hope more people learn how to make the change.
Let me know how I can help.
I left Facecrook cuz it’s frakkin stoopid. I have no use for it. It’s a sham and people are frakkin depressing. I haven’t looked back and don’t miss a damn thing about it. Maybe some of those “long lost friends” were supposed to be lost for a reason. Friends come and go. I’m gonna puke if I keep hearing “like us on facebook” or “visit us on facebook.com/whogivesafrak”. I sent Facecrook feedback letting them know how I really feel, and told them they can improve my facecrook experience by evaporating into thin air and never returning. I am usually anti-trendy anyways, but sending them feedback was mostly for self-amusement….but hey its true!
Check out “Shut Your facebook” at http://www.harmsen.net/shut_your_facebook.php. I’d like to think people are finally getting inoculated to the social disease. Being socially networked is a horrible thing; socialising is one thing, like voting, that you can’t outsource or trust someone else’s computer with, you have to do it for yourself. Best, Leif
This article seems to be more about shaming people who use Facebook and less about news. Believe it or not, we’re not all deluded losers. I very rarely use Facebook to talk to my “real” friends, and it’s always been that way. The people I do communicate with on Facebook are people are old high-school friends or distant family members and even though they’re very shallow relationships, there is something satisfying about keeping up with them. People who loathe Facebook often don’t understand how to use it or where its place should be.