Byline: From Daniel Bates in New York
TIRED of social networking? Logging off Facebook? You're probably not the only one.
Fearing for their privacy or perhaps just bored with the site, millions worldwide are said to have deactivated their accounts last month.
And Facebook fatigue is spreading - the rate of growth has slowed for a second month in a row.
In Ireland, users grew by 53,580 last month, an increase of 2.7 per cent. However, in the U.S., Canada and Britain, user numbers actually fell.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg - who visited the company's European headquarters in Dublin earlier this month - famously has the ambition to reach one billion users.
But in order to reach that target, Facebook is relying on developing countries like India and Mexico to boost its numbers.
These latest figures suggest that there could be a 'natural limit' for Facebook's saturation.
There is even speculation on blogs that, as is feared for its failing rival MySpace, the website could one day disappear 'into oblivion'.
In the U.S, Facebook users dropped by 5.8million during May. In Canada there was also a fall of about 1.5million. More than 100,000 UK users deleted their accounts.
But it's not all bad news. Worldwide, Facebook is still expanding and has around 600million users.
According to Social Bakers, one of the biggest Facebook statistics portals in the world, there are around 1,995,000 users in Ireland - meaning roughly 43 per cent of the population has an account. We rank at number 57 for countries with the most Facebook users in the world.
Eric Eldon, of the website Inside Facebook, said there is a point at which the site can no longer grow, once it has established itself in a country.
'By the time Facebook reaches around 50 per cent of the total population in a given country, growth generally slows to a halt,' he explained.
Earlier this year, figures showed that half of all those aged 15 or over in Ireland have a Facebook account. They found 90 per cent of Irish people aged between 15 and 24 have an account.
Internet psychologist Graham Jones predicted that Facebook users would suffer the same kind of 'fatigue' that comes whenever people get bored after trying anything new.
'People get terribly excited about something new and after a while the novelty wears off,' he said. 'In all aspects of our lives we are addicted to novelty, so Facebook should be the same.
'Humans are social beings and up until about five years ago we did not have a website for direct communication in this way.' Facebook has been beset by concerns over its privacy, the most recent of which was over its facial recognition technology which commentators have described as 'sinister'.
The site has come a long way since it was started in 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, in his bedroom at Harvard University.
It has become the largest social networking site in the world and made him the world's 52nd richest man with a personal fortune of [euro]9.5billion - at just 27.
In 2008 it had approximately 100million users. It has grown to 600million in just three years.
Facebook responded to the figures saying: 'From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions.
'Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn't designed to be a source for tracking the overall growth of Facebook.' Earlier this year, executives announced that the number of Facebook accounts held in the UK had reached 30million - about half the population. This represented the highest saturation of any country in Europe.
reporter@dailymail.ie
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