Laura June, in her catchy “Is not using Facebook the next trend in social networking?” post, aptly summarizes New York Times great piece on:

…growing number of young people who are leaving or never joining Facebook to begin with. Several reasons noted for staying away from the behemoth social network include the oft-discussed privacy concerns that Facebook presents, in addition to people reporting that the site can actually make you feel less, rather than more, connected to actual human beings. As Facebook continues to grow with over 800 million users, and as it approaches its IPO, it should be reassuring to note that not everyone is simply along for the ride.

Comforting indeed.

It’s not that I feel wee bit vindicated rather pleasantly surprised that there seems to be a consensus growing, slowly but surely around the idea of living a life without Facebook. Also heartening the fact I’m noticing more and more users are reacting negatively to Apps that require a Facebook account to use.

I wonder though in larger scale of things, years down the road will these very people be looked down upon as:

a) vocal minority who opted-out of what then would be the first true global identity, business, communication network and found themselves marginalized?

b) those who saw the writing on the wall and chose to stay ahead of the curve? or

c) neither - but simply those who decided it just wasn’t for them?

From WSJ:

“Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit,” Cubrilovic wrote in a blog post about the issue. “The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions.” […]

Facebook acknowledges that it gets that data but says it deletes it right away. “The onus is on us is to take all the data and scrub it,” said Arturo Bejar, a Facebook director of engineering. “What really matters is what we say as a company and back it up.”

That’s certainly nice of them.