One of the hottest trends on the Internet is quitting Facebook. That’s the conclusion reached by InformationWeek after analyzing Google query results relating to the popular social networking site. It appears that a growing number of people are interested in learning how to get off of the site.
According to the InformationWeek article, the phrase “how to quit Facebook” had 16.9 million results as of Tuesday morning while the similar phrase “how do I delete my Facebook account” generated an additional 15.9 million links. While it’s impossible to tell exactly why the spike in interest in learning about deleting Facebook accounts has gone up, recent concerns about Facebook’s privacy policies is a likely cause of at least some of the issues.
Facebook users can either deactivate their account (which removes them from any friend’s lists or groups but lets them become active and start using the account at any time) or delete it entirely. Several high-profile tech names like Matt Cutts of Google and Engadget/Gizmodo founder Peter Rojas have publicly decided to leave Facebook in recent weeks, with Rojas citing the amount of time spent managing privacy settings as a key factor.