More than half of Facebook users may quit site, poll finds

It smells like self selection.

IF the sample of the population was not randomly selected by the interviewer (which almost never happens in online polls), then the people most likely to answer were the angriest at FB. The whole thing is rigged.

From my side of the fence, it looks all rosy to FB. From (real-world) friends and acquaintances, many of whom are techies and those who aren't at least are computer literate, only other guy and myself have any concerns. It is not that they don't get it, but that they couldn't care less.

Need to fly. Time to call and yell at my wife for disclosing one more piece of personal info.

I think the real metrics regarding the effects of these privacy issues are going to be much harder to measure. I don't think there will be a lot of people outright shutting down their Facebook account, but instead people will begin to self-censor more and more what they say on the site. I notice myself using the site much less frequently the last several months, and many of my friends report the same. It's actually hard to say for sure whether this is due to privacy concerns, or if people are just starting to get bored of it and realizing that having real contact with their real friends really does matter.

"Over the last few days we've been running an online poll asking..." fail

So according to the poll... sampling a touch more than 1500 people... who are self-selected to be in the 'ZOMG FACEBOOK IS BAD' echo chamber...

16% claim to have quit FB.

30% say it's 'Highly Likely'.

30% chose the ever vague 'Possibly' option...

And that conclusively adds up to 60% of ALL 400,000,000 FB users quitting?

Hooray for polls.

Obvious the poll is silly. However, bad publicity can still sour people on the company and reduce overall Facebook usage.

Quantcast isn't perfect by any means, but it's directional, and according to it, United States users and visits to Facebook have been flat since the start of February:

http://www.quantcast.com/facebook.com

When did the current wave of Facebook privacy hoopla start?

If they lost 50% they would have 200M users. That sets Facebook back to April 2009.

This poll is so stock-full of mistakes and biases that it's practically worthless. If you bother to click through to the source it even says at the bottom of the blogpost they got it from: "Please bear in mind that this poll is not scientific and is provided for information purposes only."

And I'm not even mentioning that computerworld finds an online poll written up on a blog credible source material.

Shame on them.

Where will they go? I don't see a potential successor standing by, despite 4 years of half the people I know working on either "the next Facebook" or "Facebook for X niche."

Nonresponse bias. Next.

And 100% of people that don't read tech blogs have no idea there is a Facebook privacy issue and will continue on using FB just as they are.

Bogus.