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Millions deactivate Facebook accounts

14 June 2011 22:04 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. A report suggests that millions of Facebook users around the world have deactivated their accounts indefinitely due to privacy fears, APA reports quoting Press TV.

With Facebook’s goal to reach one billion active users, it has recently been relying on developing countries to boost its numbers, as the rate of growth has slowed down for the second month in a row.

According to a report on Mail Online, last month over 100,000 users in the UK deactivated their accounts amid privacy fears.

In the month of May, in the US, the user numbers dropped from 155.2 million to 149.4 million.

In Canada there was also a fall of about 1.5 million users, while in Russia and Norway the numbers also fell by over 100,000 users.

Facebook has been overwhelmed by concerns over its privacy, especially its facial recognition technology which has been described as threatening.

This comes as the overall number of Facebook users worldwide is still expanding with about 600 million users. Developing countries such as Mexico and Brazil are strong sources of growth for the network.

Analysts believe at some point, once Facebook has established itself in a country, the site can no longer grow.

â€œBy the time Facebook reaches around 50 percent of the total population in a given country, growth generally slows to a halt,â€ Eric Eldon, of the website Inside Facebook, which obtains the figures through analysis of the company’s advertising tools, explained.

Facebook, a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates.

The website’s membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the US.

Today, Facebook has become the largest social networking site in the world and has made Zuckerberg the world’s 52nd richest man with a personal fortune of Â£8.2billion - at the age 27.