There are others...

Check out the following link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30FOB-medium-t.html?em

Apparently there are others....

This is from the August 28, 2009, Chronicle of Higher Education:


Reports of Facebook's Death ... Exaggerated?
By Jeff Young
Is the Facebook party breaking up? We still hear that plenty of students and professors are addicted to the social-networking site, but a New York Times Magazine article out today says that even though overall numbers on the site are up, a vocal group is heading for the exits.
"I have noticed the exodus, and I kind of feel like it's kids getting tired of a new toy," one writer told the Times in the very anecdotal account.
An article earlier this month in The Guardian took note of the trend as well, arguing that the "cool cyberkids" are starting to abandon Facebook because too many old fogies have showed up on the social network.
Some professors have been part of the recent group leaving Facebook. Dan Cohen, director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, left Facebook earlier this year and talked about it on his podcast, Digital Campus.
Will students' interest in Facebook fade this year? Will professors lose interest? Or are reports of the site's demise greatly exaggerted?

Here are two responses to the above:

eelalien - August 29, 2009 at 02:52 pm
Perhaps the reason many are leaving is because they are finally running out of drivel to talk about (mostly about themselves and the "interesting" lives they lead). I have never been impressed with what is going on - or not going on - in Facebook. At least MySpace has proved to be a pretty good venue for musicians, and Twitter has become the weapon of choice for people so utterly self-absorbed that they must communicate what they are doing constantly. I have never seen any educational value in FB, and social networking, aside from some of the free tools, has yet to prove its educational value to this educator.

atalanta - August 30, 2009 at 03:24 pm
I'm one of the old fogeys who jumped onto the FB bandwagon rather late in the game, but find myself checking it less and less frequently of late. Here's a brief chronology of my Facebook usage:At first, I was reluctant to sign on for fear that my students would find me and pester me to become "friends". When I finally received an invitation from my 75 year old mother-in-law I could not longer resist and joined. (Only one student contacted me, so my concerns were unfounded.) For a while I eagerly reconnected with old friends, posted photos (with privacy settings) and updated the relatives on my family's activities. At that point I realized that I was actually using FB more like a blog. I discovered that blogspot or livejournal linked to a Flickr photo-sharing site would serve my purposes better, in a more aesthetically pleasing way and without the annoying bells-n-whistle ob FB. And yes, to echo someone else's post, my acquaintances who post frequently on FB really have very little of interest to say. I'd be satisfied with perusing a blog once or twice a year, in lieu endless bad photos and updates of insignificant activities.

NOTE: There were posts in favor of fb and arguments that refuted its demise. But hey, it is my blog.... (-: