61% of Facebook Users Take a Multi-Week Break: That is Bad News

Well the media doesn't seem to think that this is a problem but I really think this is a bad deal for Facebook.

A report from the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project found that some 61 percent of Facebook users had taken a hiatus of at least several weeks for a myriad of reasons, whether they were weary from an onslaught of gossip, or for the more pious, the arrival of Lent. 

I am sure that many of those hiatuses are permanent. When I still had a Facebook account I just never understood what people did on it for so long. I know playing Farmville was one of the big drivers back then but Facebook games are dying much to Zynga detriment.

I think people are just getting tired of hearing about other peoples lives in a long stream like that. Most of the stuff that is posted on there is just not very interesting. I mean the important events of peoples lives are still shared by close friends in a different media. So if your sister had a baby you probably would have known about it from a different source than Facebook (probably a text depending on her age.) If the girl you barely knew from Chemistry class 20 years ago had a baby then you probably would have heard about on Facebook.

So this fairly useless stream of information coming from Facebook is just not something people want to keep up with in their daily lives. This is especially true if the person has lots of friends who are actively posting things. This is the so-called Facebook spam that people talk about. It just seems that people are finding better things to do other than following the lives of people they barely know.

 At least with Twitter you have the added bonus of reading about world events as they are happening. Those hashtags actually keep everything together so you can read all about a certain event. I still have Twitter but I never look at the personal feed because it is a waste of time.