7 million users quit Facebook in US, Canada

CNN reported Monday that Facebook “lost more than 7 million active users in the United States and Canada last month,” the first time ever that the number of users has decreased.

While Facebook only recently celebrated 700 million account holders worldwide, data from the blog inside Facebook suggests that the number of its users have begun to decrease significantly throughout the Western world where Facebook is most saturated.

Many Facebook users have consciously reduced their time on the site while complaining of “predictable posts.”

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt told CNN that the decrease in users is only “minor and short-lived,” and most people leaving Facebook do so temporarily often just to focus on final exams.

Regardless of the total number of people on Facebook, a growing number of Internet users are now “shunning Facebook” for reasons varying from privacy concerns to simply “stop wasting time,” CNN reported.

In light of the weakening Facebook interest, more and more alternates are showing up. Alternates such as Diaspora, pressing on privacy security, and Path, focusing on “intimate and memorable sharing” are now entering into limited service in light of the recently diminishing market dominance of Facebook.

Entrepreneurs like Max Salzberg (the developer of the “Diaspora”) may be right in pointing out “eventually, everyone will use something else.”