Originally only open to Harvard students. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to the universities of Columbia, Stanford, and Yale. It later gradually opens to most universities in the United States and Canada. On September 26, 2006, Facebook was opened to everyone at least 13 years old with a valid email address. Facebook’s popularity spread like wildfire. It hardly took any time to become everyone’s favourite social networking website.
From 2006 to up until 2017, Facebook remained the number one social networking website. It gained more popularity with the introduction of smart phones as you no longer needed a computer to log on to your profile. Each year Facebook saw a substantial growth in the number of users. For the first time Facebook saw a decline in the number of users in 2018. It went down from 67% to 62% making it the first decline in the history of the company.
What were the reasons behind the decline? What dethroned Facebook as the most popular social networking channel? Let’s have a look at some of the reason.
1. Increased Distrust of Facebook
It hasn’t been a great year for Facebook as an organization. The mainstream media has consistently covered Facebook’s role (or at least complicity) in the world of “fake news.” When you combine this with the company’s other missteps in the areas of privacy and accountability, you end up with an environment where the users of the platform may not fully trust the motives and judgment of those that operate the platform.
Given that Facebook has access to many of our most important personal data points, photos, and feelings, a drop in trust could create a drop in usage.
2. Increased Discord on Facebook
If you’re a Facebook user, we are sure you’ve seen this in your own News Feed: someone who says they are logging off of Facebook for good because of the rampant negativity present on the platform.
In the shadow of the presidential election, there has been a continued polarization of thought in America, and an acceptance that the new normal is a climate of “us” vs. “them.” This is tiring. Each time you express an opinion on Facebook, you must defend that opinion from segments of your “friends” who are now “the opposition.” This squeezes the fun out of Facebook, like Fergie squeezing propriety out of the national anthem.
When additional Infinite Dial data is released, we’ll have more insight on this point. But I predict we’ll see an even greater drop in daily usage. While there are some people who have signed off of the platform entirely due to discord, anecdotally, I believe the bigger change is people using Facebook a couple times a week instead of every day.
3. Increased Disinterest in Facebook
Indeed, we believe reduced trust in our Facebook overlords along with reduced willingness to argue amongst ourselves on Facebook contribute to this first-ever reduction in usage in America.
But a third explanation is that this drop represents a natural shifting of users to other parts of the Facebook ecosystem. While Facebook’s usage declines, Instagram’s usage continues to march upward, as does the number of people consistently using Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
This may be a purposeful segmentation approach by Facebook. It’s particularly true among young Americans ages 12 to 24, where Edison Research observed the largest drop in usage.
After all, one of Facebook’s most attractive elements is that you can do a LOT of different things on the platform. But that’s also one of its great weaknesses. Is Facebook the BEST place for video? Probably not. Is it the BEST place for photos? Probably not. Is it the BEST place for messaging? Maybe.
As Facebook usage goes down, Instagram and WhatsApp and Messenger usage go up because they offer a more tailored experience. As social media progresses, it is natural for our own usage to gravitate toward one or more platforms that offer a more specialized experience that is more relevant to what we personally enjoy best about social media. Thus, some people gravitate toward Instagram. Others, LinkedIn. Others still, Snapchat.
We at Loud Mob Media, a marketing agency in Pune, India believe that Facebook will continue to lose on the number of users every year unless and until they come up with something that absolutely blows the minds of its users. With a steep decline coming up for the company, Facebook can be very well considered as dead platform.About Us'We are design, strategy and content creators. Our work includes designing, branding, marketing and building technologies for a range of industries including entertainment, music, fashion, retail and others. We have a team of talented artists, motion designers, strategists and geeky coders. We are nimble and responsive in a constantly changing industry. Bridging creativity and technology with human emotions, we create experiences that attract attention and generate meaningful conversations and acquire fans.'
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