Facebook: new times
The number of Facebook users continues to grow, and has just passed the 1.3 billion mark. At the same time, it is clear that the company has a problem with its demographic base, which for some time now has been getting older: young people are leaving the social network in droves.
A study by Piper Jaffray, Taking stock with teens — Fall 2014, shows that the percentage of Facebook users aged between 13 and 19 has fallen from 72% to 45% over the last six months.
Clearly, Facebook has a serious problem in attracting young people, and has gone from HOT to NOT in a matter of months, a cooling off that would have been even more dramatic had the company not bought WhatsApp and Instagram. Why? Because these two apps are pretty much instantaneous, and not seen as some kind of repository where information about what you did when you were a kid is stored for eternity, complete with cute comments from your mum and dad… and grandparents. Over the last six months, use of Instagram has risen sharply, while Snapchat, the ultimate in disposable messaging, is pretty much the norm.
These “new”apps share a number of interesting characteristics: either they have no advertising and promised to continue like this, as is the case with WhatsApp, or they have developed new and interesting advertising models, where brands try to publish content to attract users, rather than hassling them all the time. The power equation has changed completely: users can now block brands if they are too pervasive, equally, they can choose to follow them if their content is appealing, in the process opening a permanent channel through which to communicate, and which in all probability, they will use sparingly.
I can think of any number of brands that will have problems adapting to these kind of communication channels; we are clearly entering a new age, one that may well make more sense, and that will see a redefinition of Facebook.
Below, the text in full:
Facebook: new times
A new study about the online habits of US adolescents confirms the rapid decline in numbers of young people using Facebook: since spring, the figure has fallen from 72% to 45 percent, meaning that less than half of the social network’s users are in their teens.
The writing is on the wall: the world’s most popular social network site, with more than 1.3 billion users, is losing its younger members, a trend that could well bring into question Facebook’s longer-term viability.
The company cannot ignore the problem, and some of its recent acquisitions seemed aimed at trying to capture a younger market via fast-growing players like Instagram, for instance, where 75 percent of users are in their teens, or WhatsApp, leader in the increasingly popular instant messaging segment, and which Facebook spent 22 billion dollars on.
Young people seem to be tiring of leaving their mark: regarding Facebook, the words of baseball legend Yogi Berra come to mind: “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded. The appeal of instant messaging is precisely that you say something to somebody, and then you listen to what they have to say, rather than wondering what a bunch of other people are going to say about it when they see it on your wall.
This is a highly important trend in many ways: holding young people’s attention monopolized by a medium that has sworn never to introduce advertising. Times change.
(En español, aquí)
