Many is the fad that reached a crest of hyperbole right before crashing. You know, like your Uncle Milt telling you to invest in real estate in 2007. Now Peter Corbett at iStrategyLabs has run the numbers on Facebook and found college users are down a whopping 21% in the past six months, right when mass media can't get enough. Overall Facebook users are up, sure, but that's driven by huge increases in the over 55 set. Have the cool-hunters moved on, as they always do, an early warning for mass exodus?
Facebook seems to be working to stop the slide. It recently announced changes to its privacy settings that would allow you to build custom controls to publish thoughts to different circles of friends. If that takes off, it would create switching costs -- why switch to the next social network if Facebook remembers your personal settings?
Call it a fence for social media. Alas, the cool kids may already be off of the farm.
Via Patrick LaForge.
6 comments:
Could it be to do with college kids going on their summer break, that seems to be one explanation put forward by Inside Facebook: http://bit.ly/14vxVo
Still, you wouldn't believe the number of marketers who still tell me that online is not for them as it's all about the kids! As a result, another set of stats to file away and bookmark...
Just something to point out. Based on these stats, the number of US users 0-17 is up by 24% and the number of US users 18-24 is up by 5%. So the number of high school and college users is down, but the these age groups are up. So what does this mean?
Maybe it's just that HS and college students aren't joining their HS and college networks.
Just a thought. Facebook has been de-emphasizing regional networks, maybe other networks are next.
We did a blog post on the so-called demise of Facebook last month.
I would invest in this session.
Varsity, great point. I was wondering about that as well. It would be hard to fathom that 20% of college students took the trouble to delete a social media profile in 6 months. Another explanation may be that new students in college are not adopted Facebook, which would lead to a decline as the senior graduate -- in other words, the 16-19 year range may be in steep decline, an interesting issue if they are the cool-hunters setting trends for the future.
Ben, maybe, but that leaves me with more questions. So in this scenario, 16-19 year-olds are going elsewhere, but that would mean an even higher growth rate among 13-15 year-olds to offset this decline.
Another explanation may be that kids entering college already have a Facebook profile that they created using their Yahoo/GMail/other account. To join a college network, you need to enter your college e-mail address. They may not go through the trouble of doing that.
Obviously, this is all conjecture.
Varsity, good conjecture. If that is true, it then creates some trouble for marketers ... since as demos age and change their personal ecosystems, the profiles labeling them in social media might not keep up.
Which reminds me. My LinkedIn resume must be stale ;)
Post a Comment