Article link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/technology/13face.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=facebook&st=nyt&oref=slogin 

This article talks about the difficulties of quiting Facebook.com. Many people who have joined Facebook and no longer want an account there find it difficlt to completely get rid of it and only finds a solution to “deactivate” their account. By deactiviating the account, the information is still stored by Facebook, and your name can still be searched by Facebook users. The logic behind this according to Facebook is because of the numerous users that think they want to shut down their account only to restart at a later date. A Facebook spokesperson claimed that on a given day, the number of people who reactivate their account is roughly half of those deactivating their account. Facebook users have a reason to be angered; as one user puts it, “I did not want to be on it after junior associates at work whom I have to manage saw my Facebook page.” Currently, Facebook users who wished to close their accounts had been unable to do so, even after contacting Facebook’s customer service representatives. Many have attempted to erase their accounts for weeks to months without success.

 Why has Facebook with over 64 million worldwide (MySpace has an estimated 110 million monthly active users) not complied with requests by users to make deletion of accounts easier? Would losing a small fraction of users be a big deal? In the first week of class, we briefly talked about the network dynamics of coordination. This claims that the value in social networking sites is in the potential for interacting with others and the site becomes more and more valuable as others join it. Perhaps by making it difficult to leave Facebook, the company can still claim that their network is one of the largest social networking sites and quote a larger number of users than really exist to lure more users; this can be also be a selling point to companies who wish to advertise on Facebook pages and led to believe that there are more users than there really are. Another reason to keep these pages maybe to attract users who wishes to see their boss’s old Facebook page that he cannot delete. There can be a multitude of reasons of why Facebook is being particularly difficult in this. Perhaps game theory (loosely) comes in to play here. What is the best strategy for Facebook.com when faced with a group that is determined to leave its network? If these users are determined to leave the site, then Facebook’s best response to this action is obvious. Facebook cannot try to individually persuade these members to stay if they are determined to leave. So Facebook’s best response is to prevent them from permanently leaving by not allowing them to delete their information.