He added: "One possibility is that we're finally seeing the backlash from heavy media attention to Facebook privacy issues -- some of which were real, some the result of confusion and sensationalism."
It may also be that Facebook has less room to grow: It's got a 41.1 market penetration as of the end of June.

Ray Valdes, an analyst with market research firm Valdes, told the San Francisco Chronicle the company's big challenge isn't getting new members – it's keeping them.

"They don't necessarily need to grow user population to become a profitable, highly valued company," he said. "They do need to maintain their value proposition and keep users engaged even as the novelty factor wears off. It's not about getting users to sign on, but about getting them to log on."

Sounds good to me. The sooner Facebook dies, the happier I'll be. Facebook has done nothing positive for society. Facebook has destroyed the model of privacy we once had. It's made the world a dumber place. There are "like" buttons everywhere, as if anyone cared. I have them for every post on this blog, and I don't even know why. 80 million people spend time planting virtual plants. What the fuck did we do?

My disgust with Facebook is rooted in my disgust with myself. I signed up to Facebook when it was new. I was the one who told everyone I knew that it existed. I drank the Kool-Aid. I trusted Facebook. I know I'm directly responsible for getting at least 100 people to sign up for Facebook. They trusted me.

I look back on MySpace and say, "Wow, I can't believe people used to do this. This is terrible."
I look back on the Tamagotchi and say, "Wow, I can't believe people bought these. These are pointless." 
I look back on Facebook and say, "Wow, I can't believe I got my friends to use this. I'm an idiot." 

PALO ALTO, CA—All 1,472 employees of Facebook, Inc. reportedly burst out in uncontrollable laughter Wednesday following Albuquerque resident Jason Herrick's attempts to protect his personal information from exploitation on the social-networking site. "Look, he's clicking 'Friends Only' for his e-mail address. Like that's going to make a difference!" howled infrastructure manager Evan Hollingsworth, tears streaming down his face, to several of his doubled-over coworkers. "Oh, sure, by all means, Jason, 'delete' that photo. Man, this is so rich." According to internal sources, the entire staff of Facebook was left gasping for air minutes later when the "hilarious" Herrick believed he had actually blocked third-party ads.

This would be funnier if it wasn't so true. How many /b/-tards do you supect work at Facebook? My guess is quite a few. Think about that next time you upload a racy photo.

I suddenly have this idea for a remix of Sir Mix-a-Lot's Baby Got Back playing off the new Facebook like button. I see the video in my head. It is both hilarious and awesome. I feel compelled to contact the CMO of Victoria's Secret and the Pantsless Knights. Anyone know the name of who I'm looking for? 

The big thing this week (at least around most of the blogs that I read) was Diaspora, their mention in The New York Times, and the insane amount of funding they've been raising on Kickstarter. They've also been recognized by some industry folks like Leo Laporte and Fred Wilson. 

Basically, these four geeks created a video about how they want to build the next Facebook, and build it on open source principles that make privacy a priority. I completely applaud their effort. The video is kid of funny too—in an awkward sort of way. They look like they should be in an SNL skit.

It might sound like a novel idea, but it's not. There are a dozen other groups out there trying to do the same thing, but none of them were able to generate the buzz these four students have. And all of that buzz is thanks to The New York Times. People say that print media is dead, and yet a mention in the paper is still good for generating $80,000 (and growing) in funding. I wish I had known that. Perhaps I could have sent them some some of sketches I have laying around for something I called "Project S.O.F.A.", which stood for Secure Open Facebook Alternative.

What's I find peculiar though is that these kids have nothing. They haven't written a single line of code. They claim to be programmers, but all I can really see on GitHub is the source for their simple blog. When you look them up on Google, you can barely find anything about them. That makes some sense if they are privacy freaks, but why is everyone suddenly so trusting? Daniel Grippi is the only one who appears to have ever even really used Twitter. How can you build the next Facebook if you never used the first one? The cynic in me wonders if maybe we are all being trolled by four geeks looking to score a cool million and then part ways.

I have a feeling that the reason the Diaspora team is getting so much attention is because people have no clue what they are talking about. Everyone just wants to jump on the "I hate Facebook" bandwagon. I mean, honestly. Would you give someone who's never used an iPhone before money to build the next one? Why is this any different?

We all know that Facebook has been making privacy changes over the past few years which supposedly reflects society’s trends toward becoming more open. A new infographic produced by Matt McKeon effectively illustrates how Facebook has steadily decreased the default privacy settings of users’ profiles to be more open. The latest settings are surprisingly open and looking at the image below should make you wonder why Facebook is making profiles increasingly open.

I saw this a few days ago, but it's been making the rounds recently. I think I've had a dozen different people send this to me now. I've been ranting about Facebook privacy for a year or so now, so this is really no surprise to me. I deleted most information from my profile after the last bit push with turning all your interests into fan page associations. 

The thing is, outside of geeks, no one cares. We [web tards] are the minority. Early adopters are in the minority. We look at Facebook and say, "Remember when it was private and just for university students?" Most Facebook users don't have that memory. They never had that experience. For at least half of the people on Facebook, the current privacy controls aren't that different than the controls they had the day they joined. It's all they know.

Facebook is the new AOL. Having a Facebook page is the same thing as having an AOL profile back in 1995—the lowest common denominator for being on the Internet. There's nothing unique about it anymore, it's just a massive portal. I'm kind of glad too, because now I can justify ignoring it completely. I can go back to being just a little more arrogant.

"No, I don't use Facebook. That's for noobs. I roll 20s and code in vim. I'm a badass motherfucker. Yeah, what now?"

A funny look at the sad reality that is sharing. Unfortunately, it's not that funny because it's true.

At some point there's probably going to be a blacklash. A real backlash, not just one for the privacy geeks. At some point it's going to be too much for even the average person. At some point everyone will have too much of a good thing, everything you do will end up in a stream of some kind, and no one will care about any of it.

Oh well. That's the circle of tubes I guess.

Already on Facebook, you can show your friends that you're interested in their status updates, photos and links by clicking "Like." In fact, the average user clicks "Like" on nine pieces of content each month.

You'll begin seeing "Like," or in some cases "Recommend," buttons appearing on popular websites spanning a variety of industries, including NYTimes.com, IMDb, CNN.com, TIME.com, LIFE.com, Fandango, NHL.com, USA Networks, Levis.com, Univision and ABC.com.

For example, if I like a pair of jeans on Levis.com, my action will be shared with my friends on Facebook, where they can comment on it. I can also see which of my friends like the jeans on Levis.com.

I hate this. Now everyone is going to start going out and liking everything. Nine pieces of content a month wasn't enough? It was too much for me. And honestly, what's the point? When there's a like button on every piece of content, and that button gives you a binary option, suddenly everything is on the same scale and it's all pointless. You can like 100 things, and there's no way for you to say how much you like each one. Facebook will likely charge a premium to target [ads] by interests now; interests that are going to increasingly become worthless for targeting.

When there is a like button on every piece of content, what you like is no longer interesting. When there is a like button on every piece of content, what's more interesting is the things you don't like.

Instead of this abomination I would have much rather seen a system that awarded people for naturally sharing content. That is, if you share a ton of content every month that links back to the NYTimes... well, you really do love the NYTimes.

The study found that 65 percent of the largest 100 international companies have active accounts on Twitter, 54 percent have a Facebook fan page, 50 percent have a YouTube channel, and one-third (33 percent) have corporate blogs. Only 20 percent of the major international companies are utilizing all four platforms to engage with stakeholders.

Do the world's largest multinational firms even need to be utilizing Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and a corporate blog? Seven of the top ten companies on Fortune's list are oil companies. I'm not sure that ExxonMobil is really going to be able to elevate it's brand with a new Facebook fan page or have any kind of meaningful "conversation" with consumers on Twitter. Are there things that they could do? Sure. But you shouldn't get a pat on the back just for showing up.

I'm also bothered by "studies" like this which make zero attempt to calculate the value added from social media. It costs money to create and maintain a voice on major social media platforms. The service might be free, the content isn't. It's only worth the cost if the return is real value, in whatever form that value might take (PR, sales, awareness, etc.). When you start looking through the list of Fortune 100 companies that are using multiple social media platforms you realize that, while they might be there, they don't have anything to say.

We categorized each incoming tweet as about the Super Bowl itself, about the brands or the commercials, or neither. Dividing each group by the total volume of tweets, we produced the graph below which represents a minute-by-minute reflection of people's thoughts and emotions during the game.

I was reading over this post by Twitter's Kevin Weil and realized that what they are actually looking at is variations in the noise that happens on Twitter, and trying to draw some kind of insights from it. There isn't really much substance. It's akin to looking at your spam folder and noticing that there are more ads for Viagra than there are for Cialis. The noise generated by people I know isn't that much better than noise generated by random strangers. It's noise.

I think this is what Google might end up getting right with Buzz. They've built a recommendation engine into their service similar to the one in Google Reader. And since it's actually integrated with Google Reader, it already knows what kind of content I find interesting. If everyone I follow starts spamming some nonsense and it's not relevant to me, I'm either going to see it once in a stack, or I'm not going to see it at all. I'm not going to see it flood my feed.

Facebook's main focus was community and Twitter's main focus was conversation. Neither of them really gave any thought about content or context. For better or for worse, Google already knows who I am. Google knows what I know, and it knows what I don't know. It knows what I find interesting, and it's just starting to learn about who my friends are. It definitely knows to much, but everything it returns to me is useful. The same can't be said for Facebook and Twitter.

Today, we're launching Google Buzz, a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting and share updates, photos, videos and more. Buzz is built right into Gmail, so there's nothing to set up — you're automatically following the people you email and chat with the most.

Google going head-to-head with Facebook? I like it already. It's already cleaner, faster, and more integrated with other applications (e.g. Flickr, VOX, etc.) than Facebook... and it's been available for a whopping ten minutes. The only thing I don't like about it is contact management. It's not quite clear who's your friend Buzz, Google Reader, Google Latitude, and Google Talk—they are all kind of muddled together. What you really need is a way to looking at all your contacts and friend/follower relationships across services.

I suspect Google is aware of this. A new way of managing contacts is probably already in the pipe. If they get that right... well, I don't think I'll be alone in saying that I won't be needing my Facebook tab open much anymore. I'd much rather follow what my friends are reading and where they are going than how many coins they have in FarmVille.