When I saw this headline on Inc.com an online magazine website, I was not surprised, but I was definitely curious as to why. The reason I was not surprised was due to a few factors that I have noticed over the last year or so. The first being that Facebook has been on the decline over the past year. People are getting older and perhaps tired of the everyday in your face advertising that Facebook presents. Another reason is the amount of other social networks that are booming right now and have been on the steady upward swing. Foursquare just hit 10 million users this past week and do you know what they do when they hit a milestone? They update and improve on their already well established network. They reward the users in many ways on Foursquare by utilizing the specials perk on the iphone when users are at different venues that participate in the social network. Another reason I think facebook is the most hated is because of the drama it causes. Everyone knows what everyone is doing regardless if they are friends with them. Now I know there are privacy settings, but word of mouth paired with word on facebook is very strong combination. Many businesses are looking at our facebooks to make a final decision on the new hire in for their company.
Now how in the world can the most popular social network be the most hated. Easy the more people the more complaints you get. Everyone knows someone that is using facebook. Not everyone knows what foursquare is, or linkedin. To support that arguement I bring in Wikipedia, everyone uses that and its free of advertisements, however everyone knows what wikipedia is. Many people do not consider it to be a social network. Wikipedia scored higher than facebook on the customer satisfaction scale done by the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
All in all facebook has set the tone for all the social networks to follow. All Google+ is a boiled down version of facebook without all the games and side shows that draw advertisers to facebook. I think this report is just a swipe at facebook to kick them while perhaps another competitor is arising as we speak. Google+ is quickly hitting milestones of members left and right and from the history of google they are pretty good with building from the ground up.
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Inc.com
