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Facebook Piles on the Guilt Before You Deactivate Your Account

by Kaiser Hwang on July 23, 2009 at 01:02 PM

One of the biggest challenges social networking sites face is retaining users. While Facebook seems to be doing just fine with its roughly 250 million current members, the site has a pretty sly trick up its sleeve for those considering deactivating their account. If you head to the deactivation page, you'll be shown five photos of your friends with a message saying they'll miss you. The page also notes how many friends you have and how they'll no longer be able to keep in touch with you, as well as providing a direct link to send a message to your displayed friends.

While we have no plans of deactivating our own accounts, we hit up the page to see which of our friends appeared in the photos. Surprisingly, every photo was of us with a friend. It's likely the algorithm first chooses photos that have both you and your friends in them to deepen the emotional connection. Sneaky. We have to admit, tugging at our heart strings to keep us on the site is clever, and damned if we didn't feel a pang of guilt when their sad eyes stared accusingly at us for trying to leave. [From: Mashable]

Tags: facebook, guilt, top

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