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October 21, 2011

Power users leaving Faceboook: Sean Parker

Exodus to Google+ and Twitter is biggest threat company faces, says prominent shareholder

By CBR Staff Writer

Facebook shareholder Sean Parker has revealed that the biggest challenge that social network site faces is the exodus of its heaviest users because to Twitter and Google+.

Parker is also the co-founder of music file-sharing service Napster. He said that the social network’s biggest problem is not privacy as many believe, the Telegraph reported.

Speaking at the annual Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Parker said, "The strategic threat to Facebook is that power users have gone to Twitter or to Google+."

According to Parker, power users are those who contribute "tones of content to Facebook which is being consumed by everyone else" and called them "important networkers’ who prop the social network up."

Parker said, "I am trying to lean in the direction of giving these users more tools but not privacy tools."

He said that privacy is notthe real threat for Facebook.

"I don’t think privacy is an issue. That may be controversial but I don’t think that’s Facebook’s biggest problem. I think Facebook’s biggest problem is the glut of information that Facebook’s power users are overwhelmed with… [Facebook] needs to address the need of power users to have more controls.

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"They want to control what information they are seeing by basically organising their friends – and that should happen organically – you shouldn’t never have to go to some separate place to do so."

Parker also added that Facebook’s recently released "smart lists" feature was a "step in the right direction" and the first time "Facebook users have been given some degree of control over how to filter their experience" on the site.

"The next step is, once you have your friend network organised into some sensible lists…you can start selectively broadcasting to those lists," Parker said.

When asked about the ways Google+ could topple facebook as the world’s biggest social networking site, he said, "Facebook would have to screw up royally and Google would have to do something really smart."

However, he added, "It can happen – it obviously happened with people switching from MySpace to Facebook – but it requires systematic consistent product execution over a long period of time; but it also requires the systematic failure on the part of the incumbent network."

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