One lakh Britons and six million users in the US have shut down their Facebook accounts because of privacy threats and fatigue.

The same pattern is expected to follow in other countries too.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

Facebook’s growth rate has slowed for a second month in a row, ironically, when the social networking site was aiming to reach its goal of one billion active users.

Canada saw a fall of about 1.5 million users of the website, while in Russia and Norway numbers fell by more than 100,000 users.

The company is now relying on developing countries to boost its numbers.

Blogs are abuzz with speculations that the website could one day ’sputter into oblivion,’ fearing the fate of its failing rival MySpace.

There is a point at which the site can no longer grow, once it has established itself in a country, according to Eric Eldon, from the website ‘Inside Facebook’, which obtained the figures.

“People get terribly excited about something new and after a while the novelty wears off,” said Internet psychologist Graham Jones.

A study has found that young people are most likely to limit personal information online and least likely to trust sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace.

Marlene McManus, one of the young people, remarked that she has to represent a public face that does not hurt her image.

From Google.com:

It might go against conventional wisdom, but a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project is adding fuel to the argument that young people are fast becoming the gurus of online reputation management, especially when it comes to social networking sites.

Among other things, the study found that they are most likely to limit personal information online – and the least likely to trust free online services ranging from Facebook to LinkedIn and MySpace.

Marlene McManus, 21, is among those young adults. On the job hunt since graduating from Clark University in Massachusetts, she’s been “scouring” her Facebook page, removing photos that contain beer cups and any other signs of college exploits. She’s also dropped Twitter altogether.

“I have to present a public face that doesn’t have the potential to hurt my image,” McManus says.

She has seen otherwise upstanding adults, well past their 20s, sharing compromising photos and questionable rants with too many people online. “I get embarrassed for these people and sometimes just want to shake them,” she says.

Mary Madden, the Pew researcher who was the study’s lead author, remarked that the findings in a way reflect that young people use social networking for long than elders and are therefore more experienced.