Social networks’ numbers dropping, cue widespread panic
- February 25th, 2008
- 5 Comments
Social networks are cashed.
The Hollywood Reporter published numbers today showing the gravity-defying growth numbers of social networks are over. Both MySpace and Facebook aren’t seeing the same numbers they saw last year, with MySpace hit especially hard. The NewsCorp-owned site had 2.4 percent less visitors in January than it did in December (though the site is still up overall by 8 percent since January 2007). Facebook gained only 6.2 percent since November. That’s problematic because people are used to double digit growth from month to month.
Reasons as to why the numbers aren’t as impressive—everyone who would have signed up for the sites already has (hence low growth), people have newfound privacy concerns, or people are just tired of drawing obscene things on each other’s wall. I know kids here at school are all about Facebook, but you sorta get the feeling that people don’t spend all night on the site anymore. That’s just based on my personal experience and isn’t based on any sort of science at all.
Growth cools at social networks [Hollywood Reporter]
darthbith (Who am I?)
7 months ago
It seems to me that the novelty has worn off these sites. As a freshman 3 years ago, I spent hours and hours looking at my friends profiles, etc. to the exclusion of doing homework. Now, its all old hat. I see all my close friends almost daily, so I don’t need Facebook to update me on how all my friends are doing, and (somewhat sadly) I’ve grown more apart from my friends back home, so I don’t spend nearly as much time surfing their profiles as I did just after graduating high school.
Again, just empirical evidence from one experience, but it seems reasonable (to me :-D)
Nicholas Deleon (Who am I?)
7 months ago
Exactly. When I was a freshman here in 2004 all the way through my sophomore year, it really did seem like the only thing kids did was screw around on Facebook, either in the dorms or on their laptops in class. Now I’m more likely to see a kid browsing ESPN.com rather than some random (or otherwise) person’s profile. I wonder if opening the site up to everyone (rather than exclusively college kids) and adding all those silly programs caused it to loose some of its luster.
Jeff
7 months ago
I deleted my facebook a while ago when you guys posted something about facebook and how evil it was… since then i’ve gone outside, saw the sun again, saw real faces not pixels, and realized that even tho I had more “friends” on facebook, I am way cooler without that damn thing.
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Travis (Who am I?)
7 months ago
Yeah - they need to innovate or die. Myspace was a fun waste of time at first but is not even good for that anymore. Why visit a site if none of your friends do? I know people who have not logged onto Myspace since January of 2007 - that cannot be helping them out. Even kids like my 16 year old niece think Myspace, Facebook, etc. are all “full of old perverts looking for young girls to rape” and stay away now a days.
Samantha (Who am I?)
5 months ago
These places are havens for perverts looking for cyber sex. I recently started an account on livejournal, which I have found to be much more “safe” than myspace, etc etc. Skype: HAVEN FOR PERVERTS. Every other question you get (if you are a female, anyway…) is “Hey, you want cyber?” or “Hey, you gotta cam?” There are nice people on there, it just takes a looooong tiem to find them. =P