Stop the presses! Run for the hills! Facebook is dying!
The news came out earlier this week that facebook growth was slowing in the US and Canada. According to articles from reliable news sources, such as the La Times, Facebook lost nearly 6 million users in the U.S in the last month.
This is the kind of news that may get internet users scurrying for new social media venues. Not to mention the implications that this kind of dire news may have for social media as a whole.
If Facebook is losing users, what’s going to happen to social media companies like LinkedIn and Twitter?
Is it the end for the social media company? Is it time to jump over to diaspora?
But wait!
Before you jump to action, you need to take another look at the complete stats.
In many countries, facebook continued to record gains in users. According to Inside Facebook, facebook actually gained 11.8 million users in may following a 13.9 million user gain in April.
Facebook is still steadily marching towards 700 million users.
Why the Drop in Facebook Users in the US and Canada?
Keep in mind that these statistics are only recording a short one month snapshot of Facebook trends and rely heavily on Facebook advertising tools which may be subject to bugs.
There are a number of factors that can contribute to the one month fluctuation.
June of course was the month of graduations. For a social media company that got it’s start focusing on university students, this may be significant as students graduate from college. However, this would simply be a seasonal fluctuation.
We may very well see normal growth patterns emerge again when summer school starts and when schools go back in session with incoming freshmen joining up.
Another point to note is that Facebook is a more mature platform in US and Canada. There is often a slowdown in users as a company grows towards maturity.
These minor fluctuations are made up with gains in the developing countries such as Mexico, Brazil, and Indonesia, as one can see from the chart.
What Does this Mean for Social Media Marketing?
Don’t jump off Facebook yet.
These minor fluctuations are just that. A minor fluctuation.
Remember, overall Facebook is still growing worldwide.
While, there are statistics that seem to show Facebook growth to slow down once they hit the 50% mark of the total population of any given country, Facebook is still some ways from hitting that mark worldwide.
It’s still staggering how popular Facebook is today. Just think, the company is marching steadily to 700 million users worldwide, even with these fluctuations in the countries where it is more mature.
That’s over 10% of the world’s population!
Also, don’t forget that people are spending more time on social media than any other internet medium these days.
So, keep on using all your social media marketing techniques. Stay of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc…
They are here to stay.
Richard is a full time professional, husband, father and blogger juggling all the responsibilities of life and running a blog. Richard enjoys writing about life and online money matters.
What I find so entertaining is the mentality that only booming growth is good, and the minute it starts to taper, people start finding another bandwagon to jump onto. This is absolutely crazy. Steady growth is awesome, and broadening horizons to find other growth is even better. What is it about America (and Canada) that they pretty much don't count the rest of the world when things like this happen?
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Richard,
These are some interesting facts regarding facebook. I am not surprised there has been a slight decline. That being said though, I don't think facebook is going anywhere anytime soon. Thank you for sharing
Don’t want to get all pessimistic here but it happened to Myspace… I think it’s inevitable.
Moved to Google Plus. I think Facebook Will be dead. Have much spamer, have much ripper, have much hacker …. It's will be die.
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I think it will be really interesting to see how the Google+ numbers compare with Facebook in a year's time. I also really like Google+. I don't think Facebook will die, but we may see some people leave facebook for Google+.
It is hilarious to think that Facebook is about to be Faced(phased)-out. Yeah yeah…bad play on words. Anyhow…back on topic…. I think that Facebook will be with us for a loooonnnggg time. Now if they can just solve the rumors of the funky security set up that they have…. hahahahahahahaha
You know, I thought so when I wrote this post which was before Google+ came out. Now I have to say there is some really good competition for facebook. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some real drop in Facebook users who move over to Google+. Who knows how the numbers will look in a year.
My success was built on my recruiting, sales and marketing background. Social media started as a hobby, and stepping on a way, i realized to take it seriously. Instead, I used social media as a tool to help clients with their sales, recruiting, and marketing problems that it encounter. That focus on integration was much different than most consultants.
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