As Facebook gets ready for a much-awaited public offering, the company is eager to flaunt its force by building on its enormous membership: an upwards of 800 million active users around the world, and around 200 million in the United States, or two-thirds of the population.

These numbers are only growing, or at least that's what Facebook says.

But the corporation is running into increased resistance in its native country.

One of Facebook's key selling points is that it develops closer ties amongst friends and colleagues. But some who leave the site say it can have the contradictory effect of making them feel more, not less, estranged from their peers.

"I wasn't calling my friends anymore. I was just seeing their pictures and updates and felt like that was really connecting to them," said Ashleigh Elser, 24, a graduate studnet at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Without a doubt, the Facebook-free life has its inconveniences in an age when people publicize all kinds of milestones on the web. Elser has let pass engagements and pictures of new-born babies. But none of that hurt as much as the gap she said her Facebook account had opened between her and her closest friends. And that's why she decided to shut it down.

Facebook executives say they don't imagine one and all in the country to sign up. In its place they are thinking of ways to keep existing users on the site longer, which gives the company more odds to show them ads. And the company's prime growth is now in places like Asia and Latin America, where there may well be people who have not yet heard of Facebook.