I remember the old joke from the 1980’s about East Germany. President Honecker went on an overseas trip. He returned back to East Berlin. Noone was at the airport. Nobody on the streets. Everywhere was in darkness. He drove around until he saw a single light. There was a hole in the Berlin wall with a message. “Dear Mr. President. We have all left for West Germany. You are the last one left. Turn the light out.”
People worldwide are leaving Facebook daily by the thousands. Researchers at Princeton University predict that 80% of users will desert Facebook by 2017. It is only a few years ago that researchers said that Facebook friends spent an average of 37 minutes per day on Facebook. That has dropped to half that time.
Facebook might go the same way as Myspace which fell out of use in 2011 after eight years.
Researchers checked the number of times people Googled Facebook, and found that since late 2012 the number of people who Google Facebook has dropped month by month.
Sheryl Sandbrg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, owns 12.3 million shares in the company; her shares are currently valued at $750 million. Rather sad. Why should one person have such an obscene sums when one billion people of the Earth struggle every day to get a meal? There is desperate poverty in the USA, the highest of any Western nation. Mind the gap!
Facebook marks its 10th birthday on February 4. We could be witnessing its funeral by the time Facebook is 20 years old. In a few years time, we could write a message to Sheryl Sandberg:
Dear Ms Chief Operating Officer: “We have all gone. You are the last one. Turn the light out.”