Are U.K. Users Burning Out on Social Networking?
According to yesterday's article in the Guardian, the three largest social networks in the U.K., MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo, all experienced large drops in membership between December, 2007 and January, 2008. Is this one month of falling numbers a fluke or have the networks reached a plateau? Says, Alex Burmaster, Nielsen Online analyst, "One month of falling audiences doesn't spell the decline of Facebook or social networking. However, most of the leading social networks are less popular in the U.K. than they were a year ago."
Losses By the Numbers
According to the article, Facebook saw a 5% drop between December, 2007 and January, 2008, but still had 8.5 million users in January. This keeps Facebook in the number one position as the most popular social network in the U.K. However, after 17 straight months of growth, this drop of 400,000 users, is the first on record for Facebook in the U.K.
MySpace also lost 5% drop in traffic between December and January. They are still the number two social network in the U.K. with 5 million unique users.
Bebo only saw a 2% drop, and ranked third with a total of 4.1 million users.
Growth Rates at an End?
These drops in growth, if anything, point to the fact that the massive growth rates the networks were experiencing could not be maintained indefinitely. For example, Facebook's audience is 712% bigger than it was in January of 2007 and Bebo saw a 53% increase in the same period. I would argue that these numbers point to the networks being more popular, not less, than they were a year ago, so I'm not sure what Burmaster meant in that earlier statement unless he was solely referring to growth rates.
However, Facebook and Bebo's growth may have come from MySpace's loss. The News Corp. giant actually saw its number of unique users fall by 9% since January, 2007. Says Burmaster, "Growth among the big players looks to be more about getting people from their competitors, not attracting new people to social networking."
Does these findings foretell a saturation point for social networks? Or are the networks just not that cool anymore now that everyone uses them? In a BBC News article on the subject, Nic Howell, deputy editor of industry magazine New Media Age claimed, "Social networking is as much about who isn't on the site as who is - when Tory MPs and major corporations start profiles on Facebook, its brand is devalued, driving its core user base into the arms of newer and more credible alternatives."
Interestingly enough, the exodus from the larger networks may have had an impact on some of the smaller networking sites that grew during the month of January. Less trafficked social networking sites like Windows Live Spaces, which just launched a refreshed version with some Facebook-like features, saw a rise in number of users at this same time. Other U.K.-oriented sites like BBC Communities and Friends Reunited also saw growth in January.
Update: A Facebook spokesperson contacted me this afternoon with the following: "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."
In other words, "you're measuring the wrong thing."
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As one of the 400,000 UK drop outs I can say that my reasons for not bothering with Facebook since approx December are mainly down to the infinite number of application requests et al that plagued me every time I logged in.. that and the fact that a lot of people fall prey to those applications and their profile pages end up looking like a mile of toilet roll with random scribbles on it!
Posted by: Mark Hutton | February 22, 2008 8:44 AM
I think it's interesting that more simplified networks are gaining users while the networks that have spread themselves thin with features and applications (myspace, facebook) are losing users. Maybe these sites should take note of this.
I for one like linkedIn and simple communities, I still have a facebook account, but I definitely haven't been on in months.
Posted by: Henry | February 22, 2008 9:49 AM
Yet another reason for that decline could be that many people came to these networks to see what this is all about. At some point there was a hype around them and everyone was coming there to see that with their own eyes. I registered an account on Facebook for that reason. I visited it a couple of times after that but realised that it's not the type of application I'm interested personally. So now I know what Facebook is about and don't have any other reasons to visit it again. If for example they add some major new feature and everyone begins to talk about that I'll visit Facebook again. Maybe I'll like it and stay. Or maybe this will happen again - I'll check it out and then leave.
It's similar to free online games. Some people stay for long but others come and then leave after a couple of days. For social networks this period of time that people need to find out if they like it seems to be a little longer.
And there could be yet another reason. For example someone heard that you can find such and such people on Facebook or some other network. He came and actually found those people he was interested in. But after that he realized that Facebook is not the most convenient way to communicate with them. So he uses email, IM or good old phone or meets them in person - and therefore doesn't visit the website where he met them.
I think there could be a couple of new waves of newcomers as the potential audience of those networks grows - for example older people after some period of time somehow realize that it's funny - or the networks go international and people outside english-speaking world begin to rush in - and we could see similar little declines after those waves.
Posted by: alibloomdido | February 22, 2008 11:18 AM
I might be true that with the advent of distributed social networks (DiSo, OpenID, DataPortability etc.) the all-in-one communities like Facebook and MySpace may experience decreasing user numbers.
Once DiSo really works (and not only for early adopters and geeks) more people will eventually move from a MySpace profile + MySpace blog (ugh) model to a "DiSo-linked identity profile" ("DSLIP" :) of Wordpress blog + last.fm music identity + del.ico.us bookmarks + Twitter stream + some other profiles on niche communitiy sites.
Or it's just Web 2.0 fatigue after all.
Posted by: Fabian | February 22, 2008 11:22 AM
We can judge the popularity of these sites by seeing their ranking in http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?url=www.fortunehotels.in Alexa. Orkut has been steadily rising on the Alexa charts but MySpace is still significantly bigger than Orkut.com.
Posted by: MySpace vs Orkut | February 23, 2008 1:32 AM
I never thought FaceBook or MySpace would catch on in any big way. They seemed like short-lived fads that didn't offer much over email and the phone but did have the potential for causing one a great deal more hassle.
Posted by: SocialNutWorks | February 23, 2008 10:54 PM
Social networks may be peaking but I still think the concept has a future. As with so much new technologies it needs to slowly work out its uses. People will find that the way social networks deal with networking. Making and cultivating contacts through social networks seems a whole new way of using peoples assets without really knowing them. Anyway I blogged about this in detail You can read that post here. Looking forward to your rections there!
http://www.onepostperday.com/?p=224
Posted by: Henk | February 27, 2008 4:25 AM