London, June 14, 2011: Privacy threats and fatigue has led one lakh Britons and six million users in the US to shut down their Facebook accounts, with the same pattern expected to follow in other countries too. Facebook’s growth rate has slowed for a second month in a row, ironically, when the social networking site was aiming to reach its goal of one billion active users. Canada saw a fall of about 1.5 million users of the website, while in Russia and Norway numbers fell by more than 100,000 users. The company is now relying on developing countries to boost its numbers. Blogs are abuzz with speculations that the website could one day ‘sputter into oblivion,’ fearing the fate of its failing rival MySpace. There is a point at which the site can no longer grow, once it has established itself in a country, according to Eric Eldon, from the website ‘Inside Facebook’, which obtained the figures. “By the time Facebook reaches around 50 pc of the total population in a given country, growth generally slows to a halt,” the Daily Mail quoted him as saying. Internet psychologist Graham Jones has predicted that Facebook users would suffer the same kind of ‘fatigue’ that comes whenever men and women get bored with trying anything that is new. “People get terribly excited about something new and after a while the novelty wears off,” he explained. Source: Hindustan Times, Image: flickr.com
