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"The hashtag #DeleteFacebook appeared more than 10,000 times on Twitter within a two-hour period on Wednesday, according to the analytics service ExportTweet. O

"The hashtag #DeleteFacebook appeared more than 10,000 times on Twitter within a two-hour period on Wednesday, according to the analytics service ExportTweet. On Tuesday, it was mentioned 40,398 times, according to the analytics service Digimind." Is this really such a big deal for Facebook? Suppose 50000 persons delete their Facebook everyday, then it will just lose 1,825,0000 users one year, not counting new users joining Facebook every year. And Facebook has 2 billion users. Edit: The number lost in one year is 1,825,0000, not 1,825,000.

mr_spothawk 9y ago
maybe this is how facebook finally turns into Gab.
bloaf 9y ago
I think you dropped a zero somewhere along the way.
afterburner 9y ago
Check your number commas.
elgenie 9y ago
50K * 365 = 18.25M But that's still only .00857 of 2.13 billion daily actives.
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  You just compared a yearly figure to a daily figure?
  - elgenie 9y ago
    Well, GP did, but this shouldn't be that hard to comprehend. If for an entire year 50K users leave Facebook forever every day, the result would be FB's daily actives shrinking by eight and a half tenths of a percent … if one assumes that each of deactivating used Facebook daily.
some_random 9y ago
But, how many of those people are active to any meaningful extent? Also, Facebook relies on a critical mass of users; if 75% of my friends leave, I'll probably leave, then large swaths of the social networks begins unthreading?
- VVyattPrentice 9y ago
  And here I am like: "If the taste makers leave, I will leave." jk I've never Facebooked.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  If even 10% of my friends weren't there, I couldn't be planning events there for example. If you have to call or email a subset of people you might as well choose a different way of planning (e.g. invite people via email to a dedicated planning service). So to me the value is that everyone I know is there. Not just 95% but 99%. So if even a fraction left, I could much easier just leave. My "social circle" on facebook could quickly just disappear, and I suspect this goes for lots of other people. Because the strength of facebook is that every social group is connected - but that will be how the cancer spreads too.
netsharc 9y ago
But "2 billion" is the number they have to brag/do a sales pitch with. Heck, I have 3 accounts, one I rarely use and one I don't even remember the credentials any more. Come to think of it, I have a 4th account. And how many do the botfarms have?
duck 9y ago
I would say most people on Facebook aren't on Twitter, so this isn't a great sample and thus it is hard to know yet. The thing that could go against FB is exactly what made it grow fast - the network effect.
nabla9 9y ago
FB loses appeal, people deleting their account is their smallest problem, it's the number of people who just stop using their FB account because it's not cool and cool people are not there. If this catches on, FB can turn into Myspace in few years. It will still have billion or so active users, but FB's stock valuation will crash until it's P/E ratio will be something like 4-5.
spydum 9y ago
Wonder how many of those 40000+ mentions were bots? If Facebook is manipulated to shift elections, why wouldn't we expect Twitter be manipulated to shift social media platforms? Also, I suspect many millions have already abandoned facebook and were using other platforms, they just left their account around just in case. Now, they have a wee bit of signaling, for practically no cost, so they go delete their account, and can happily pronounce on whatever currently-popular- social media platform, how they "dont even have" a facebook account triumphantly (no doubt missing the irony).
chillwaves 9y ago
> And Facebook has 2 billion users. I simply do not believe 1/3 of the planet is on Facebook. I am not. Half of the planet does not have access to clean drinking water, I do not believe they are on Facebook either.
- ams6110 9y ago
  A good number of those two billion user accounts are not real people. They are either additional alternate identities a person had created, or out-and-out fiction.
  - chillwaves 9y ago
    So why even tout the figure? It's obviously inflated. I would be surprised is if it is 500M actual users. What % of American voters users Facebook? I would be surprised to see over 80%. Nothing has adoption rates that high.
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  > Half of the planet does not have access to clean drinking water It's a lot easier to ship a phone somewhere than to ship clean drinking water. (There are a lot of people who do not have access to clean water but have a cell phone.)
- redcalx 9y ago
  nitpick: World population is currently about 7.4 billion.
- Reedx 9y ago
  Yeah, I'm surprised every time I see that number that it doesn't seem to get much scrutiny. Furthermore, the claim is that they are monthly active users. Only 1/2 of the planet is even on the Internet. Yet they have 2B MAU?
  - adventured 9y ago
    WeChat has a billion monthly active users, and they managed to do that mostly just in China and a few parts of Asia. WhatsApp has 1.5 billion monthly actives. It makes perfect sense that a global social network that dominates in most countries not named China, could get to two billion users. I must have seen hundreds of skeptical statements on HN over the years about how Facebook can't have X number of users. I've never once seen any supporting evidence against their general scale. Not once, not ever. And again in this thread, skeptics and zero supporting evidence against Facebook having two billion users. In their favor is extreme data: dozens of large and persistent research efforts put into studying use, by external parties. That spans everything from traditional media usage polling agencies, to large media ratings firms, to ad companies, to competitors, to services that see wide-spread use of Facebook-login, to Web traffic tracking services that indicate massive adoption. It also includes the massive usage that is seen on the iOS and Android app stores. The sole rebuttal possible, is to say: it's all fake! without any equally massive supporting evidence. Companies like Google would have a very large interest in destroying Facebook by pointing it out, and Google would know as well as anyone if Facebook were lying to such an extreme degree.
jadedhacker 9y ago
I have a feeling this will be a blip, but I also have a feeling this saga will lead to a qualitative change in the air. The level of trust FB has with the general public will fall. People will become more suspicious of it over time. It will make them vulnerable to being "disrupted" by some other service, technology, or philosophy.

mr_spothawk 9y ago

maybe this is how facebook finally turns into Gab.

bloaf 9y ago

I think you dropped a zero somewhere along the way.

afterburner 9y ago

Check your number commas.

elgenie 9y ago

50K * 365 = 18.25M But that's still only .00857 of 2.13 billion daily actives.

pfarnsworth 9y ago
You just compared a yearly figure to a daily figure?
- elgenie 9y ago
  Well, GP did, but this shouldn't be that hard to comprehend. If for an entire year 50K users leave Facebook forever every day, the result would be FB's daily actives shrinking by eight and a half tenths of a percent … if one assumes that each of deactivating used Facebook daily.

some_random 9y ago

But, how many of those people are active to any meaningful extent? Also, Facebook relies on a critical mass of users; if 75% of my friends leave, I'll probably leave, then large swaths of the social networks begins unthreading?

VVyattPrentice 9y ago
And here I am like: "If the taste makers leave, I will leave." jk I've never Facebooked.
alkonaut 9y ago
If even 10% of my friends weren't there, I couldn't be planning events there for example. If you have to call or email a subset of people you might as well choose a different way of planning (e.g. invite people via email to a dedicated planning service). So to me the value is that everyone I know is there. Not just 95% but 99%. So if even a fraction left, I could much easier just leave. My "social circle" on facebook could quickly just disappear, and I suspect this goes for lots of other people. Because the strength of facebook is that every social group is connected - but that will be how the cancer spreads too.

netsharc 9y ago

But "2 billion" is the number they have to brag/do a sales pitch with. Heck, I have 3 accounts, one I rarely use and one I don't even remember the credentials any more. Come to think of it, I have a 4th account. And how many do the botfarms have?

duck 9y ago

I would say most people on Facebook aren't on Twitter, so this isn't a great sample and thus it is hard to know yet. The thing that could go against FB is exactly what made it grow fast - the network effect.

nabla9 9y ago

FB loses appeal, people deleting their account is their smallest problem, it's the number of people who just stop using their FB account because it's not cool and cool people are not there. If this catches on, FB can turn into Myspace in few years. It will still have billion or so active users, but FB's stock valuation will crash until it's P/E ratio will be something like 4-5.

spydum 9y ago

Wonder how many of those 40000+ mentions were bots? If Facebook is manipulated to shift elections, why wouldn't we expect Twitter be manipulated to shift social media platforms? Also, I suspect many millions have already abandoned facebook and were using other platforms, they just left their account around just in case. Now, they have a wee bit of signaling, for practically no cost, so they go delete their account, and can happily pronounce on whatever currently-popular- social media platform, how they "dont even have" a facebook account triumphantly (no doubt missing the irony).

chillwaves 9y ago

> And Facebook has 2 billion users. I simply do not believe 1/3 of the planet is on Facebook. I am not. Half of the planet does not have access to clean drinking water, I do not believe they are on Facebook either.

ams6110 9y ago
A good number of those two billion user accounts are not real people. They are either additional alternate identities a person had created, or out-and-out fiction.
- chillwaves 9y ago
  So why even tout the figure? It's obviously inflated. I would be surprised is if it is 500M actual users. What % of American voters users Facebook? I would be surprised to see over 80%. Nothing has adoption rates that high.
ReverseCold 9y ago
> Half of the planet does not have access to clean drinking water It's a lot easier to ship a phone somewhere than to ship clean drinking water. (There are a lot of people who do not have access to clean water but have a cell phone.)
redcalx 9y ago
nitpick: World population is currently about 7.4 billion.
Reedx 9y ago
Yeah, I'm surprised every time I see that number that it doesn't seem to get much scrutiny. Furthermore, the claim is that they are monthly active users. Only 1/2 of the planet is even on the Internet. Yet they have 2B MAU?
- adventured 9y ago
  WeChat has a billion monthly active users, and they managed to do that mostly just in China and a few parts of Asia. WhatsApp has 1.5 billion monthly actives. It makes perfect sense that a global social network that dominates in most countries not named China, could get to two billion users. I must have seen hundreds of skeptical statements on HN over the years about how Facebook can't have X number of users. I've never once seen any supporting evidence against their general scale. Not once, not ever. And again in this thread, skeptics and zero supporting evidence against Facebook having two billion users. In their favor is extreme data: dozens of large and persistent research efforts put into studying use, by external parties. That spans everything from traditional media usage polling agencies, to large media ratings firms, to ad companies, to competitors, to services that see wide-spread use of Facebook-login, to Web traffic tracking services that indicate massive adoption. It also includes the massive usage that is seen on the iOS and Android app stores. The sole rebuttal possible, is to say: it's all fake! without any equally massive supporting evidence. Companies like Google would have a very large interest in destroying Facebook by pointing it out, and Google would know as well as anyone if Facebook were lying to such an extreme degree.

jadedhacker 9y ago

I have a feeling this will be a blip, but I also have a feeling this saga will lead to a qualitative change in the air. The level of trust FB has with the general public will fall. People will become more suspicious of it over time. It will make them vulnerable to being "disrupted" by some other service, technology, or philosophy.