Are we falling out of love with Facebook?

[dropcap]“[/dropcap]…is wondering what’s so great about Facebook” posted an edgy, provocative Oliver, age 14.He proceeded to upload an ironic profile photo of himself in shades, set up a virtual farm, and discover that his crush had been haplessly poking half of Year Nine.

I’ve come a long way since then, and ditching the third person was just the first step in keeping up with Facebook’s tremendous growth.

81 percent of all internet users, 1.35 billion people, visited the site monthly by late 2014. But Facebook, just like my Year Nine heartache, is destined to die.

Last year marked the first time active usership fell, and by a whopping nine percent, while Pinterest and Tumblr increased by over 90 percent. Even Google+ managed to coerce an extra six percent into its weird circling thing.

Twitter made status-spamming about football cool, Instagram allowed endless sunset pics without judgement, Snapchat ended the first-world problem of selfie fatigue, and Vine has done wonders to pull people away from Facebook’s attempts to provide similar content.

With an exodus onto these rival sites, all that’s left on my Newsfeed is an endless stream of LadBible videos of cute dogs, pictures of strangers at Smack, BuzzFeed articles about Daniel Radcliffe, and Tab articles about boobs. That and constant adverts for LG, because one of my friends liked LG at some point.

But there is hope. Lest we forget the two pinnacles of university procrastination: ‘Overheard at Warwick’ and ‘Warwick Memes’. These glorious institutions serve as a vital reality check for all Warwick Students: yes, it is mediocre living in the West Midlands, but together we can overcome substandard bus travel and desolate functionalist architecture.

Is Facebook on the way out? No chance. From this stage, however, it will have to expand and adapt to keep its users engaged. Buying Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, and the ever increasing list of features shows a move in this direction.

I don’t miss Farmville, though.