[BRIEF NOTE] Facebook, not nearly dead yet

[rfmcdonald]

This Saturday, the Toronto Star's Chris Sorenson was speculating: "Has Facebook fatigue arrived?". His article answers his question quite neatly.

Facebook status update: Is it over already?

That's the buzz in some quarters of the Web after a recent report showed the number of people logging on to the social networking site in the United Kingdom dropped by 400,000 between December and January.

The decline, a first for the Facebook-crazed British, was pounced on by critics who gleefully warned that Facebook fatigue had finally arrived.

Perhaps more ominous, at least by Internet standards, is the recent appearance of a music video on YouTube that blares "I'm getting bored of Facebook," to the tune of Billy Joel's "We didn't start the fire."

There's even a Facebook fatigue group on Facebook that encourages people to log off permanently. (Ironically, the group has still managed to attract 36 members.)

But while Facebook's meteoric growth may indeed be slowing, including in Canada, experts say it's far too soon to secure a burial plot beside social networking pioneer Friendster.

"I don't think they're dead or falling flat on their face just yet," said Timothy Hickernell, an analyst with Info-Tech Research Group, who tracks the social networking phenomenon in North America.

In the U.K., for example, Facebook still boasts about 8.5 million users. That translates into about one out of every six people in the country.

Globally, Facebook claims to have a user base of 67 million.

Canada, meanwhile, boasts the third-largest number of Facebook users in the world behind the U.K. and the United States, where Facebook originated. Analysts here estimate one of every four Canadians have Facebook accounts.

Kaan Yigit, an analyst at Solutions Research Group, said his own data shows that Facebook's growth rate has slowed considerably in Canada over the past few months--a finding he attributes to the suspicion that most Canadians between 12 and 34 are already on Facebook.

"The thing about Facebook fatigue is that it's primarily an older phenomenon," Yigit said.

He said people over the age of 40 are more likely to find Facebook time-consuming and rife with potential work-life conflicts.

"I don't see any fatigue in the younger, 12 to 34 age group, because with those people, it's really not an option not to have Facebook. Otherwise, you're not in the loop."

Making Facebook a viable business while respecting the privacy rights of the users, the experts interviewed by Sorenson argue, is much more of a problem for Facebook than the continued existence of a mass of people, mainly younger ones, who are interested in social networking. Not that older people are excluded, mind, as demonstrated recently in Malaysia.

An 89-year-old Malaysian woman who is the oldest candidate in Saturday's elections has taken her hunt for votes online with the support of volunteers a fraction her age, reports said Friday.

The gutsy grandmother, who is an independent candidate in the east coast state of Terengganu, became an overnight media celebrity when she began campaigning last month.

Maimun Yusuf now has her own blog, and a page on the popular social networking website Facebook. Footage of her campaign has also been uploaded on the video sharing website Youtube.

Maimun has been "adopted" by 24-year-old Brian Ong, a Yale economics graduate who was moved by her story.

"This is a last-minute measure for her to reach out to more voters, especially the younger generation," Ong told the New Straits times.