Hack Blogspot

Perhaps a little premature, this idea that the end of Facebook is nigh, but certainly the end of  the beginning . The bad news for Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s 27-year-old billionaire creator, is that many people are doing just that. They’re using Facebook less, or leaving it altogether – which is known, would you believe it, as “Facebook suicide”. Figures show that 100,000 British users deactivated their accounts during May, reducing the total number to 29.8 million. And six million logged off for good in the United States. What started off as an exclusive online social club at Harvard University has saturated Western society. Now it could be on the way down. The thing with being rated as a hot growth stock is that when the growth starts to slow you’re rated as an ex-hot growth stock.

Yesterday, we published Jason Calacanis's first reaction to Google Buzz, which was that Facebook is toast .  Below, in a note to his email list, Jason puts some meat on that thesis.  You can sign up for Jason's excellent email here >   My 30 second review of Google Buzz: 1. Google Buzz 1.0 is better than Facebook after six or seven years. 2. Facebook's history is one filled with stealing other people's innovations and doing them better (i.e. Zuckerberg has stolen every idea Evan Williams and the Twitter team have released). How ironic now that Google has out "Facebooked" Facebook. 3. Google has an excellent privacy record and Facebook is a disaster. Most folks do not trust Zuckerberg and Facebook any more because of their privacy record (filled with lawsuits) and because they steal every good idea they see (i.e. Twitter's innovations and FourSquare's checking in).