As I wrote earlier in here and here, maybe the tide is starting to turn. I think that it won't be long before people start to realize that all of the changes happening right now are not necessarly creating something long-lasting, but something that will come & go and change many times before they settle on something that will be around long-term.
And one of the things that I would say will continue to drive people away from these sites will be the advertising community's decision to keep looking at these social sites as a way to force advertising on people. As we saw when Facebook opened its pages to everyone in order (I would guess) to generate a wider audience for potential advertisers, people aren't crazy about the fact that we keep forcing our messaging on them. We’ll see how this plays out in the future.
For some, it would be unthinkable - certain social suicide. But Gabe Henderson is finding freedom in a recent decision: He canceled his MySpace account.No longer enthralled with the world of social networking, the 26-year-old graduate student pulled the plug after realizing that a lot of the online friends he accumulated were really just acquaintances. He's also phasing out his profile on Facebook, a popular social networking site that, like others, allows users to create profiles, swap message and share photos - all with the goal of expanding their circle of online friends.
"The superficial emptiness clouded the excitement I had once felt," Henderson wrote in a column in the student newspaper at Iowa State University, where he studies history. "It seems we have lost, to some degree, that special depth that true friendship entails."
Link: Some Youth Rethink Online Communications - Forbes.com.
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