“Facebook has spread like an
infectious disease but we are slowly becoming immune to its attractions, and
the platform will be largely abandoned by 2017” said the researchers at
Princeton University.
The forecast of Facebook's
imminent ruin was made by comparing the growth curve of epidemics to those of
online social networks. Scientists argue that, Facebook will eventually die
out.
The social network, celebrated its
10th birthday on 4th February, has survived longer than rivals such as Myspace
and Bebo, but the Princeton forecast says it will lose 80% of its peak user base
within the next three years.
John Cannarella and Joshua
Spechler, from the US University's mechanical and aerospace engineering
department, have based their prediction on the number of times Facebook is
typed into Google as a search term. The charts produced by the Google Trends
service show Facebook searches peaked in December 2012 and have since begun to trail
off.
Facebook reported nearly 1.44
billion monthly active users in April, and is due to update investors on its
traffic numbers at the end of the month. While desktop traffic to its websites
has indeed been falling, this is at least in part due to the fact that many
people now only access the network via their mobile phones. And many prefer to
use the Facebook Messenger app.
Myspace was founded in 2003 and
reached its peak in 2007 with 300 million registered users, before falling out
of use by 2011. Purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for $580m, Myspace
signed a $900m deal with Google in 2006 to sell its advertising space and was
at one point valued at $12bn. It was eventually sold by News Corp for just
$35m.
The 930 million people using Facebook
via their smartphones each month could explain the drop in Google searches –
those looking to log on are no longer doing so by typing the word Facebook into
Google.
Social Media expert Michael
McQueen called it the Levi’s Effect. McQueen added that the site has been
overtaken by people of 30 years of age and above, as teenagers log off.
But Facebook's chief financial
officer David Ebersman admitted on an earnings call with analysts that during
the previous three months: "We did see a decrease in daily users,
specifically among younger teens."
In response to Princeton University’s
study, Facebook predicted the imminent demise of the social network, with its
own satirical prediction that the University itself will be out of business by
2021. Mike Develin, a data scientist at Facebook,
wrote in a note: “Princeton will have only half its current enrollment by 2018, and
by 2021 it will have no students at all.” Devlin claimed he had analyzed
several data points that includes volume of queries on Google Scholar matching
the query “Princeton”.
What do you think? Will Facebook die out like
the bubonic plague as predicted by the Princeton University? Or Devlin is
right? Place your opinions in comments below.
No comments:
Post a Comment