Where Are Teens Going Instead Of Facebook?

A timer-based photo messenger is giving stiff competition to Facebook.

We have seen plenty of social networking services rise, bask in glory and fade away. Friendster, Orkut, MySpace are only a few names from that list. But the one website which has reigned for the longest time, as we all know, is Facebook.

It went viral a short time after its debut way back in 2004, and the fever has been on ever since. It created quite a stir. And I’m not surprised that it’s finally waning away, among young folks at least!

Facebook’s decline amongst the youth has been in the news for quite some time now. Facebook CFO David Ebersman has not held his silence over this decline in usage.

“Youth usage among U.S. teens was stable overall from Q2 to Q3, but we did see a decrease in daily users partly among younger teens”, Ebersman said.

Ebersman’s definition of “younger teens” is unclear, as Facebook hasn’t disclosed it’s current user-categorization in terms of age group. But the CFO’s concern does tell us about the challenge Facebook is facing in retaining the attention of young consumers who are now heading towards other social sites/applications like Snapchat, Twitter, Whatsapp, Tumblr and even its own Instagram.

Let’s get familiar with one of the alleged ‘Facebook Killer’ apps: Snapchat, the bang up-to-date social portal teens have gotten their hands on.

Snapchat is a photo messaging application developed by Stanford University students. Using the app, users can take photos, record videos, add text and drawings, and send them to a controlled list of recipients. They can even add captions to their pictures. These sent photographs and videos are known as Snaps or Selfies.

Users set a time limit for how long recipients can view their Snaps, after which they will be hidden from the recipient’s device and deleted from Snapchat’s servers.

This timer-based photo messenger is doing particularly well and giving stiff competition to Facebook as it provides a platform to it’s users to share pictures among one another with astonishing ease and a fresh concept.

Mr. Zuckerberg very recently tried to acquire it (and failed) for a whopping USD 3 billion. What more is there to say?

It’s a very exciting prospect for the youth as they’ve found a medium to share exactly what they are doing which apparently is much more appealing than old-fashioned text/emoticon messaging. Actions speak louder than words, they say.

Hence proved.

The Nation’s Restaurant News, a trade publication reported that restaurant customers are increasingly shifting their attention to other social media platforms. “Location and mobile oriented platforms such as Vine, dominated by smartphone users, are starting to nose into the territory once held by social media powerhouses Facebook and Twitter.”

Maybe Facebook has become too populated for it to retain its charm? Teens are demanding more privacy and with their whole family on the Facebook network now, they need to think twice before uploading any photos or status messages. Parents keeping tabs on their kids through FB, isn’t unheard of. If not for anything else, teens are running away from cyber adult supervision.

Facebook’s privacy preferences have also had many loopholes in the past, which has caused much distress among the users. Mobile apps and check-in sites like Foursquare are further eating away at Facebook’s community.

People, the youth in particular, are restive and want change, something new to keep their lives interesting. With the above mentioned networking hubs that have come into existence, it naturally gets a little difficult for Facebook to keep up with all the fresh concepts taken up by its rivals, but it will be interesting to witness renewed tactics (if any) which the multi-billion dollar worth social enterprise might come up with.

Looks like it’s time for some brainstorming back in Menlo Park, California.

Originally published at Chip-Monks.