I recently noticed a story on the BBC commenting on a decline in users on the social networking site Facebook . Nothing unusual in that: journalists are always on the lookout for new trends or the beginning of the end of a trend. I guess the question is whether this news is the marker of something ‘terminal’ or whether in this accelerated cyber world, it’s part of the normal ‘dip’ that is encountered in any product life-cycle. Tweak the product a little and hopefully normal service will be resumed.
But in today’s Western Mail, I noticed the following article which comments on how the corporate world is beginning to make use of Facebook. The article is entitled ‘How to win friends in cyber world’. The article makes the point that forward-thinking companies are beginning to embrace social networking sites as a new means of communicating with their customers. More ominously, and not so good for Facebook, the article goes on to observe:
‘Better yet, employers are within their rights to access information in the public domain. This has great potential in recruitment and, used wisely, in monitoring existing employees.’ Sounds harmless enough, but there are shades of 1984 here. Ultimately, such corporate activity could result in mass ‘cyber-desertion’ and scupper Facebook completely.
