Is the Facebook bubble deflating?

Are the glory days of Facebook coming to an end as millions exit the social network? In the United States more than  six million took the time to opt out last month and in Canada, with a population only one tenth the size of the U.S, 1.5 million said adios to their “Friends".

The drain in Britain was slower with only 100,000 leaving the fold,  but as some commentators consider users to be like sheep, that could accelerate.  

The figures come from the research site Inside Facebook,  which says that people continue to sign up in developing countries. The site doesn’t say whether Panama is considered developing, but with about three mobile phones for every man woman and child in the country, perhaps it has already joined the developed.

MIT  professor Sherry Turkle’s recent book “alone together” speaks out about the emperor with few clothes and says that we that we are losing our minds to a mania for the social media of Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging.
She points out that we are in danger of relinquishing our humanity to "social robotics" and a "new social confusion." We are swapping real life for vicarious life. For some, being with real instead of faceless people seems to be an increasingly difficult struggle. 

George Orwell could have added another twist to his big brother watching prediction, a kind of self immolation, sharing every thought and experience with anyone who cares to listen. Life for the brotherhood becomes easier.

Reviewing the book, a commentator in Britain’s First Post said: “There have been warnings before from shrinks and sociologists, not to mention anyone with the commonsense to have got angry at those texting away under the dinner table or the idiot bumping into you because he is buried in his Blackberry. But Turkle is the first to get the message through. Alone Together has sparked debate on where all this is taking us. The backlash has begun.” 

That now appears to be a pretty smart prediction. But nature abhors a vacuum, and so it seems does the world of cyber friends, including people you have never met or are never likely to. In recent weeks my email box has been deluged in recent weeks with requests for me to sign up and become a friend/colleague/networker/activist or more on a host of sites.  

One site even gives you the opportunity to rate your “friends” looks, charms, and qualities, or lack of the same. Of course they get the same opportunity to return the compliment.

Facebook, filling up with  business “friends” who want your money, has begun to look like one of the advertising inserts, that comes along with yuour  daily newspaper, many of which head for the recycling bin, unread, or like the junk mail that in other times and places was delivered to your doorstep by the postman unless you were smart enough to notify the authorities “no junk mail”. It seems that in the U.S. and Canada 7.5 million have taken that step with Facebook.