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Re:Can Anyone Stop Facebook? by tiffani on Friday December 04, 2009 @09:26AM (#976371)
I have to ask of that article, though, how many people are actively using Facebook nowadays (as in, how many login everyday and actually do something), too. It never mentions it like a lot of articles about Facebook do (although I suspect it's a lot). I ask this because my Facebook usage has declined greatly since graduating from college last year and it's really gone down since they introduced the stream and became more Twitter-like. I tend to sign onto Facebook maybe once every three weeks now. It doesn't help that my stream is populated by my friends' constant romps on Farmville or Mafia Wars and it just drags down the whole experience.

I've really left Facebook more as a living, breathing address book rather than anything else for now. I am much more likely to be on Twitter than Facebook. It also happens that I'll talk to people on Twitter and then eventually add them as friends on Facebook, but just continue talking to them on Twitter. It's even the case now where most of the folks from Facebook (and school) that I'd talk to on a daily basis have migrated over to Twitter and they're more active on Twitter than Facebook. We can't be the only ones doing that...

Re:Can Anyone Stop Facebook? by henrikschroder on Friday December 04, 2009 @09:42AM (#976392)
Well, that's highly anecdotal and as long as Facebook keeps growing your observation does not hold true for the majority of the users.

Everything goes in waves though, it lies in human nature to grow bored with sameness. Ten years ago there existed a community product in my country that had managed to capture 90% of all high-school students, and they seemed unstoppable. Now, the product is almost forgotten, they lost to other products, similar products, but people had just gotten tired of it and wanted something new, something cool, something different.

But ten years from now Facebook will probably be gone. It will be very interesting to see what replaces it though.

Re:Can Anyone Stop Facebook? by electromagnetic on Friday December 04, 2009 @10:21AM (#976460)
It depends if Facebook will be gone. Trust and reliance become significant things in stopping migration, I haven't changed from Google despite it being eternally the same because #1 I rely on it, #2 I trust it.

If facebook can get one, or both, of these from its 350 million users it has a significant chance to stick around. You also have to consider teen markets shift much faster than adult markets. I know in my high-school a single thing could spread throughout the whole school, but when a new grade entered the viral spread had disappeared and they remained 'uninfected' by it. So any trend automatically lost 1/5 of its teen market if it didn't capture the new grade.

This happens less so with more mature crowds, who tend to be more loyal. You don't see people buying from the same car manufacturer time after time because it's an 'in thing', it's because they're loyal, which is in essence reliance and trust.

Re:Can Anyone Stop Facebook? by forensic on Friday December 04, 2009 @12:32PM (#976765)
Google specifically avoids changing the user experience.

Facebook-today is, for my uses, much worse than Facebook-of-years-past.

In the past it was simplistic, elegant, and did one job and did it well. Now it is trying to be everything and is bloated, slow, and spammy. The signal-to-noise ratio is terrible and I can't find a way to turn off "Mafia Wars" spam.

Re:Can Anyone Stop Facebook? by electromagnetic on Friday December 04, 2009 @03:59PM (#977191)
> I can't find a way to turn off "Mafia Wars" spam.

On the notifications that display, hover over the top-right corner and an X should appear. It prompts to hide all notifications from the application.

Thankfully notifications are one thing Facebook is removing. Perhaps the signal-to-noise ratio will improve when they make the spamming more difficult.

Re:Can Anyone Stop Facebook? by eru on Friday December 04, 2009 @10:31AM (#976482)
About which community product are you talking?
Re:Can Anyone Stop Facebook? by henrikschroder on Friday December 04, 2009 @06:04PM (#977391)
Re:Can Anyone Stop Facebook? by nopinsight on Friday December 04, 2009 @10:10AM (#976440)
Facebook just reached 350 million active users and they count only people who log in over the past month.

Also I just read very recently that over 50% of monthly active users log in to Facebook everyday.

Re:Can Anyone Stop Facebook? by theli0nheart on Friday December 04, 2009 @11:11AM (#976550)
I totally agree. Facebook at this point is a phonebook. That's all I use it for now. I could care less what a random acquaintance did last weekend. It is totally irrelevant and wastes my time. Twitter forces me to focus on only those who I care about.

http://twitter.com/dwlz/status/1379312535

Re:Can Anyone Stop Facebook? by bumblebird on Friday December 04, 2009 @10:10AM (#976443)
>> "It doesn't help that my stream is populated by my friends' constant romps on Farmville or Mafia Wars"

So surely that shows your friends are using it a lot :/

Personally, I find facebook far more usable than twitter - upload images/videos/share URLs, no silly char limit etc.