No 'Facebook fatigue' for longtime users: survey

WASHINGTON - So much for "Facebook fatigue."

A survey released on Friday shows that people who have used the social networking site over a long period - since its founding in 2004, say - show no sign that they have tired of posting pictures, updating weekend plans or just relaying random thoughts.

The Pew Research Center report, based on a US phone survey, logs and data from November 2010, sheds light on Facebook's possible long-term popularity as the company founded by Mark Zuckerberg heads for a $5 billion initial public offering.

Ahead of the IPO, one concern about Facebook has been that users will simply bore of it after a while, a phenomenon known as "Facebook fatigue." The Pew research suggests those worries may be unfounded.

The longer that people have used Facebook site, the more frequently they hit the "like" button, commented on friends' content, posted status updates and tagged their friends in photos, the report showed.

It also concluded that having more Facebook friends kept users more involved with the social networking site.

"The more Facebook friends users have, the more they perform every activity that we explored: friending, liking, private messages, commenting, posting, photo tagging, joining groups and poking," Pew said regarding the survey by its Internet & American Life project.

Facebook users on average can reach 156,569 other network users through friends of friends. The number is skewed by Facebook users with especially large friend lists, and the median is 31,170 people reached through friends of friends.

"This examination of people's activities in a very new realm affirms one of the oldest truths about the value of friendship," said Lee Rainie, head of Pew's Internet project. "Those who are socially active have a better shot at getting the help and emotional help they need."

The survey was based on a phone survey of 2,255 US adults that was conducted in November 2010. Respondents were asked to share logs of their Facebook activity, and about 269 respondents let Facebook release data on their use.

Facebook says it has 845 million active users today.

It would take 10 years to read every single tweet

More than 50 million tweets a day flow through our timelines. Could anyone read every one of them?

Has Twitter reached critical mass? At Death and Taxes, one writer took a stopwatch to a scroll through his Twitter feed. He reports it took an average of 6.6 seconds to read each tweet. This adds up to a huge 330 million seconds – equaling about 10 years – to give a cursory glance to all the tweets in a single day. And forget about clicking on links – that can only drive up your reading time and will most certainly distract you from the task at hand. (but then again, isn't Twitter inherently a distraction?)

Even if we left off the estimated 40% that are spam or meaningless chatter, that would still be an endeavor of six years per day to wade through the news and conversations that spread in 140 characters or less.

Not even NewsFeed has that kind of time to waste on the Internet.

Will people quit Facebook today?

MANILA, Philippines - Days ago, creative web technologist Joseph Dee and systems designer Matthew Milan of Toronto, Canada asked Facebook users to dump the social networking service, citing privacy concerns.

They created a website, which declared May 31 as "Quit Facebook Day" and provided alternatives to the popular social networking site, such as Twitter or Flickr.

"If you agree that Facebook doesn't respect you, your personal data or the future of the web, you may want to join us," the website read.

A screenshot of the Facebook login page.

Facebook was recently hit for its so-called confusing system for setting privacy safeguards, which made it possible for unwanted users to gain a wealth of information about the social networking site's members. (Read full article here)

In response to this, chief executive Mark Zuckerburg promised to "roll out changes" over the coming weeks to prevent personal information from being accessed by others.

Quitting 'not easy'

Dee and Milan are out to convince the world that Facebook should no longer be patronized.

They admitted, however, that giving up the service will prove to be a difficult task.

"Facebook is engaging, enjoyable, and quite frankly, addictive. Quitting something like Facebook is like quitting smoking. It's hard to stay on the wagon long enough to actually change your habits," they said in the "Quit Facebook Day" website.

And they're right. The "Quit Facebook Day" website looms as a worldwide flop, with only 25,475 users vowing to deactivate their accounts as of 12:00 p.m. on May 31.

The figure is just over 0.006% of the social network's estimated 400 million members.

Just recently, data released by Google showed that Facebook is "king of Internet visits" with about 570 billion pages viewed monthly. This is more than 8 times as many pages viewed each month at Yahoo.com, Google said.

Some Pinoys won't give up Facebook

In the Philippines, it seems that Facebook is also a hard habit to break.

Abs-cbnNEWS.com posted the question "Would issues about Facebook's privacy policies make you quit Facebook?" in its official Facebook page on Monday morning, and to date, only 3 members (out of more than 20 users who gave their comments) said "yes."

Most of them said it's the Facebook user's responsibility to be careful about what they post, and to hide things that they don't want other people to see.

"No, the problem here is not Facebook. People should really pore over and go around to learn more about the privacy settings, madali lang naman (it's just easy)," said Famela Bayawa.

"No, because I do believe if you're wise enough, no matter how tight the security of Facebook is, you would not put important or very sensitive items in your account," added Danilo Cruz.

Still effective

Although it looks like Facebook is here to stay for a long time, Dee and Milan still have a reason to celebrate.

The "Quit Facebook Day" campaign, although it didn't rake in as much "quitters," was effective -- it made headlines and gave a wake-up call not only to Zuckerburg but also to creators of other social networking sites.

At the end of the day, the website was about making the web an "open, safe and human place."

And with Zuckerburg working double time to ensure that Facebook gets back on track, it looks like the "Quit Facebook Day" page has served its purpose.