Why the Long Facebook?

Considering the public’s limited attention span, Facebook should be proud of its longevity in Net years. Surveys show, however, that its popularity is fading -- and not just on Wall Street after the botched IPO:

"The online poll (Reuters/Ipsos) also found that 34 percent of Facebook users surveyed were spending less time on the website than six months ago"(Reuters)

So if users are expressing a decrease in satisfaction, why do they keep using it?

Connection is a key component, of course.

But also, long before the web, we’ve had an innate desire to broadcast to others about ourselves, from wearing logoed clothes to putting alma mater labels on den walls or car windows.  Social media simply provides us with another outlet to satisfy this desire.

Plus, Facebook has made it more constant, and convenient.  

In fact, comments posted on articles discussing dissatisfaction with Facebook were posted on none other than...Facebook.

So despite analysts predicting its imminent demise via dwindling satisfaction, we won’t stop using it unless something else becomes more appealing, more convenient, or, as they say in college where Facebook started, more ‘popular.’ 

But buying Pinterest, auto-face-recognition for tagging, and having loads of cash would make anyone popular on campus, right?