Social Networking Decline

Call Me, Don't "Social Network" MeWhile social networks are still massive and generally doing well, there are more more reports of people getting fed up with such networks because they get too many friend requests and are not happy with the new advertising methods the sites use to generate revenue.

For example sharing a person’s buying behavior is not making users of such services happy.

Today, the Wall Street Journal has an article that Bill Gates has stopped using FaceBook. The sad fact is that Microsoft has invested in the company.

While I have complained in the past about getting a few friend requests a day on such networks, Gates receives 8,000 each day. This is absolutely astounding and explains why he would want to leave the service.

The article also goes into the fact that you cannot ever delete your information on some of these networks.

Certainly, all this bad press can’t be good for the likes of MySpace and FaceBook and could signal a broader trend that the world has lost interest in such sites.

  • joecascio.net
    August 3, 2009 at 11:03 am

    Social networking as it exists today is still an immature technology and cultural phenomenon and very much in flux, developmentally. Only recently, Facebook has added many new features to allow users to protect their privacy. The industry and users both are still learning and there’s a long road ahead, but I don’t believe there’s any going back.
    Bill Gates can hardly be cited as indicative of people on social networks in any respect, except for maybe his shoe size.
    The next wave of social networking will improve on the current technology, and draw upon methods people use to socialize off-line, like private, by-invitation-only clubs.

  • electropredator
    April 12, 2010 at 4:28 pm

    I would also note that CIA like to monitor these sites. In actual reality, you really do not have any privacy.

  • Melis
    April 13, 2010 at 10:08 am

    These sites bore me so much, Facebook especially. I signed up to network my business, the interface isn’t user friendly, the uses aren’t intuitive and I really don’t like the fact that some dork I knew briefly 10 freakin’ years ago keeps showing up on my list of people I might know. It’s not like I’m on the same computer or even using the same email address.
    Facebook? Pass. I have a life.

  • MAO
    April 13, 2010 at 1:23 pm

    Even though they have turned the “social” teenage experience into an internet-based platform it doesn’t mean that it will one day become magically profitable! Eventually people grow up and find they can A: Spend have their life online with no real experiences or relationships B: HAVE A LIFE. Social networks are for celebrity junkies, the unemployed and losers. Everything the high school aged “popular” people do on the net they would have be doing anyway without it. Switching from wood to plastic doesn’t infer automatic, skyrocketing and endless profits in a new market! The bulk of people using these networks use them because they are free AND free of encumbrance. Start making then pay for them? Constantly trying to drive company sales using them? Say goodbye to social networks. Unless of course they FINALLY focus on the one thing that can keep people coming back no matter what, money- individual users income source. The big networking sites should figure out how to engender a culture of entrepreneurship and profit by users instead of using them the other way. Watch Facebook morph into a small-business, online computing program as it’s users pass the 18 mark. Oh, an let us not mention the fact that cryptome keeps posting internal documents showing these sites are selling your personal information to anyone- including Federal agencies like say the IRS!

  • electropredator
    April 27, 2010 at 8:38 pm

    The internet has also become a commercial toilet. It is a medium for all types of perversion and commercial exploitation. There will always be those who will exploit a good thing, and there will always be those who will believe the hype about making money on the net, because they want to, in spite of rational arguments and facts to the contrary. There are NO free rides or easy way to make money. And personally I disliked any commercialization of the internet. It can be a national resource to be used for the common good, instead of for profits. But, that is an unrealistic ideal. This indiscriminate and expoitive use of the net has dispoiled the pristine research environment that once existed here. I do miss the good old days before the internet became a household word. With the advent of Internet2 we may be able to preserve some of those qualities.
    The internet is also an opportunity for free speech and to spread the truth about governments and war, and corporate misuse of power, and scams, like no other opportunity we have ever had. – Hank Roth

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