back to article Nearly 2 MILLION US Facebook users quit social network

Shares in Facebook continued to slide on Tuesday, after an analyst claimed the dominant social network had seen a modest drop in its userbase. Capstone Investment's Rory Maher said Mark Zuckerberg's company suffered a 1.1 per cent fall in US users over the last six months. The number of European Facebookers had also declined, …

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  1. Richard Cartledge
    FAIL

    Capstone as in all seeing eye pyramid.

    Pft! They don't even bother to hide it.

  2. Eduard Coli
    Big Brother

    Sorry

    Those would be my accounts, perhaps I let them lapse.

    No worries, I'll get right to it and make some new accounts so we can all be "Friends" again.

  3. Local Group
    Angel

    Facebook Anonymous

    Shall we meet again next Wednesday?

    Thank you one and all.

    Donuts and coffee at AC's.

  4. Homer 1
    Pint

    Meh

    Who needs Farcebook when we have El Reg?

    And, as a bonus, the general level of discourse here usually exceeds Farcebook's and Twatter's by a considerable margin.

    1. adrian sietsma
      Mushroom

      Re: Meh

      "And, as a bonus, the general level of discourse here usually exceeds Farcebook's and Twatter's by a considerable margin."

      That means FB and TW must be REALLY inane : the general level of commentary on El Reg has definitely gone a long way downhill over the last 5-10 years, with a few honourable exceptions.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Living is also way over rated

    You social fadsters should off yourselves this weekend. Then I can start my global Soylent Green business.

  6. Homer 1
    Coat

    Soylent Green?

    Isn't that the algae floaters one sees off the Isle of Wight?

    Anyway, if it ain't chocolate flavour, I ain't buyin'.

  7. Jeebus

    I do so love the people waiting to jump on those who don't use the site. Like a reverse snobbery, so very sad indeed.

    Do not use Facebook, left last year when they changed their terms, disagreed and left, and yes that does make me better than those still on the site.

    1. JDX Gold badge

      No it makes you a sanctimonious jerk.

      People aren't jumping on those who don't use the site; they're jumping on those who like to make a song and dance about how and why they're not using the site.

  8. JDX Gold badge

    Why is failure to grow a failure?

    They stopped growing because they got everyone* in the main countries they operate in. Why is holding steady at a billion users seen as a failure?

    *obviously not literally but if you look at a key target market like student/20s, they really don't have much left to aim for.

    1. JimmyPage Silver badge
      Big Brother

      Re: Why is failure to grow a failure?

      Why is holding steady at a billion users seen as a failure?

      Because for FB to deliver to those people who bought shares in it, it actually has to make more money than it spends over a sustained period of time. Up till now, all of FBs profits have been derived from the fact that there were X+y users now compared to a point in the past. And it's the "+y" that generated the income. By drawing in companies who spent money advertising.

      FBs business model is effectively a ponzi scheme. Very slick. Very popular. Highly visible. But very vulnerable to stagnation.

      I still think at some point, we are going to see a FB "premium" account. Doubtless slickly marketed. Probably starting out around $10/£10 per month. Maybe with a discount, if you get more "friends" to sign up. Alternatively, you will start seeing paid-for content creeping in. Maybe premium groups you need to pay (or subscribe) to join.

      Of course the one thing that many people *would* pay for is to lose the ads. But that wouldn't go down too well with the big companies paying (or in GMs case, not paying) to peddle their wares on FB.

      The move by FB to insist on real identities should have been a wake-up call.

      My main concern about FB as a non-FBer, is it's probably already possible to trawl FB, with it's users and friends, and pinpoint people who aren't on FB - and then profile them, based on the people they know who *do* use FB. I know my email address has been hoovered into FB when people I know have signed up. So FB knows I exist, who my friends are, and what they like. Imagine what this data is worth to a clever marketing company ?

  9. Gritzwally Philbin
    Pint

    The Great Escape

    Got my info off of FB well over a year ago. Goodness they didn't make it easy!

    Had to start by shutting down all my friends, so nothing new could be added, then changing all my personal info to question marks.

    Let that sit for a few days so those changes could be floated across all their servers. Got back in and started deleting posts. Two pages worth a day, with three of four days between for the system to again, make the changes across their servers, and to give it time to pull up everything it could find.

    The best thing about that wall is that it is designed to show you all your comments on your page and the pages of those you've added ad friends as well. As you dig down and delete newer posts, it starts to scour through your friends' lists to find anything you've added and bring them up.

    The trick was to just *wait* and let the data - my data - come to me.

    Once I got to the point where I was deleting my comments on other people's pages, I knew I was close.

    It's those comments you make on *other* people's pages that keeps you in their system.

    Once I got everything, I logged out and waited a week to be certain. Sure enough it brought up a few more of the earliest posts I'd made to someone I hadn't even heard from in 4 years. Done.

    Once every post was cleared out, I then deleted all my friends (you have to do this last, or you won't be able to get at and remove the posts you've left on their pages) and waited.

    Two weeks later, I log in and it is showing me random names of people it *thinks* I might know, not one I actually do.

    BINGO! I'm now completely OUT of the system, and maintain the account in my name solely to check on the status of my 'ghost-writer' account, which I use to comment on various sites with.

    Have fun shilling my info to whomever you can, Mr. Zukerberg.

    Deb.

  10. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Facebook use

    Is only economically useful to Facebook if people don't have adblockers enabled.

    Of course they won't tell their investors or advertisers what kind of numbers are involved as it'd trash the stock price even further.

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