We’ve been talking about the decline of Facebook for a while now, and it seems we’re not the only ones, as a new study of how teenagers use social media has determined that young users see Facebook as ‘dead and buried’.
Whereas once parents feared their children joining Facebook, the tables have turned as parents are using it to keep connected with families, whilst the younger users are moving onto cooler things.
“What appears to be the most seminal moment in a young person’s decision to leave Facebook was surely that dreaded day your mum sends you a friend request.”
Of course this may be good news for Facebook considering the way they have been going lately, since the older generations who are now using Facebook are the ones with the disposable income for their ‘targeted’ marketing.
Meanwhile Snapchat, an image sharing app which allows users to send images which delete themselves after a short period, continues its exponential growth with over 400 million images sent every day, and recently turning down a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook. Co-founder Evan Spiegel told the Telegraph that he believes “deleting should be the default”, and we definitely agree in terms of maintaining privacy.
WhatsApp, a messaging app for smart phones, has also seen growth, overtaking Facebook as the number one way to send messages.
Facebook is now moving towards a ‘family’ orientated use, with teenagers using it as a way to keep in touch with older members of their family, or siblings who have left for university; as well as older generations using it to keep in touch with family members. This has moved completely away from Facebook’s early days, which was developed focusing on being a social network for young users at University.
So now you should expect to see a decline in both the numbers of users of Facebook, and ultimately the revenues generated from Facebook. This may take a few months to filter through, and it does give Facebook the opportunity to evolve, but in its current format Facebook is essentially dead in the water.
Perhaps 2014 will become the year when people realise that ‘social’ media is not a sales platform for business, but something that people use to be ‘social’!
