Everyone's Quitting Facebook

[steve2470]

(yes original article title)

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/everyone-s-quitting-facebook

On a day when Wall Street darling Apple hit new highs, making it the most valuable company ever (not adjusted for inflation), ex-darling Facebook continues to reach record lows. After its controversial IPO, Mark Zuckerberg has been unable to convince investors of a brighter future. It’s not just Wall Street that remains flocking to the exits, the company has been leaking high-level execs since it went public. The site is also shedding users. Despite robust international growth, Facebook lost 6 million U.S. users in May.

Now, with the three-month investor lock-up period over — the period in which pre-IPO shareholders are barred from selling a certain chunk of their shares — the company is losing one of its largest and most notable shareholders. PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor (he famously paid $500,000 in 2004 for a 10.2 percent stake) Peter Thiel on Monday sold another 20 million shares, nearly his entire stake. Along with the proceeds of the initial IPO, Thiel has netted himself a tidy $1 billion for his troubles.

That investors are cashing out after one of the most hyped IPOs in history is only natural but the velocity of the selling belies a lack of confidence in Zuckerberg to fulfill Facebook’s lofty promises. Thiel isn’t just any old investor. He sits on the board and has privileged insight into the future of the company. As he must understand by now, this is only beginning for Facebook’s Wall Street woes. It faces three more “lock-up” expirations by year end with the biggest in November, when a further 1.32 billion shares could flood the market eclipsing many times over last week’s paltry 271 million share window.

“We don’t build services to make money,” Zuckerberg wrote half a year ago in Facebook’s IPO prospectus, hinting at the company’s inherent identity crisis. The site was never designed to make money, it was crafted to suck users in and keep them within the confines of Facebook’s world. Zuckerberg, perhaps unwittingly, admitted the central paradox to this agreement: “People want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.” But by going public at the valuation that they did, around $100 billion, Zuckerberg and company signed a pact with the devil. That number doesn’t represent real value. It’s a promise that would conceivably be delivered down the line, essentially a public declaration that profits will indeed be maximized.

[Electric Monk]

1. With regards to facebook, you're not the customer, you're the commodity.

[HiPointDem]

5. true, but you can also pay for services and still be the commodity being sold these days.

[siligut]

32. Yes, along with paying for things that harm you

It's the new capitalism.

[hunter]

36. That's why I don't watch television.

When the telemarketers call from the cable or satellite companies I ask them "how much?"

They go into their spiel and I say, "Fine, when I receive your first payment you can hook me up."

[Behind the Aegis]

2. I use it to send B-day wishes, and thank people for B-day wishes.

It has become almost unusable in its current incarnation. It, to me, is nothing but a damn jumble with all kinds of bells and whistles that you can't get rid of if you don't want them. But, it has provided some insight to some people, that's for damn sure.

[HiPointDem]

3. good.

[Lex]

4. 9 month old article. Has Facebook folded yet?

[steve2470]

8. hyperbolic headline for sure, and didn't notice the article date, ugh nt

[sakabatou]

13. Dunno

[flamingdem]

6. It's not going away as long as Latinos are a growing group

they are a huge and growing group of users.

[Savannahmann]

7. Can't believe I get to post this twice.

But perhaps they're quitting because of this news story.

[DeSwiss]

16. True story.

[bhikkhu]

9. I've never been a heavy user, but the ads have gotten annoying

I find myself avoiding it. If I want to keep up with what relatives and friends are doing, I don't want to have to wade through crap I never signed up for and have no interest in. They could easily do it like google, where its off to the side, but now they put it right in the "newsfeed".

I doubt they'll be going broke anytime soon, but if something better came along (and its easy to imagine something better) I'd be happy to jump ship. Not what a company wants to hear from its customer base!

[AsahinaKimi]

10. I actually did quit facebook.. a while back.

It just became too complicated and too much work to maintain my account. My Twitter account is so much easier to manage, and I can skip a day or so and not feel like I missed something.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

11. I'm still there, and so are my friends and family...

I got rid of the ads using Adblock Plus, so that took care of that!

I enjoy being there.



It fills a much different niche for me than DU does.

I like it.

[Sherman A1]

17. Agreed

I some how just do think it will evaporate right away.

[TeamPooka]

12. i remember when this article was new 9 months ago.

[FrodosPet]

14. Secrets the NSA has discovered about me from Facebook

OMG, the feds know that I like the Tigers and the Red Wings and The Foo Fighters and "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" and cute pictures of my niece.

And I was trying so hard to hide that publicly posted information.

But seriously, folks: No probable cause plus no warrant equals MYOBNSA!

[Left Coast2020]

15. But everyone says to use it for networking for jobs

I listened to a webinar 2 weeks ago that said "social media is essential for finding a job in todays market...blah, blah, blah.." Even in a workshop I went to yesterday, the same thought. I use Linked-In and thats it. No FB, or twitter. I don't want perspective employers judging me by my personal politics--which I hear they have a tendency to peek at. I was waiting for a time to see if it would be worth using, but I am now conveinced its a waste of time. If they want to look at my L-I page on how professional I am, and business I did in China, have at it.

[Electric Monk]

18. Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.

- Yogi Berra

[tavernier]

35. Snort

[Warren DeMontague]

19. The only thing worse than facebook is people determined to convince others how awful facebook is.

Wasting time trying to get other people not to waste time on facebook? Waste of time.

Seriously, someone should start a group for them, on like a social networking site or something.

[BainsBane]

20. Facebook Anonymous already exists

Ironically, they have a Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Facebook-Anonymous/120975607929295

[Warren DeMontague]

37. And yet, no 12 step program for 12 step addicts.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to xerox a mirror and see what happens.

[Skittles]

21. it sure did a good job of sucking users in

[newfie11]

22. I still use Facebook

It is easy to keep up with family all over the country.
I also use it to talk to my Newfie dog owning friends world wide.

The one thing I really like about Facebook is the ability to meet folks in many other countries with the same interests.

[KG]

23. oh no! there's ad's on FB. good thing there's no ads on TV, radio or print media. that would be bad.

[HappyMe]

24. I have family and friends in other states.

I'm not quitting FB.

[Smarmie Doofus]

26. Good. Progress is being made. n/t

[Locrian]

27. the screwed up....

Not as smart as they thought they were....


They should have focused on building a center for people to interact w/o pushing adds and junk up your ass. Nobody wants that and it's not effective.

Build a section where people can OPTIONALLY go shopping or whatever. You don't have to force it - people are suckers and like shopping / etc enough. Just don't push it on people.

[MannyGoldstein]

28. Quit. Tired of their Terms of Service shenanigans

"In order to provide our users with an even-better experience, we're now selling your personal data to anyone!"

[Mr Dixon]

29. Really? SMH

Quit FaceBook are you people insane, then where would I play candy crush saga?

[geek tragedy]

30. Every other item in my newsfeed is an ad, so I check a lot less often.

Who would have guessed that bombarding people with ads would have this result?

[pipi_k]

31. You wouldn't be able

to tell from my newsfeed.

My friends and relatives are a chatty bunch. My ticker is always moving, and if I don't check my newsfeed for half a day, stuff just scrolls right down and out of sight.

I have adblock, so ads aren't a problem.

One of my biggest beefs involves the "invites" to games people are playing, but I realized that I can block them by blocking invites from the people who send them. They don't know about it, and it doesn't affect anything other than the game invites.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

33. Who needs Facebook when you got Google+!

As for Apple, I still can't understand what the hype is for.

Gibe me a PC and/or Microsoft stuff any day!

[Tommy_Carcetti]

34. It still beats Twitter by a mile.

Perhaps it's OCD for me, but I simply cannot stand to look at Twitter. There's nothing but a bunch of short misspelled sentence fragments with random hashtags and ampersands thrown about.

But apparently it's all the rage....

[BainsBane]

38. I'm the same

The only extensive twitting I've ever done was during the last Presidential debate.
My Tweets still read like actual English though.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

39. I have an obsession about texting using proper sentences and complete words.

No "U" for "you", no shorthand, or anything else.

It has to read like an actual sentence.

I'm an English major; what can you say?

[Rex]

40. Yep, hardly ever use it anymore. Hope they go under.

Facebook is a failed social experiment.