[BRIEF NOTE] Facebook, not nearly dead yet

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.

[MUSIC] Annie Lennox, "Little Bird"

Annie Lennox's song "Little Bird" is perhaps the best song on Lennox's 1992 debut album Diva. The lyrics are fairly straightforward, a story of recovery and self-empowerment generally.

I look up to the little bird
That glides across the sky
He sings the clearest melody
It makes me want to cry
It makes me want to sit right down
and cry cry cry
I walk along the city streets
So dark with rage and fear
And I...
I wish that I could be that bird
And fly away from here
I wish I had the wings to fly away from here

Set against a propulsive Eurythmics-like synth background and sung with her trademark white soul inflections, the song was bound to be a hit, even without the popular dance remix by N-Joi. The music video helped put it over the top.

This music video was directed by Sophie Muller, a British director who had worked with the Eurythmics and Annie Lennox before. I don't pretend to know whose idea it was to make the music video all about Lennox' past video alter egos, but Muller certainly made it work. The red-haired and suited androgyne from the videos for "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This" and "Love Is A Stranger" came first, then the angel actress of "There Must Be An Angel," the leather-suited short-haired singer from "When Tomorrow Comes", the repressed housewife and the disco vixen from the Savage video album, the diva from her solo video "Diva" and the angry lover of Hugh Laurie in "Walking on Broken Glass," and her raccoon makeup and metallic skirt from her live performance of "Under Pressure" with David Bowie. (I've read that the aforementioned red-haired androgyne was played by a drag queen from Gdansk.)

Each avatar walks down the catwalk, sings and poses, pushes others around and fights for control of the microphone, on and on until a heavily pregnant contemporary Lennox puts her foot down and ends the song against some drum machine slaps

But my my I feel so low
My my where do I go ?
My my what do I know ?
My my we reap what we sow
They always said that you knew best
But this little bird's fallen out of that nest now
I've got a feeling that it might have been blessed
So I've just got to put these wings to test

"No More 'I Love You's" is the song that began my infatuation with Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics, but "Little Bird" is the song that confirmed it for me. It's a fun song, with feel-good lyrics and beautiful singing and great music. That's part of the reason why I was saddened when I realized earlier this month that, in this video, Lennox wasn' playing with all of these different facets of her past music career. In the "Little Bird" video, Lennox is saying goodbye to them, letting them air just one more time before locking them away and setting off on a new career.

That shift was probably inevitable. Keeping up the twitchiness of the Eurythmics' first three albums or the passion of Savage probably wasn't possible, and probably wouldn't be good for Lennox. After more than a decade in the public spotlight, for her own personal comfort Lennox had to find a new persona--clean-lined, calm, manageable--for the next decade, and for the decade after that. That doesn't mean that I can't mourn the loss of the embodied spirit of that first decade, even as I appreciate this song and this music video for the great pop-musical artifacts that they are.

[LINK] "P.E.I. too big for Island Games, says Guernsey"

Via CBC, news that one of the participating islands in the Island Games (official site, Wikipedia) won't support Prince Edward Island's candidacy as host for the 2013 Island Games on account of its size.

Prince Edward Island has lost the support of Guernsey, an island in the English Channel, in its bid to host the 2013 Island Games, because it is too big.

Jon Marley, the Island Games liaison for Guernsey, said there were problems with last year's games in Rhodes because of the size of the Island, and the time it took to travel between venues. For that reason, Guernsey has decided to support Bermuda's bid to host the games.

"Compared to Guernsey, you're a very, very large place," said Marley.

"There is no strict, 'The island is too big, too small.' It's purely because Rhodes is in everybody's minds and there was issues with that. Unfortunately it just came around at the wrong time for us."

P.E.I. is about 100 times the size of Bermuda.

The Island Games were established in 1985 and are held every two years. The Rhodes event attracted 2,000 competitors from 25 islands.

Guernsey, by way of comparison, hosts a population of 65 thousand people versus Prince Edward Island's 139 thousand, and a land area of 78 square kilometers versus Prince Edward Island's 5684 square kilometers.