Facebook on Its Way Out?

Well, frankly, I think not. Some new stats from Hitwise, however, show that the popular social networking site’s numbers are down 27% for the week ending Feb. 23, and that has people all abuzz that Facebook is on its way out.

I have always said, and will continue to say for the time being, that MySpace, right now, is THE place to be. It has much larger numbers of users, but its growth was way outpaced by Facebook’s. I think that Facebook will eventually be THE place to be for several reasons.

MySpace, while a good place to be, still creeps me out a little bit. I remember signing up for the first time and getting messages from some strange folks I didn’t know. Same goes today for my clients — one company has “adventures” in the name, so you can imagine what that conjures up — but you simply decline those kind invites to be friends and move on to more appropriate contacts.

Facebook is so much cleaner and more appealing to us thirty-somethings than MySpace’s wild colors and music. It’s easier to navigate and figure out what the heck you’re doing. I had to buy a book to figure out MySpace!

So for these reasons, I think Facebook will continue to be adopted at a faster pace by the older crowd (it’s already about saturated the younger crowd) and eventually hit the big numbers of MySpace.

One complaint, though: Facebook recently adopted Facebook Pages that are designed for businesses, but I think they’ve gotten a little money hungry in the process. No longer can businesses use the regular profiles as their pages — in fact, Facebook disables you if you have one.

However, the new Facebook Pages do not have all the cool features and usability of the profiles, which has proven to be troublesome for my clients. Some of the applications haven’t been designed for “pages” yet, and the worst is that there’s no way to invite people to be your “fans” (on “pages” you have “fans” not “friends”). So how do you drive people there? Well, they want you to pay to advertise with them. What do you do if you had a loyal following on a profile, but now have to switch over to “pages”?

Facebook, if you’re listening, please fix this. As a loyal user, I am very disappointed and suspect I am not the only one. Don’t run off your business clients — this could help you grow to number one! Otherwise, I’m afraid you might tick enough people off that it could send you on your way out…