Google Trends is an excellent way to gauge public sentiment about anything on the Internet or in the real world. And with everyone talking about Facebook these days, DeleteFacebook is one of the most popular searches on Google. How popular, you ask? Have a look at the graph below courtesy Google Trends:
While this shows us how popular DeleteFacebook has been over the past 5 years, it doesn’t tell us how many searches were started with that phrase.
Mashable used Google AdWords data to reveal that in February alone, there were between 100,000 and 1 million searches for “delete Facebook” in the US. That number would have doubled in March with the news of CA’s involvement in the scandal and the start of the #DeleteFacebook trend. As Mashable points out it also doesn’t count searches such as “how to delete Facebook,” which it says also averaged 100,000 to 1 million search attempts in February.
While the company’s stock price and reputation has taken a big fall, some damage control is being attempted through media appearances by Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. However, the worst is yet to come with federal inquiries, multiple class-action lawsuits and court hearings in store for Facebook’s top brass.
The #DeleteFacebook movement really picked up steam in the last half of this week, when WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton also tweeted in support of deleting Facebook. WhatsApp was purchased by Facebook for over $19 billion. Mozilla said it would stop advertising on Facebook for the moment, while Elon Musk deleted his, Tesla, SpaceX accounts from the site to show support for thousands around the world who are also deleting their Facebook accounts.
