Is Facebook Past Its Prime?
posted by Rob Johnson on Jul.23, 2009, under Tech News

By Hillary Rhodes, for PC World
Nobody left to ‘friend’? Too many friends anyway? Why Facebook when you can Twitter? In the here-today-gone-tomorrow world of social media, these common complaints may mark the beginning of the end of Facebook’s enormous popularity.
Is Facebook on its last legs? Is it going to pull a MySpace on us? Will Facebook be the Internet’s hip site du jour one day, then suddenly lose the love and affection of most of its followers the next? We hope not. But various irritations associated with the site could contribute to its eventual demise.
In the first quarter of this year, the “bounce rate” — the percentage of visits to Facebook.com that consist of a single page view and then a quick exit — has grown by 19 percent, according to Internet traffic research firm Alexa. Though that statistic hardly qualifies as conclusive proof of Facebook’s imminent demise, it does raise the possibility that a large number of Facebookers are surfing over to the site, finding little there of interest, and promptly leaving.
Here are some reasons Facebook might be losing its grip on people’s online networking lives.
1. Facebook veterans are defecting to Twitter
People who delight in constant updates are the lifeblood of Facebook — but many of them are flocking to Twitter. When it comes to intense scrutiny of everyday trivialities, Twitter thoroughly out-Facebooks Facebook, where two or three status updates a day is the maximum before you start looking like a loser.
And even though you can update Facebook from your phone, Twitter feels more mobile. It gives the impression that you’re out and about, simultaneously doing something important and tweeting about it, whereas updating your Facebook page implies that you’re sitting by yourself at a computer with nothing better to do.
read the rest @ MSN Tech
Rob Johnson