There’s some non-peer-reviewed “research” (PDF) going around that claims Facebook will have lost 80 percent of its users in a few years’ time, based on the idea that you can draw a reasonable analogy between the social network’s trajectory and that of a contagious disease, Gigaom reports. For my own sanity, I would like to pretend I never read about this Princeton study, but there are a lot of articles out there taking it quite seriously — the most irksome headline I’ve encountered reads: “Facebook is an ‘infectious disease’ and will lose 80% of users by 2017, say researchers.” It should go without saying that this story is nonsense, but apparently it doesn’t, so please allow me…
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