IMHO. LOL. TMI. RIP? – Yahoo! News

IMHO. LOL. TMI. RIP? – Yahoo! News

Friday, Facebook users will be able to “claim” their names to use as personalized URLs, making it even easier for millions of “friends” find them online. There’s no disputing the fact that social media is king, but there are signs that its subjects may be fomenting a revolt. Or, just growing bored with reading the minutiae of other people’s lives.

In a message on the website, Facebook designer Blaise DiPersia touts the “new” features like a cyber real-estate agent: “Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the web.” (Note to Facebook: Flickr, MySpace and other social networking sites already allow personalized, or vanity, URLs).

Douglas Rushkoff at The Daily Beast is predicting that Friday’s mad rush may also be the moment the social media giant “becomes obsolete“:

Now that we’ll be quickly findable via Google, what’s left to distinguish this social-networking site from the social network that is … the Internet?

For every Twitterer who has two million followers (ok, maybe just Ashton), for every personal blog, there’s data that shows yes, people are jumping on the social media bandwagon by the millions, but they’re just as quickly jumping off. Or, not being social. Yahoo! tech blogger Ben Patterson reports that of the more than 4.5 million Twitter users, most of them aren’t even using it:

Turns out that nearly 80 percent of users haven’t added a homepage URL to their profile, while more than 75 percent never entered a bio. Even worse, 55 percent of Twitter users aren’t following anyone, 52 percent don’t have any followers of their own, and 54 percent haven’t tweeted—which, after all, is the main thing you’re supposed to do on Twitter.

Patterson’s blog also quotes a Harvard survey that shows that “90 percent of the tweeting on Twitter comes from just 10 percent of its most active users.” Data on blog activity is underwhelming as well. A 2008 Technorati survey found that “only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web.” reports The New York Times.

With more than 200 million active users, it’s doubtful that the end of Facebook, or social media in general, is nigh, but it seems as if the masses have begun revolting against the benign (and sometimes banal) chatter inherent on these sites.

To counter social networking boredom, Dan Morill from Techwag suggests “re-Jiggering”:

“…reach out and reduce the stories of preeclampsia, overt drunkenness, psychotherapy, travel plans, I got on a plane, hey I am in a Bar here is my GIS information, trolls, relationship issues, and all the other stuff that well, is too much information.”

And if you find yourself re-Jiggered, you’re not alone: A new social research study finds that people “lose about half and replace them with new ones after about seven years.”

- Lili Ladaga

Yahoo! News bloggers compile the best news content from our providers and scour the Web for the most interesting news stories so you don’t have to.

CLICK HERE to find out more about putting the Internet to work for your business ideas.

Filed under: Blogworks

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!