The impact of #deletefacebook

This is turning into a bit of a series: in previous posts, I showed how there’s a yearly peak in people googling “delete facebook” around New Year, the time for New Year’s resolutions. The peak is even higher than for “quit smoking”.

Against the backdrop of the latest Facebook controversy, Whatsapp co-founder Brian Acton helped launch a #deletefacebook campaign. Below is an update of my previous chart, which gives a preliminary impression of the impact of this campaign.

Some caution is in order, for recent Google Trends data can sometimes be a bit unstable. Also, it’s possible that currently some people are googling “delete facebook” out of curiosity, without actually intending to delete their account. That said, the impact of the current campaign may well be substantially larger than the annual New Year’s peak.