According to The Guardian, Facebook saw the first monthly drop in traffic since it became the largest social network in the U.K. As Henry Blodget points out, looking at this at a month by month basis is completely misleading. Facebook has grown a whopping 712 percent year over year for the month of January. This is simply a seasonal decrease and I’m sure we will see continued growth from January into February.
When looking at the picture overall though, there may be some slowing in the social network space as I pointed out on the Social Times earlier this month. Even still, Facebook still has plenty of room for growth and there are simply short-term signs in slowing growth. Using the monthly metrics is highly misleading and is like day trading in the stock market and using it as an indicator for long-term growth. It simply won’t work.
I believe that we are going to see continued growth in this space for the next 12- to 24-months and social networks transform into social platforms and OpenSocial attempts to make a significant impact in the industry. If we see growth continue to slow over the next couple months I would begin to get concerned. For now it’s a minor blip.
Update
I’ve received the following statement from Facebook:
“The number of users for Facebook continues to climb in the UK. Our internal monthly active user numbers rose between December and January in the UK and are now at more than 8.3 million. Facebook tracks active monthly users, rather than registered user or unique visitors. Active users reflect those who have used the site in the past 30 days.”
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Hi Nick. I saw your post title and my first thought was that you meant that the UK doesn't matter. Just thought I'd let you know.In terms of useage, I am based in the UK and the people I 'network' with certainly seem to be spending less time on Facebook.Your post is very bullish, that's fair enough, but objectively, I'd like to ride the stats for a couple of months to see the trend.
Comment by Craig Killick — February 21, 2008 @ 12:10 pm
It is seasonal. Though I think the rapid growth has saturated here and people are getting a little peeved at application spam
Comment by Wills — February 21, 2008 @ 12:21 pm
Hi Nick. I saw your post title and my first thought was that you meant that the UK doesn't matter. Just thought I'd let you know.
In terms of useage, I am based in the UK and the people I 'network' with certainly seem to be spending less time on Facebook.
Your post is very bullish, that's fair enough, but objectively, I'd like to ride the stats for a couple of months to see the trend.
Comment by Craig Killick — February 21, 2008 @ 1:10 pm
It is seasonal. Though I think the rapid growth has saturated here and people are getting a little peeved at application spam
Comment by Wills — February 21, 2008 @ 4:21 pm
Willis, it looks like Facebook is responding to such problems quickly. It announced last week that it won't allow apps to hold quiz results (etc) hostage until users spam their friends with invites. From the Facebook developers blog:"Additionally, it is misleading to entice an investment of effort or promise a result and then — without warning — hold expected content hostage behind an invitation ransom; this is now expressly prohibited."http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&…..
Comment by Mary Specht — February 22, 2008 @ 5:57 am
The numbers Nielsen have published are for Dec-to-Jan – and correlate nicely with the Facebook social ad numbers which their system outputs. If you look at the same numbers for Jan-to-Feb, they showed an increase of 13%, much more than enough to make up for this seasonal drop.
Comment by Henry Elliss — February 22, 2008 @ 6:50 am
Willis, it looks like Facebook is responding to such problems quickly. It announced last week that it won't allow apps to hold quiz results (etc) hostage until users spam their friends with invites.
From the Facebook developers blog:
"Additionally, it is misleading to entice an investment of effort or promise a result and then — without warning — hold expected content hostage behind an invitation ransom; this is now expressly prohibited."
http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&am...
Comment by Mary Specht — February 22, 2008 @ 6:57 am
Realistically all markets undergo short term ups & downs. A real trend requires a longer time. By the way, anyone know what happened to UniVillage which was student only site set up for UK initially in 06 ?
Comment by Maggy Young — February 22, 2008 @ 7:35 am
Realistically all markets undergo short term ups & downs. A real trend requires a longer time.
By the way, anyone know what happened to UniVillage which was student only site set up for UK initially in 06 ?
Comment by Maggy Young — February 22, 2008 @ 8:35 am
The numbers Nielsen have published are for Dec-to-Jan – and correlate nicely with the Facebook social ad numbers which their system outputs. If you look at the same numbers for Jan-to-Feb, they showed an increase of 13%, much more than enough to make up for this seasonal drop.
Comment by Henry Elliss — February 22, 2008 @ 10:50 am
[...] current coverage of Facebook. Brian Groom of the Financial Times reported on information that we posted last week. I’m not sure why this news was recirculated again yesterday but there was coverage [...]
Pingback by Facebook Lives to See Another Day! - The Unofficial Facebook Blog — February 26, 2008 @ 9:00 am
Another downturn… NMA – Facebook's UK unique user numbers have dropped for a second month in a row. The fall to 8.3m unique users in February from December's 8.9m puts an end to the social network's rocketing success.
http://www.nma.co.uk/Logon/ResourceBarrier.aspx?R...
Comment by Craig Killick — March 19, 2008 @ 9:36 pm
Another downturn… NMA – Facebook's UK unique user numbers have dropped for a second month in a row. The fall to 8.3m unique users in February from December's 8.9m puts an end to the social network's rocketing success.<a href="http://www.nma.co.uk/Logon/ResourceBarrier.aspx?RequiredServices=17%2C%7C&PipelinedPage=/Articles/37291/+Facebook%27s+rise+over+as+user+numbers+drop+again.html&PipelinedQueryString=liArticleID%253d37291"> <a href="http://;http://www.nma.co.uk/Logon/ResourceBarrier.aspx…” target=”_blank”>;http://www.nma.co.uk/Logon/ResourceBarrier.aspx…
Comment by Craig Killick — March 19, 2008 @ 9:36 pm
[...] All the numbers on the web via Compete, Alexa, comScore and others pointed to slowing growth. I argued that it was just a seasonal things and that things would be back on the rise. Well, Facebook [...]
Pingback by Is Facebook's Growth Slowing? Hell No! - The Unofficial Facebook Blog — April 10, 2008 @ 4:00 pm