Credit: TheSportsJuke.com

Social networking site Facebook hit a benchmark 500 million users this week, complete with much fanfare and celebration. But some folks weren’t celebrating, either because they are no longer enamoured of Facebook or they don’t have a profile at all.

It’s pretty easy for people like me to generalize our own experiences and habits and apply them to the entire population – always a wrong-headed move to extrapolate to the general populace from a sample of one. Just because I’m on Facebook (admittedly less and less) doesn’t mean you are.

In a socialmediatoday.com post entitled 93% of the world is not on Facebook, Matt Rhodes writes:

“The problem is that huge numbers like this can stop us from examining them in more detail and acknowledging what they don’t tell us as much as what they do. It is true that Facebook usage is growing at an incredible rate and large numbers of people use the social network. But let’s not get carried away by this. In some countries, Facebook is not the most popular social network – in the Netherlands it is Hyves, in Brazil Orkut and in Russia Vkontakte. In other countries social networks are not yet the main way that people interact online – they use message boards, forums, blogs and other social media tools. And, of course, in other countries still the use of social networks is very low.”

Even in North America where Facebook does clearly dominate, some users are burning out on all the noise, distracting application spam, and “social graph collisions” (example: boss learns you called in sick by errant status update) that detract from the quality of the Facebook experience.

Computerworld’s Mike Elgan writes on SFGate.com:

“Facebook is structured on the false assumption that you have one social network. But nobody has one social group.

A nine-year-old has at least two — parents and peers. A teenager has at least three  - add ‘trusted close friends.’ And a middle-aged adult has many: Former school-mates, former colleagues (each company is a separate peer group), non-nuclear family, nuclear family, current co-workers, close friends, etc.

While it’s true that you belong to all your social groups, you’re the only person in the world who does. Each other member of any group does not belong to your other groups. Sooner or later, your social groups are going to clash and you’re going to get burned.”

Elgan’s article, The five stages of Facebook grief, outlines a user experience that begins with confusion and discovery and ends in withdrawal.

SFGate blogger Yumi Wilson goes further, asserting “Maybe it’s the fact that a lot of people are getting really, really tired and even bored of Facebook — and they’d move on, if they knew where to go next.”

Wilson quotes a Mashable report that Facebook has the worst customer satisfaction in its category:

“The 2010 American Customer Survey Index conducted by ForeSee Results gave Facebook 64 out of 100 points in a customer satisfaction survey; that’s lower than any other business in its category. However, it’s not at the bottom of the social media heap; MySpace received one point less.”

What’s truly fascinating is how all this privacy angst, customer dissatisfaction, user ennui, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s relentless hubris has put an initial public offering on hold for Facebook.

As Jessica Vascellaro wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

“Most everyone in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street agrees: The eventual IPO of social- networking site Facebook could make its founder the world’s richest twenty-something. Yet Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, now 25, seems intent on deferring that multibillion-dollar payday. He’s huddled with executives like Intel CEO Paul Otellini and Oracle Corp. President Charles Phillips—the goal being to extract wisdom about how to better run his independent company.”

Good idea, before it goes the way of the MySpace dodo.

As usual, send me your feedback on Twitter at @dblacombe or via e-mail doug@communicatto.com.

Doug Lacombe is president of Calgary social media agency communicatto.

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