A**ebook on the wane?

Some think so:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/wi...-for-facebook/

The bad news for Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s 27-year-old billionaire creator, is that many people are doing just that. They’re using Facebook less, or leaving it altogether – which is known, would you believe it, as “Facebook suicide”.

Figures show that 100,000 British users deactivated their accounts during May, reducing the total number to 29.8 million. And six million logged off for good in the United States. What started off as an exclusive online social club at Harvard University has saturated Western society. Now it could be on the way down.

Facebook suicide is still too bold a move for some. It would be unthinkable for a 16-year-old to kick the habit. Your teenage children might tell you they are “revising” for exams upstairs, but how many hours have they frittered away, sharing hilarious YouTube clips with friends or “poking” each other? For this crowd, Facebook has penetrated every facet of their lives. It is how they communicate (they don’t use email or text messages). It is how they swap articles and videos. As one technology writer put it recently, for them “it’s becoming a web of its own”. Just as Zuckerberg planned.

For others, young twentysomething professionals, for example, it’s a lot easier to quit. My friends use Facebook as a kind of address book, a back-up to their iPhones. At university, we would compulsively check the website because everybody else did. But these days, indifference is catching on. It’s a social epidemic in reverse.

There’s one over-riding reason for this: once you’ve entered the world of work, concerns for privacy become more urgent. That midnight skinny dip at the Majorca beach party was a laugh – but there’s no need to share it with your boss. The dangers of thoughtless social networking apply to all, whether you’re a soldier in Afghanistan, or an over-friendly juror in Manchester.

[tigersaw]

I never bought into the idea of anyway. I don't get twitter either, no idea what use it could possibly be to me

I have a friend who regularly berates me for not having Tw*tter and keeps saying I need to sign up so I wouldn't need to ask 'how is so and so doing' or 'what have you been up to lately?'. But if I already knew all that, would we talk about? More importantly, NOBODY needs to know what ANY OTHER PERSON is doing or thinking at all times.

mm Twitter, yes, "In the Starbucks just having a Latte, ordered a choclolate brownie, can't wait youm youm".

P1ss off I don't want to know.

Same with Facebook, although I do sneak a peak at my kids when they've left themselves logged in. Bad, bad Dad.

I use Twitter on a professional basis - I have a few websites that sell things so when I put a new product on there, it automatically tweets it, and your customers know there's something new. I also have a coupld of magazine sites and the same thing - when a new article goes on, it tweets your followers. Useful as it means your followers will know when you have new stuff on your sites.

I don't have a personal Twitter account as "Just had a dump, massive, bloccked the u-bend" is not sharing material really.....

"My friends use Facebook as a kind of address book, a back-up to their iPhones. "

Thats about the catagory I fit into, I use it to maintain my contacts and as a free online storage system for pics on the little one. I too cant deal with the needless status updates

[dizzyblonde]

I don't like...so and so answered a question about you, or your mate scored this in bouncy balls etc.

I don't care that my mates are weirdly stalking me by answering odd questions about if I shop at Walmart, and I reallly don't want to see that playing games is reaaaaalllly a special thing, cause I play them when I'm bored, just like everyone else.

I've only recently (last august) got into FB after I gave people loads of stick for being saddos with pretend friends, now I use it myself.

I think it's brilliant for keeping in touch with people I wouldn't normally be ar5ed to, great for putting pics up for everyone to see.

The pointless updates do my head in a bit tbh but it's ok, it has lost a bit of it's novelty with me a little though.

What's a Facebook?