Yesterday Robert Scoble tweeted that he’d been invited to a press conference with Facebook:

The rumours started circulating that this may be an attempt by facebook to integrate a Groupon style system which they’re going to call “Facebook Deals”?

Well, this morning I found confirmation of this – direct from Facebook:

A holding page on the Facebook site announces that Facebook Deals is in fact coming and will be a way to find restaurants, shows and “group activities” to share with friends:

You’ll be able to find check-in deals using iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7 and by integrating with Bing maps, you can use the service to find deals near you.

Stay tuned for more information following the press conference!

Several sources are now rumouring that Google is planning an alternative social network – supposed to be a “Facebook Killer”.

Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg recently tweeted that Google is building a “Google Me” service to compete with Facebook.

This would be a huge move by Google and would take a lot to win over a lot of the seasoned Facebook users, but with the consumer confidence and a strong technical lead behind them maybe they can do it.

With Facebook recently topping the chart for the most popular website in the US, there’s obviously a reason for Google to step up to the plate and have a go at competing.

Details are still scarce, however the former CTO of Facebook Adam D’Angelo stated on his site that there are many people working on the project.

With the recent anger over privacy settings on Facebook, you have to wonder if Google are pushing to get this release soon to take advantage of the situation?

The graph says it all really – looks like 2010 is the year that Facebook privacy concerns have prompted people to close down their Facebook accounts.

It’ll be interesting to see how Facebook respond to this and whether they’ll reverse some of their recent privacy moves.

See our other article for further information on how to delete your facebook account.

With the growing privacy concerns relating to Facebook accounts – many people are now looking at deleting their Facebook accounts.

In fact – if you type into Google “How Do I” – the automatic suggestions show “How Do I Delete My Facebook Account” at position number 4 in the most searched for terms!

And the demand is growing as you can see from Google Trends:

So, now you know you’re not alone – how do you go about removing your Facebook presence?

Well there are 2 ways – Deactivation, and Deletion.

Facebook Account Deactivation

When you deactivate your Facebook account, your Facebook page is effectively archived and made inaccessible.    This however is a reversible process as you can later re-activate your account if you change your mind.

To Deactivate your account, go to your account page and select “Deactivate account”

Facebook Account Deletion

Deletion is the only sure way to completely remove your Facebook profile.   This cannot be un-done so make sure you want to do this before proceeding.

Click Here To Delete Your Facebook Account.

Be sure not to try and use your account either directly or via a Facebook connect login over the next 14 days or the deletion may not complete.

Warning

Make sure that if you delete or deactivate your account that you’re not relying on Facebook Connect as your login for any websites.

For further reading – here is an interesting article from the BBC entitled “Cold Turkey for a Facebook addict”

Hitwise has just announced that Facebook is now the most visited site in the US, with Google moving down to second place.

According to the figures, Facebook and Google accounted for 14% of all US site visits last month!

You can read the full article here at Hitwise Intelligence.

Twitter is officially down – and looks like facebook is having trouble too!   Is this the begining of the end for social networking!

Here’s the Twitter Blog about the problem: http://status.twitter.com/

Update – Turns out to be a Denial of Service Attack : http://blog.twitter.com/