Let me start off by saying I am no knight for Facebook. The day Facebook and I break up, if it will ever happen, will be just another day. Still, I can't help but notice that more and more people are taking up arms against the service, almost like it's some kind of coup. Let me explain.
I spend hours every day studying trends and opinions that are spreading around the online universe. Doing this on a daily basis has helped me develop a knack for predicting trends and accurately understanding shifts in public opinion.
That's why the past few weeks have made me wary about Facebook's future. It's not just that the social media giant has been experiencing misfortune with it's recent shift into going public and tanking in the stock market. Stuff like that recovers and is not truly indicative of the company's future. The real trend that is scaring me is the overblown reaction to all of this bad press. It started with people deleting their Facebook accounts at a more rapid rate, seemingly doing so because they were fed up with privacy issues.
Yes, privacy. Facebook's biggest obstacle separating it from total domination, at least in my opinion. Facebook has dealt with some seriously bad PR over the years with privacy issues, turning extreme loyalists and users of the site into malevolent naysayers. The same goes with ongoing issues with viruses slipping into Facebook's scripts at an ever-increasing rate.
Now, however, we are seeing new trends of people outright getting rid of their accounts because they are just sick of it. Many people just don't see value in the social site for reasons that range from lack of good content to it taking up their lives for little-to-no reward. It's bad enough that Eric Jackson, a credible analyst, is announcing to the world that Facebook will be a memory by 2020. Bad press like this just seems to be a reason that the process of Facebook's end will be even sooner.
To me, it almost seems like a conspiracy against Facebook. It's most likely not and there's really no evidence for it, but what I see is a few extreme haters of Facebook repeatedly announcing to people online that the site is, for lack of a better word, boring. Old. Tired. Done. Enough people seem to be agreeing, even though the site really hasn't changed that much these past few weeks.
Am I a Facebook hater? By no means. I love the site and I check it regularly. Unfortunately, it is waning on me. I am one of those users that finds it more and more rare to read updates I actually care about. I would much rather check my Twitter feed which is always bursting with good content, and I have even begun to dust off my Google Plus account and have been finding it rewarding.
Time will only tell. Facebook needs to implement some kind of new PR plan in order to turn this negativity around before it becomes a problem big enough for people besides me to see. What would I do? Come back here tomorrow for the answer in pt. 2.
Jon Negroni is the Director of Public Relations, Promotion, and Marketing at Richter10.2 Media Group. For more information regarding Richter10.2, check out our introduction video here.
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