There’s been a Facebook backlash of sorts recently, with privacy concerns taking center stage for many users. The most recent changes, which automatically allow third-party websites to customize your experience (unless you opt out) has led to a number of the early adopter, techie types to cancel their accounts entirely (http://bit.ly/a8Ekje).

Is this the beginning of a new trend, or just the latest growing pains for the current giant of the social web? It is true that privacy issues seem to be more of a generational thing. Gen-Y typically doesn’t have the same concerns about online privacy, which is one of the factors that allowed the site membership to grow in the first place. But what ultimately made Facebook become as ubiquitous as it is now was when the Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers began crashing the party and creating profiles of their own.

Unfortunately for Facebook, expanding their membership base is a double-edged sword. Older generations are far more concerned with protecting their personal information than are their younger counterparts. And as the novelty of reconnecting with high school friends wears off and people tire of reading about farms and mafia wars (while at the same time it becomes increasingly more complicated to keep your privacy settings in place with every “redesign”), more and more people are starting to just say no.

No one should shed any tears for Facebook yet, however. We’re too far down the rabbit hole of the social web to ever go back. People like being able to easily connect with friends, businesses, media outlets and causes that are important to them. And the simple fact of the matter is that, as the world’s largest social network, pretty much everyone you know is there already. It’s not a whole lot of fun to go off to play at another social network all by yourself.

Nevertheless, this is a critical time for them and we should watch carefully how they respond. Because as MySpace can certainly tell them, nothing stays hot forever.