#greenetworks
Facebook is now everywhere! On your computer, phone, tablet and even on your TV! You’d think that this would mean that the number of Facebook users will ridiculously increase. However, Facebook has been losing millions of users per month, as alternative social networks attract the attention of those looking for fresh online playgrounds.
In the last month, the world’s largest social network has lost 6m US visitors, a 4% fall, according to analysis firm SocialBakers. In the UK, 1.4m fewer users checked in last month, a fall of 4.5%. The declines are sustained. In the last six months, Facebook has lost nearly 9m monthly visitors in the US and 2m in the UK.
Users are also switching off in Canada, Spain, France, Germany and Japan, where Facebook has some of its biggest followings. The number of minutes Americans spend on Facebook appears to be falling, too. The average was 121 minutes in December 2012, but that fell to 115 minutes in February, according to comScore.
“The problem is that, in the US and UK, most people who want to sign up for Facebook have already done it,” said new media specialist Ian Maude at Enders Analysis. “There is a boredom factor where people like to try something new.”
Alternative social networks such as Instagram, the photo sharing site that won 30m users in 18 months before Facebook acquired the business a year ago, have seen surges in popularity with younger age groups.
Path, the mobile phone-based social network founded by former Facebook employee Dave Morin, which restricts its users to 150 friends, is gaining 1m users a week and has recently topped 9m, with 500,000 Venezuelans downloading the app in a single weekend.
As Facebook itself has warned, the time spent on its pages from those sitting in front of personal computers is declining rapidly because we are switching our screen time to Smart Phones and tablets. While Smart Phone minutes have doubled in a year to 69 a month, that growth is not guaranteed to compensate for dwindling desktop usage.
Is Facebook going to go the way of Myspace? The risk is relatively small, but that is not to say it isn’t there!