Only one of my friends quit Facebook today, how about you?

May 31, 2010 by Bill Palmer

I lost a friend today. Or so says Facebook, which reports that I now have one fewer “friend” than I began the day with. I don’t know the identity of the friend who deserted me today, but I’m guessing that the abandonment had less to do with something I said and more to do with the fact that today was Quit Facebook Day, a campaign with attacked Facebook over privacy issues and compared quitting Facebook to (I’m not making this up) quitting smoking. Nevermind that smoking will alienate you from most of society and eventually kill you, while the worst that Facebook can do is share super “private” information about you with the world including secrets like (gasp) your name and (oh, no!) your birthday.

So did the campaign work? Well, I began the day with one thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven Facebook friends and I also ended it with 1767, a result of having lost one unidentified friend and then having gained a new one later in the day. I’d say my Facebook friendbase is fairly broad and typical, including everyone from friends and family to industry acquaintances and former co-workers, so if I lost less than one tenth of one percent of my friends, it’s fairly safe to assume that less than one tenth of one percent of all Facebook users quit the service today overall. That’s a monumental flop in my book. And yet some have already referred to Quit Facebook Day as a success even before it began, simply because it brought attention to the Facebook privacy issue. I don’t see it that way; what the campaign told the world is that nearly all Facebook users would rather stick with the service, warts and all, than give it up entirely.