For the first time in nearly 18 months, Facebook’s UK userbase fell by 5%, from 8.9million to 8.5million users in January.
Ok, so that’s hardly the end of the world, but could it be a sign that social networking may not be the future of the web, as was first thought? Similar trends have been observed among UK users with both MySpace and Bebo this year.
The loss of 400,000 users in a single month for Facebook gives an early indication of a potential plateau, although I wouldn’t jump the gun before measuring the data over a longer time period. It could just be a temporary blip, but then again…
The advertising industry (which includes internet marketing) have been rather slow to catch on and take advantage of social networking platforms as a marketing and branding tool. Whilst they are doubtlessly still one of the most powerful online marketing mechanisms if used correctly, could advertisers have missed the boat on the peak of the social networking era?
It’s hard for me to think of social networking as a fad, but it could well be that the mass acquisition of users to general networks like FaceBook and MySpace, was always going to represent an early golden period that might not be replicated for some time to come.