Why the "Quit Facebook Day" Was a Dud

I posted earlier about the planned Facebook exodus on May 31.  Many bloggers use Facebook as a way to promote their blogs.  I personally do not use Facebook to promote my blogs so I cannot comment as to it's effective.  What I will comment on is the planned exodus of some 30,000 Facebook users and why it was a dud.  Why?

Well over a year ago I was quite active on Entrecard and while this traffic network does not have the same privacy issues hounding Facebook the underlying problems of a mass exodus remain the same.  They just don't work.  I went through 2 mass exoduses on Entrecard with a lot of very talented, experienced bloggers leaving the network in the fall followed by a lot more leaving the next spring.  Yet despite dire predictions this network continues on boosted by the negative attention it received.

A mass exodus actually brings attention to the site everyone is complaining about resulting in negative attention which ultimately brings the site traffic from those wanting to see what the problem is.  Sure 30,000 Facebook users might have closed their account but leading up to that with all the hype even though it was negative likely saw 40,000 users join giving Facebook a net gain of 10,000 users and a whole lot of traffic.  In short Facebook actually benefitted from all the negative publicity.  Had the exodus been kept quiet then sudden dropped an exodus on Facebook it might have been effective.  Think about it had this exodus happened all at once without any prior warning where Facebook all of a sudden lost 30,000 users that would have perhaps got their attention. 

If Facebook's privacy issues are of such a concern some countries will ban it making that a heck of a lot more effective than a planned exodus.  What really strikes me is Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg made some very unflattering public remarks about how trusting Facebook users are dumb f---s.  That comment in itself should serve as a huge red flag.  Based on that I would not use their service because if the CEO is not concerned about privacy issues and feels it is his right to allow all information given by users to be used by third parties, well that's time to not get involved in what that company has to offer.  It definitely is not a company that I would want associated with my blogs.

Garden Gnome
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