Below are excerpts from the discussion on Pinyadda around this Gadgetell article, “Study says 60% of Facebook users thinking about leaving”. On Pinyadda you can follow breaking news from thousands of sites & blogs across the web on topics like: Facebook, Social Media, Privacy.

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Chase Garbarino pinned this to Allison Ciummei, Austin Gardner-Smith, Cheryl Morris, Jon Frisch, John Garbarino, Jennie White, Jonathan Kardos, Joe Ranft, Kevin McCarthy, Lauren Foye, Matthew Growney, Bill McBain, Rob Gonzalez, seth hayward, Steve Tarsa, Tom Nickerson.

So does anyone here fall in the 60% considering leaving?

Rob Gonzalez pinned this.

Definitely not. Too easy to keep on top of what a bunch of people I know are doing.

Joe Ranft pinned this.

That’s kind of a pointless poll. There’s no alternative, so people won’t leave.

I could see younger people, college age and teens, quickly migrating to something else, like the quickly left MySpace, and then Facebook slowing becoming dormant, but for now it was hard enough getting my Mom on Facebook. She’s never leaving.

Cheryl Morris pinned this.

I won’t leave unless they REALLY screw up with my personal info (and even then I’ll probably still keep my name there… they’re essentially the world’s directory). It’s less about creeping on those 850 friends’ lives for me, more about that nowhere else do I have all 850 people’s contact info if I want to be in touch. I will be trying and rooting for alternatives (diaspora), though. Just keep having less and less respect for Zuck as some sort of scandalous story breaks about him or FB it seems just about every day.

Chase Garbarino pinned this.

Same at the very least I see myself keeping an account with my 3rd email or something. I do think their continual missteps on this is going to prevent them from being the social OS which is what Zuckerberg has always wanted, but I also don’t think it is necessarilly too late to recover. But I wouldn’t count on their management team to make awesome decisions either since other than pure growth they haven’t done many things well. But damn do they do growth well.

Kipp Visi pinned this.

I’m pretty amazed at it being as high as 60%. I think of Facebook as a way of keeping in touch so I’m not leaving, but it’s definitely going to lose a lot of value if this many people really are. There’s alternatives for people growing up (LinkedIn) and the college crowd (the new Facebook) but i like that everyone is already on Facebook. I kind of wish people would just stick to one so I don’t have to keep jumping around, although I know that doesn’t make for much of a competitive environment.

Jennie White pinned this.

I am with Kipp, I am amazed it’s as high as 60%. If the majority of my friends, leave and find somewhere else to stay in touch 24/7 (my age uses FB messages instead of email) then I’ll leave too. If Facebook gets to MySpace, where it’s uncool to be associated with the site at all, then I am out of there. It’s not the lack of privacy that scares me, that’s inevitable, but it’s getting boring and a little weird.

Cheryl Morris pinned this to adam fullerton, Jennie White, Lauren Foye.

Facebook has definitely gotten boring. And I wonder if it’s getting more boring because it’s becoming more public (with co-workers and the like and now apparently the world vs. your closest 200 friends like back in the day). It’s not so hilarious and racy and un-PC and entertaining because people are being so careful… again, perhaps examples of the “deep” engagement they’re losing?

Jennie White pinned this.

Cheryl, great point–the deep engagement is fading. It’s superficial, now are profiles are filled with the brands, stories, music the individual likes, Facebook has become less about the community and more about the individual. We aren’t sharing inside jokes, memories, thoughts, and feelings with our Facebook communities (friends, family, coworkers), instead we’re showing them what brands we like…yuck.

seth hayward pinned this.

there’s definitely been a change in engagement, nice way to put that.

i think about leaving all the time, but there’s not a lot to actually be gained from leaving. if you are so sick of facebook, just stop visiting/using it. problem solved.

for some reason i always think about this line from The Departed about communities relative to each other:
William Costigan Jr.: “Families are always rising and a’falling in America.”

facebook once had that deep engagement, but then it lost it. not everywhere, not 100%, but people definitely changed their behavior on it. people tweet what they used to say with a facebook status. one website loses a bit, another rises a bit.

it’s not the end of the world for facebook that people are less engaged, just signals a shift in how we want to use facebook. should be interesting to see how facebook really deals with this – in retrospect, they’ve scaled so well up to this period.

Jennie White pinned this.

@Seth, nice reference to The Departed and you’re right I can see how it relates to Facebook.The question is, how will the lack of deep engagement impact Facebook users or even society? First we used letters, then telegraphs, then telephones, then computers, then text messages, then Facebook and Twitter to communicate with the people we cared about that. If Facebook doesn’t care about engagement, who are we going to talk to? Brands, like Starbucks.. that’s scary.

I want Facebook to slow down a little bit and let the rest of the world catch up with them.

Kevin McCarthy pinned this to Jennie White.

Jennie, you bring up something interesting. Assuming that you have the person’s email address, why do you (speaking for your generation) Facebook message them instead? Is it out of convenience or is it because Facebook messages are less formal or is it something else?

Jonathan Kardos pinned this.

I won’t (and can’t) leave. It feels like it would be social web suicide. I love all the comments… all true.
It feels like FB is having a bit of an identity crisis. While they’re trying to be our uber network, it seems like they’ve lost sight of what the core user experience is. My feed, conversations, and community are not at all what they were when I created my account…

Chris Ercoli pinned this.

I haven’t read ALL the comments above, but ENGAGEMENT is an issue! Now that they’re beginning to monetize FB, friendships and correspondence will be based on financial gains – is it me, or is something wrong with that?

Joe Ranft pinned this.

I think Facebook does a lot to trap its users, which works short term, but longer time might not, especially with some of the obvious shorcomings. Here are two examples: 1) messages via Facebook. These should default to e-mail. It’s really annoying to have another inbox to deal with. Linkedin messages start in Linkedin but allow for the correspondence to continue in e-mail. 2) Photos. The photos on Facebook are super low quality. Whatever they’re doing to downsize the files is wrong. When users realize that using Facebook for storage, rather than just sharing, is a bad idea, they’ll look for an alternative like Flickr.Both of these are decisions made that benefit Facebook and not the end user. Forcing users back to Facebook to reply to messages make the platform more sticky. And it’s expensive to save the photos in their original resolution.

Cheryl Morris pinned this to Chris Ercoli, Jennie White, Joe Ranft.

Chris, there does seem to be something wrong with that, especially when put that way, and it gets to the core of why we’re on there to begin with: to talk with friends.But, I always remind myself that I’m not paying for Facebook so I try to be accepting/lenient/understanding about how they monetize it. Remember how much they got slammed in the press in 2009 for NOT making enough money?

That being said as we all seem to agree on, when the changes affect UX and engagement as much as it has, it just doesn’t sit well. I’m with Jennie — I just do not want to talk with brands on Facebook as much as Facebook seems to think I do. If I’m talking with friends about/around that brand or interacting with friends to get a group benefit from that brand, that’s another thing — that’s social. Updates in my newsfeed are just not.

Joe, great points with the pictures — I was noticing the quality the other week now that I’ve started using Flickr more (and have a Mac screen that makes it a heck of a lot more apparent). Never quite got why they didn’t monetize the photo part of Facebook… considering that’s what some 70%+ do when they get on the site!

Paul Rand pinned this.

Joe Ranft pinned this.
About 18 hours ago
“That’s kind of a pointless poll. There’s no alternative, so people won’t leave.”So why not make an alternative? I would say Pinyadda is one, but it’s a bit different in style. Although I’m sure if the developers had the time and money they could make one. All you have to do to make the next Facebook is
1. Find a suitable shortish name with the URL free and register it (and the .net’s, org’s .me’s co.uk’s etc around it if your smart
2. Find a good coder (or coding team) who wants to help and is willing to code from scratch (taking nothing from Facebook)
3. Find a good graphics person or team (I know a guy) who is willing to do that part of the design from scratch
4. Get some people who know how to write (especially the legal stuff)
5. Get a good web host
6. Make it better then Facebook, maybe even stress how private your info is. Then people will come pouring in
7. ????
8. Profit (or you can ignore this one if you don’t like ads and do like paying for all that huge amount of hosting out of pocket.
9. Turn down google 8.6 X 10^657890 times when they try to buy you

and hey, if you decided to do this, I’ll be glad to help (mind you the only thing I’m any good at is moderation)

Tom Nickerson pinned this to Chase Garbarino, Cheryl Morris, Joe Ranft, Kevin McCarthy, Katie Goelz, Lauren Foye.

Who conducted this study and who was the audience surveyed? That is probably one of the more important pieces of this statement. As a person who reads studies all day long (and has to decide whether or not they are credible), I find it fishy that this info is not provided in the article.

Kevin McCarthy pinned this to Tom Nickerson.

Hey Tom, Sophos conducted the study, so I have to imagine that the demographic is tech/security-knowledgeable individuals. I think it was something like 1600 participants.

Katie Goelz pinned this to Chase Garbarino, Cheryl Morris, Kevin McCarthy, Lauren Foye, Tom Nickerson.

I think, over the past few weeks, Facebook has created a problematic sense of hysteria about how much information is being leaked from personal profiles to advertisers and the general public. If everyone took a deep breath, checked their privacy settings, and deleted anything they felt uncomfortable having people see (ie an HR department or a parent/grandparent), this wouldn’t be such an ordeal.

Linda Smith pinned this.

My initial reaction was exactly what Paul Rand noted. Wouldn’t this be a huge red flag that the time is right for the next “MySpace/Facebook/etc” It’s human nature to get complacent with the current option–particularly in this environment. Someone’s chance to step it up and go for the big break.

Paul Rand pinned this to Cheryl Morris.

Glad I’m not the only one who thinks that. And since the active users on this site are from what I can tell, more technologically inclined, why don’t we get a group together. If anyone is interested then I’d be glad to help out by setting up a temp forum on a subdomain of my website. Or the crew that makes Pinyadda could do it. Tell me what you guys think and maybe we can make Facebook obsolete in a year or two (or three).

Jennie White pinned this to Cheryl Morris, Jonathan Kardos, Joe Ranft, Kevin McCarthy.

Kevin- I actually did a study at NU about how kids my age and younger prefer to communicate through Facebook instead of email. First off, I don’t remember the last time I emailed one of my best friends. We communicate through FB messages and wall posts because that’s where we’re spending our time, we’re hanging out on Facebook, while people older than us are using email. If it was up to gen y and younger, we wouldn’t have emails, we’d do it all through Facebook.Jonathan- I liked your point about Facebook’s “identity crisis,” they got too big too fast and it went to Zuck’s head. I read on Mashable today, that Facebook is revamping their privacy settings and making them simple. This will be the first time they reverse something like that, right?

Cheryl and Joe- I am interested that you use Flickr for pictures, I’ve been thinking about it, but I find the site confusing. Joe, definitely agree with your point about the picture quality on Facebook. I am currently looking for an FB application that let’s you order prints from your friend’s albums, ok that could be borderline stalker, but I like the idea.

Facebook isn’t going anywhere, too many people use it and rely on it for connecting with others and entertainment. Facebook has become people’s social life.

Cheryl Morris pinned this to Paul Rand.

Check out Diaspora — http://www.joindiaspora.com/ . These NYU guys seem to have gotten the most buzz around building a network catered to college students & heightened privacy.

Linda Smith pinned this.

Google has a pretty good setup for free picture sharing at picasaweb.com

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