This is just one of the groups that has formed to protest Facebook's decision to open up registration to anyone. After last week's blowup over its newsfeed features, it feels like this announcement couldn't have come at a worse time. It will be interesting to see whether this move will pay off for them or whether their real differentiator was the power of being closed and exclusive. Ypulse reader Nick, who is a youth minister, wrote yesterday to share his own anecdotal experience talking about Facebook with the teens he works with. He said:

"Last night, I got to talking with some highschoolers about Facebook. I asked about the recent changes to the news feed and received the negative 'stalker' response that has been common among teens. What's interesting, though, is that one of the girls commented that she thought, 'Facebook is dying.' It seems to me that the novelty of the service is wearing off and, especially with them opening up their services to different geographical groups, they are further driving away their customers from their service.

What is even more interesting is that two girls told me that they thought that the Net was getting boring. I think the social networking sites of today are going to really have a hard time keeping people happy. My youth only get online every once in a while now to check facebook profiles and see who is on IM. If no one is on, they sign off and get back to texting each other. The Net seems like it's no longer the connection point for kids, but rather their mobile phones."

And to back up Nick's observation about teens and their cellphones, Textually just published research on U.S. teens and texting that revealed "the respondents, aged 10-18, overwhelmingly chose text messaging as their most important feature beyond voice calls, with very few teens identifying functionality such as video, email, instant messaging (IM) or a music player as the most important feature on a cell phone."

Posted by anastasia