The facebook application layer is creating a zillion more connections among facebookers by the hour.  

So what happens when someone deletes their own facebook account?

You leave a hole in reality as your record is expunged.

Deleting accounts in a social network service causes a ripple effect of "disappearing" someone.

• Threads are disrupted, orphaned messages replying to someone that no longer exists.

• Friends and contacts suddenly discover you are no longer in their buddy lists.

• Groups you created no longer have a founder.

We model our relationships, we archive our histories.

Deleting an account disrupts the models, the archives and perhaps those very relationships.

That's why it is more common to keep an account working but fallow.

It may also be cause to develop "redirection" specs for social networks: I used to be active here but now I'm active over in this other space.

Question of the Day:

Is Skype a social network in the MySpace, Ecademy, and facebook sense of the term? Skype has social network graphs (millions of buddy lists) and behavior that runs on top of it.