Shares in social networking giant Facebook dropped by a staggering 24% overnight after the revelation that huge numbers of users are deleting their News Feeds using a Chrome extension called Nudge.
The Chrome extension, which lets users get rid of the highly-addictive News Feed across all platforms while retaining the useful parts of Facebook, dramatically reduces the amount of advertising revenue that Facebook can make off its users, since they no longer see targeted adverts — or indeed anything at all — on their Facebook home page.
It’s thought that thousands of Facebook users are flocking to the Delete Your News Feed feature in order to take back control of how they use the social network. Analysts have been scrambling to redo their financial models for a world where users do not endlessly scroll down pointless content that they don’t actually enjoy consuming.
Nudge also changes Facebook’s trademark blue bar into grey to make the site less appealing, and hides sidebars designed to keep users addicted, along with a host of features designed to decrease internet addiction in general.
Desperate offers by Mark Zuckerberg to buy out Nudge for up to $1bn have been repeatedly ignored by Nudge’s CEO and founder, Louis Barclay.
“Mark who?” said Barclay when contacted this morning by reporters.
“You can download Nudge here,” he added.