10 Comments »Om Malik has posted comScore data showing that Facebook had a down month in September. Given that college students are returning to school then, the data doesn’t make much sense. A quick glance at Alexa shows a different picture but then again Alexa is notorious for being inaccurate. A comparison to Compete.com’s statistics on Facebook shows that comscore’s data may have been inflated for previous months.
Even Facebook employees that have presented about Facebook have been showing growing numbers. When speaking at the Graphing Social Patterns conference, Dave Morin said there were 43 million users and 225,000 new users per day. Then yesterday at the D.C. Developers Garage, Ami Vora of Facebook said that there are now 45 million users and 250,000 new users per day. Facebook says that they are growing and I think their numbers are relatively accurate (although as a private company they aren’t required to publish this information).
If you ask me, Facebook traffic is growing and this is a blip in comscore’s data. Comscore had previously released questionable data about the Facebook demographic information. All sources in this case are relatively quesitonable (comscore could be statistically inaccurate, Facebook may want to hype their numbers). We probably will never know what’s true here.
The number of accounts and new accounts per day is A LOT different then the number of uniques they’re getting.
If these new users aren’t translating into active users then the Comscore data makes perfect sense.
I know a lot of people who sign up for accounts and then just don’t use them.
The number of accounts and new accounts per day is A LOT different then the number of uniques they’re getting.
If these new users aren’t translating into active users then the Comscore data makes perfect sense.
I know a lot of people who sign up for accounts and then just don’t use them.
I still don’t get the ‘college students returning to school’ argument - people said apps would take off even more at that point too.
If I had to guess, I’d say Facebook’s more use for keeping in touch with college-mates when you’re at home for the holidays… In term-time, there’s the long-forgotten method for keeping in touch called face-to-face!
I totally agree …. I posted about the “Myth of School Year Traffic” at the beginning of August:
http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/08/the-myth-of-...
Well here is a test, check your network activity and see if you notice the difference. I do. A month ago, there was a lot of activity on Facebook with all my friends. Everyone was excited about finding each other, now that we are caught up, what is the use of Facebook. I can email my long lost friends directly. I am not checking my facebook as often anymore. Also i am not getting as much activity from my friends either.
Steve Ballmer is right, Facebook is a fad.
[...] allfacebook - the unofficial facebook blog « Is Facebook’s Traffic Down? [...]
I still don’t get the ‘college students returning to school’ argument - people said apps would take off even more at that point too.
If I had to guess, I’d say Facebook’s more use for keeping in touch with college-mates when you’re at home for the holidays… In term-time, there’s the long-forgotten method for keeping in touch called face-to-face!
I totally agree …. I posted about the “Myth of School Year Traffic” at the beginning of August:
http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/08/the-myth-of-school-year-traffic/
Well here is a test, check your network activity and see if you notice the difference. I do. A month ago, there was a lot of activity on Facebook with all my friends. Everyone was excited about finding each other, now that we are caught up, what is the use of Facebook. I can email my long lost friends directly. I am not checking my facebook as often anymore. Also i am not getting as much activity from my friends either.
Steve Ballmer is right, Facebook is a fad.
[...] have any data on-hand to indicate if it’s still the fastest growing; today Allfacebook ran an article suggesting that Facebook’s traffic has declined somewhat. The point is, however, that for widget developers like myself, developing products and services [...]