Hacker News Reader

Comment by faramarz | Hacker News Reader

What a crock of shit. Pardon my french.

If you're going to close your account, the world doesn't need to hear about it. Those of you jumping on the bandwagon to close your accounts probably can't come up with a real reason why you joined the service in the first place. So stop your whining.

2 bloggers ranting about their demise doesn't count for the rest of the population.

Facebook is here to stay. you know why? because it's the only app that you, your mother and your grandmother (mine anyway) are on and navigating with ease.

View on HN

They seem to be somewhat desperate though, judging by the sign-off screen:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_happens_when_you_d...

Thats not desperate, that's a great retention technique! Every startup can learn from this. If you don't have a practice to retain your users, you don't care about the success of your business.

That's not a retention technique (even though it may work as such), that's a last ditch attempt.

A retention strategy makes sure that people never reach that page.

That's a retention technique in the same way that, "Don't break up with me! I Love You!" is a relationship reparation technique.

Not that I'd actually recommend doing it, but I'd bet that technique does work some small percentage of the time. What does Facebook have to lose by seeming desperate at that stage? I think it's smart.

Holy hell, that screams dating site unsubscribe system. I didn't realize Facebook was that low about account deactivations.

But how often do you and your family make any meaningful use out of it? A pattern I've seen is that people join, have an active wall for a couple weeks and then they just go back to using sms and email for keeping in touch with each other.

I make a lot of use out of it - that being said, Facebook is a whole lot of fluff these days. Nothing they have done recently is really compelling from a user perspective, all of the really useful/interesting stuff was done ages ago:

- Writing on people's walls, was there from the start.

- Status updates, was there from the start.

- Event invitations, have been done forever.

- Using as an address book, has been like this from the start.

- Photos/tagging, has been around since forever.

What has Facebook added in the last couple of years that's really made the site more engrossing and compelling? Chat? Nobody uses that, almost. Applications? Most users I know see them as annoyances more than features. Gifts? That was a completely flop too.

The core use of Facebook has barely changed at all since it launched - there's a very small core set of features that make the site what it is... I'm convinced someone can come along and do these core features better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com