Social media experts skeptical of Facebook decline

Following a statistical report this month that Facebook is on the decline in North America, social media experts say the news is over-blown. In a June report, Facebook tracking site Inside Facebook said the social network lost 1.52 million subscribers in Canada in May, dropping from 18.1 million to 16.6 million. The information was derived from Facebook’s ad tool, an application designed to enable advertisers to analyse Facebook membership numbers and help them target ads at age groups, locations, or other niches. In the U.S., Facebook lost six million users, falling from 155.2 million to 149.4 million in May, Inside Facebook, a site owned by U.S. research firm Inside Network, reported. The firm said it has noticed a trend in which subscriber growth halts at the point when 50 per cent of the population of an area is using Facebook. News reports based on the Inside Facebook data highlighted declining membership numbers, but social-media observers say there’s more to the story. “We live in an age when we have so much access to information that it’s more important that we’re correctly interpreting the data and not just making broad generalizations without really understanding what the numbers mean,” Alexander Bunkowski, online media specialist with media agency DSA Media in Langley, B.C., said in an interview. In a DSA Media blog post, Bunkowski pointed out that Inside Facebook included a number of caveats in its measurements, noting that Facebook’s ad tool has “bugs” that affect accuracy. He added that for about a year the Canadian Facebook membership numbers have fluctuated between 16 million and 18 million and that it’s too soon to suggest the May slump is anything more than cyclical. “Facebook is an easy target and has generated a lot of backlash on privacy and security issues in the past; news sources know it makes a great headline,” Bunkowski wrote. “However, these articles are entirely based on a single report based on numbers generated by a self-serve advertising platform that is known to be a broad estimate at best.” In a statement provided by its Canadian public relations firm, High Road Communications, Facebook told The Wire Report that its subscriber base is healthy. “The Inside Facebook report that suggested that there was a usage decline in Canada was false. From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions. Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn’t designed to be a source for tracking the overall growth of Facebook,” Kelly Ornelas, a spokeswoman for High Road, said by email. “We are very pleased with our growth and with the way people are engaged with Facebook. More than 50 per cent of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day, and we still have a happy and active 15-plus million Canadians on Facebook.” Neports last week said Facebook has now reached 750 million members worldwide. Duncan Stewart, director of research for technology, media and telecom at Deloitte Canada, said via email that he is skeptical of Inside Facebook’s numbers. “I think they are wrong. They took a single data point and extrapolated it,” Stewart wrote. “I meet literally thousands of Canadians per month. Although I always get some people talking about how they don’t use Facebook any more, those numbers are dropping over the last year, and the number who say they are finally joining after holding out is rising.” Bunkowski wrote that ComScore Inc.’s numbers also paint a different picture. ComScore says Facebook’s reach in Canada has grown every month since May 2009, reaching 21.1 million users in May 2011, or 84 per cent of the estimated online population. That would include non-registered users viewing fan pages and pictures housed on Facebook pages. Inside Facebook didn’t respond to a request for comment. But following its original article, the company wrote a follow-up post saying that different web-measurement companies use different methodologies, which could explain why it saw a decline and others didn’t. The organization also defended its data collection through the ad tool. “Facebook is clarifying to media outlets that data from ad tool isn’t intended for measuring traffic. To be sure. We use it anyway because it seems to be the most specific, and directionally accurate, despite the questions.” On its website, Facebook says the ad tool is limited: “Please keep in mind that this is an estimate of the potential audience for your ads on Facebook and is not exact.” Ian Capstick, founder of Ottawa media consultancy MediaStyle, said it’s too soon to say whether Facebook is waning. “We’re looking at just one study,” he said in an interview. “But if we start to broadly see a trend in the reports over the next several months, it could be concerning for Facebook, and they’ll have to address it.” Facebook is facing retention and usage issues, he added. The site “has had a consistent problem keeping their users on board, because of erratic interface changes. The user experience is substantially if not wholly different than it was three years ago.” User demographics are also shifting. Young people who joined Facebook a few years ago have graduated from college and university and they’re in the workforce now, he pointed out. “Do you really want your profile from college or university following you around in your mid-30s?” Capstick said, noting that people may abandon their profiles to distance themselves from their pre-workforce lives. Facebook did not address those comments. “There really isn’t much more for us to comment on as we still have a happy and active 15-plus million Canadians on Facebook,” Ornelas wrote. Although Facebook can play an important role in the media strategies that Capstick’s firm puts together for clients, if the site is in decline, it wouldn’t have a substantial impact, he said. “People aren’t abandoning the Internet,” he said. “Facebook is just one medium. It would be irresponsible if I told any of my clients to communicate exclusively with their membership using only one medium.” news@thewirereport.ca

Social media experts skeptical of Facebook decline

Broadcast | June 28, 2011

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