

Quit Facebook Day flops as only 1 in 15,000 pledge to quit - MikeCapone
http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/31/quit-facebook-day-flops-as-only-1-in-15000-pledge-to-quit/

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iamdave
This is sort of emblematic of the Facebook Faux Activist generation. While
they are so prepared to step up and say something about their convictions,
wrapped up and emotionally spirited after been told, all throughout their
school lives about how their parents were activists (for things that actually
mattered, but that's a different story), my generation lacks what matters when
it comes to being an activist:

The ability to realize actions speak louder than words. As long as it doesn't
involve going outside, standing in a line or otherwise stepping away from your
precious Macbooks for a few hours a day to actually form a peaceful, but
resolute protest about a matter, it's very unlikely that this generation will
actually accomplish things like this. And even then, something like
deactivating your Facebook account turned out to be a flop.

What's more shocking is that they were more than willing to take part in a day
in which thousands of people stood up, and willfully desecrated the holy
figure of another religion, whether or not they actually understood the
overtones of what they were doing, or understanding the undertones of the
moderate followers of the Muslim community who reached out to media outlets to
explain why the Muhammad drawings disturbed them (Muhammad did not want to be
worshiped as an Idol, and they felt that depicting him in the form of an image
would detract from the central message he was trying to convey).

Surprising, yet expected all at the same time.

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philk
Given there are followers of Islam out there who (off the top of my head)
bombed the Danish embassy in Pakistan, murdered Theo Van Gogh and put a bounty
on Salman Rushdie's head I don't find it shocking at all that there were
people willing to stand up and declare that they weren't intimidated.

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mechanical_fish
As I've said before: "Quit Facebook Day" is bound to be useless. What we need
is "Join Alternative X Day". Where X is something you can recommend with a
straight face.

It's as if they had declared "Quit Internet Explorer Day" before Firefox was
even released.

~~~
webdragon
People should remember that before Facebook, MySpace was the unstoppable
juggernaut. It's only when there's something to steal Facebook's thunder that
it will go the way of MySpace and we'll all forget about it.

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philk
The problem for Facebook isn't that people are going to quit, it's that
they're going to stop sharing anything worthwhile.

Once the majority starts treating it as a glorified address book there's much
less reason for people to visit regularly.

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what
This is silly, they have no idea how many people actually quit. Not that I
think many people quit anyways.

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sorbus
That's exactly what I was thinking; it would be more interesting to know how
many people kept that pledge. Still, it does put it into perspective; the vast
majority of people simply don't care, or don't know, about Facebook's privacy
issues, despite all the noise lately.

~~~
what
I was thinking more that the people actually concerned with their privacy
might not want to submit their name and email address on some random site. So
the the number of pledges could under represent the people that actually want
to quit (or did quit).

But, yeah, it's far more likely that most people just don't care.

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sz
I used to be on Facebook quite a bit. I deleted my account a week ago, and the
abrupt change felt surprisingly liberating. Facebook was becoming a chore to
manage, but I didn't realize this until after I left.

Sems like there's still room for something more simplified (but not to
Twitter's extreme.) Buzz?

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vaspers
It's not a "flop". Many of the most respected tech bloggers have permanently
deleted their Facebook accounts. I did so myself about a month ago when I
heard that Zuckerberg called FB users "dumb f __cks". Who cares about hooking
up with people you went to high school with anyway?

~~~
techiferous
> It's not a "flop".

Agreed. It's a change in direction. Facebook is no longer on an easy, upward,
unchallenged trajectory.

A business plan to compete directly with Facebook no longer seems foolish.
Regardless of Diaspora's success, the overwhelming support of $200,000 of real
money proved that there is a hungry market for a Facebook competitor; someone
just has to build it.

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pierrefar
That's the wrong way to calculate the "flop". 1 in 15k registered accounts
quitting is a flop, but it can easily be argued that not all 500 million heard
about the day. It's a marketing/awareness issue and language barriers (in how
many languages did the day get promoted?).

The more correcet number is how many have pledged to quit and actually did?
That's the real number. Even then it's not fool-proof because those pledging
are already self-selecting. However, if zero (or very close to zero) people
from pledgers actually quit, we even can call it a win for Facebook.

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codexon
I have multiple Facebook accounts back from the day an edu address was
required. I never bothered to delete them. Same with my main account.

I am not sure why everyone takes Facebook's 500 million member number at face
value when a quick look around reveals numerous spam, fake, and barely updated
accounts.

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ryanwaggoner
That's their active user number, not their total-user-accounts-in-our-database
number.

~~~
codexon
Why would you believe that is their active number?

Back when I was active on Facebook, there was no shortage of fake accounts
that survived multiple attempts by Facebook to purge them.

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Jun8
So much for the thinking that people would leave FB in droves after the latest
privacy mishap(s). The thing is that people have invested too much time and
effort in FB. Unless there's a one-button migration button to some other rival
system, many people just won't leave.

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robryan
I'm sure some of the people that get involved with a pledge like this will
rejoin when the realise they made no impact. After all if you have no thought
for making an impact why would not just quit quietly?

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brianwillis
Of course it flopped. People who have strong objections to Facebook have
already quit, or never joined in the first place.

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resdirector
This was bound to fail: it's very hard to pledge to quit if you have > 0
friends that you actively follow.

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xaei
fb says it has > 400 million users. thats about 27k who quit in a day. now if
we knew what the baseline quit rate is, the #s might mean something..

