audio blog - podcast

25 February 2008

Face it, Facebook

There has been a buzz on the Net last week about Facebook losing 400000 UK visitors from December 2007 to January 2008. This is last month we are talking about. So, is there a general loss of interest in that service or is there something new around the corner that only Brits know about and won't tell the rest?

As for me personally, this reminds me of how the stock exchange works. Remember that just few months ago Yahoo was about to pay 1 billion US dollars for Facebook? Remember Microsoft evaluating Facebook at 15 billion dollars? So, what does this mean? Will Facebook slide down?

Well, we have the official data from Nielsen Online that reflect that 5 percent of site visitors who did not bother coming back to the site this month. What went wrong there? Do I smell another case of MySpace social network decline? is it the overload of applications within the program or a simple fact that people get bored sooner or later? Will other countries' statistics reflect the UK ex-Facebookers behavior? Is Facebook doomed do fail now? Is there a life on Mars? So many questions... What do you think?

What rings my red lamp, and I may be wrong, is the following additional info from Nielsen:

Nielsen Online only measures website traffic based on a panel of UK users at home and work - it does not cover usage in schools, universities and internet cafes, meaning that younger internet users are under-reported.

The explanation for lower number for Facebook can indeed be hidden behind the omitting the statistics about the company's biggest share of users. We are still to see. As I said, how about that life on Mars?

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