Note: after I wrote the post below my brother Doug in Sacramento sent me this cartoon from JoyOfTech:
Don’t look now but Facebook is getting as popular as a two-time no-show/no-call temp who wants to know why you’re not calling him about jobs any more.
My evidence for this is both quantitative and anecdotal. The quantitative part you could see from the stock market IPO yesterday. If not for the benevolence of the underwriters, it would have tanked well below its offering price of $38.
As for the anecdotal part, it’s popping up all around.
Myself, I quit Facebook. It happened just the other day. I was feeling…kinda grossed out. My distant cousin Hovhanes Dourgarian from Moscow or somewhere north of Armenia had shared with me on SocialCam some porno flick he watched. Actually, he didn’t share it. SocialCam spammed it onto his Facebook timeline.
Oh yes, there’s this account as well. Unreal.
My buddy Steve’s kids, aged 17 and 19, quit too. Not cool to be where your parents hang out.
Social networks regress to spam at an accelerating speed. Facebook had a good run.
Is Twitter next?
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
MOMENTUM STOCK LIKE MOMENTUM HOUSING…SMART MONEY NO LIKE BUBBLE
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Yet you are technically promoting them still via share links on this blog…
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promoting Facebook? I personally like the drop down share options that give a whole list of nonsense networks to choose from. Why would you take any share options away merely out of personal preference? Where I prefer to share may not be where you do or the next person does…
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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That’s a good point Andy. The Share links are not my favorite as whatever value they might possess in sharing is increasingly outweighed by how cheap they make you look.
Paul and I have briefly discussed removing them in the past, and it certainly wouldn’t hurt to review it in the future.
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I don’t think that providing readers with the convenience of sharing one of our articles on their social network of choice is promoting the network, nor does it cheapen the user experience. Removing that ability would be purposefully making it harder for people to share our content. There are still plenty of people using Facebook — many of our readers in fact. A share button is not an ad or even an endorsement.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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I agree Paul. Similar to companies that offer a map link to their physical location are most likely not promoting mapquest or Google maps. They are simply trying to make navigation easier for their users/customers.
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I agree with what you say about facebook feeling gross. It can be but I think that it still has many things it can be used for. Like the cartoon, I don’t trust facebook but I do use it for what I need to, nothing more. I think something else will come along, something more based around video and the raw human element. we’re not there yet but we’re getting there.
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Hi Gloria…thanks for the comment. Come back and let us know if you’ve found that something else that comes along at some point.
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Paul, gregg, notgregg,
Isn’t making use of something publicly technically an endorsement?
P.s. Gregg I know you are going to use some technicality in response…
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I use Firefox to view this blog, while many use Internet Explorer. Are you suggesting that Staffing Talk is endorsing both?
I would think that if there were only one link, which would suggest that it is the ‘preferred’ social network; that would constitute an endorsement. To offer a wide array is almost a clear non-endorsement.
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Andy,
Although i’m not willing to subject myself to Facebook spam, a lot of people still use it and Staffing Talk takes advantage of that with the Facebook button.
Are you calling me out therefore as a hypocrite or are you just pointing out an irony?
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I have to say I disagree. There isn’t any statistics that truly show a decline if Facebook users, is there? From 500mil to 900mil in a matter of a couple of years…I say still worth it and if you know what you’re doing in the social media world, it’s effective, still.
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Gregg, I must have missed your blog on my rss feed. Better late than never. Welcome to the club. I left Facebook over a year ago and I have never regretted it. My reasoning back then was from a security standpoint, and because I was making the case to my employer that we should continue to block Facebook on our network. I lost the case to marketing. I never reactivated my FB account. Fast forward to now, our logs indicates that the number of malware reported has risen proportially to the number of hits to FB.com from our network. So the notion of distrust for FB’s growth and monetary worth is a fair justification imho.
Disclaimer: the malware-fb correlation is based on an educated guess.
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