Sorry Facebook, You Can't Reach Me Anymore.

Last winter, the world commemorated Facebook as it celebrated it's sixth birthday. Currently, over 100 million people access the popular site on their cell phones. As the numbers keep growing, I cannot help reminiscing about, the good old days. With the expansion of Facebook, I feel its popularity will decrease the effectiveness of businesses reaching the younger consumer.

The reality is there are a growing number of bitter Facebook pioneers. The pioneers are people who have been active on Facebook when it was exclusive to only college students. After polling my friends and checking out various comments, I realized this was a real problem for the corporations flocking to Facebook expecting to reach a younger audience. In the book The Facebook Era, by Clara Shih, she articulated the demise of MySpace was because it became impersonal and too vast. Now, Facebook is growing and becoming too corporate.

Long before my friends knew what social media was, we were learning about the latest party and promoting campus events via Facebook. What was once an intimate place for college friends to look at pictures is now a circus with everyone in attendance from Sarah Palin to your grandmother. As a result, I just log on occasionally to change my status and log off. My addiction to Facebook may have subsided due to my recent immersion into the real world, but I cannot deny it is a little annoying. Between the club promoters bombarding me with messages about parties in a city I no longer live in and the increasing amount of friend requests from people I don't know, sifting through the junk is frankly not a pleasant experience.

The consequence? Marketers have a very small window of time to reach me. The changing environment is just not as fun as it used to be. Yes, I understand in reality I know privacy, is no longer in existence. However, that has not stopped me from shifting into a smaller, private network within a larger. In reality, I love the concept of staying in touch with my college friends and sharing inside jokes without being so rudely interrupted by the outside world.

Do you think businesses can combat these changes or is it not a problem worth addressing?

Best,


Passion Redefined