Canadian site’s numbers grow as others decline
Misty H
Sun
Although it’s too early to declare full-fledged Facebook fatigue, the writing on the wall — metaphorically and literally, since site members use a “Wall” to communicate — suggests disenchantment among the ranks.
According to traffic monitor Alexa Internet, page views on the social networking site are down one per cent over the last three months as of Jan. 16. By contrast, rival Canadian site Nexopia, which launched a year earlier and is arguably more vulnerable to user ennui, continues to trend upward.
The Alberta-based site, which caters to the 14 to 20 demographic, has seen page views climb 31 per cent over the same three-month period, with members — nine in 10 of them Canadian — up nearly 20 per cent.
It may be as simple as the first law of nature: Teenagers, as a matter of self-preservation, don’t want to be where their parents are.
“My school friends have Nexopia, but my work friends have Facebook,” says Megan Adkin, a 16-year-old from Edmonton. Because Adkin’s mom and dad are among her “friends” on the latter site — meaning both can freely view anything posted on her page — she restricts most of her personal exchanges to Nexopia.
“It’s not like I’m trying to hide stuff from my parents,” says Adkin. “It’s just keeping some things on a different level.”
If Facebook — with 60 million members, seven million of them Canadian — has become the national water cooler for adults, Nexopia is the corner convenience store attracting their pierced and tattooed kids. The Canadian site now has 1.2 million members, only six per cent of whom are 23 or older.
“We’re like the rock and roll Facebook,” says Nexopia spokesman Chris Webster.
Part of Nexopia’s appeal to young people is that it allows them to employ usernames.
While Facebook members register using their legal names, Nexopia members can adopt online handles known only to their circle of friends.
“They can express who they are without having to feel like they’re exposing themselves,” Webster says.
Nexopia got its start when founder Timo Ewalds was in Grade 12 and his school banned floppy disks as a security measure. He created the site as a way to send files home and soon saw the potential for interacting with friends.
By the time Ewalds was in university, the project had grown to the point that he dropped out of school to foster Nexopia full time.
The updated site will include, among other things, more application options — a somewhat unexpected step, given the criticism Facebook has taken for its ubiquitous third-party applications.
Facebook currently offers more than 13,000 applications that members cannot only download themselves but also encourage friends to download. Given a large enough friend list, the cumulative effect can be dozens of spam-like application invites a week.
Nevertheless, many Facebook members stand by the site, which despite recent controversies continues to attract some of the heaviest traffic in the country.
“I’ll admit, the millions of application invitations can get annoying,” says Jennifer Baxter, who has accounts on both sites. “But with the lack of anonymity on Facebook, you get a lot less ‘creepers’ and random — sometimes very inappropriate — messages.”
Baxter, 19, also dislikes Nexopia’s “plus” option, which for $5 a month allows members to see who’s been looking at their page and how often.
“A lot of users just want to browse around and check out pages without having to worry if the page they’re going to is a ‘plus’ user,” says the Sherwood Park, AB, girl.
“(They worry) they’ll get spammed and called a ‘page creeper’ because they didn’t feel compelled to leave a comment or send a message.”
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
