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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Dougherty - North America
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Facebook traffic declines – much ado about nothing?
February 25, 2008
Maybe it’s the zombies or the poking, but there has been a decline in the market share of visits for Facebook. The website has experienced considerable growth over the past 24 months and the market share of visits has recently reached the highest points to date over the Christmas holidays (the week ending Dec. 29, 2007). However, for the week ending Feb 23, 2008, the market share of visits was down 27% from the peak.
To some extent, this may be a seasonal trend related to the school year, since traffic increased during both Thanksgiving & Winter breaks to the levels similar to summer months. While the user base has shifted somewhat toward older demographics, there is still a significant share of traffic between the ages of 18 to 24 (40-41% for each week in 2008) that would make the traffic patterns somewhat susceptible to college schedules.
Users are continuing to increase the amount of time being spent on Facebook. The average visit time has increased steadily over the past 24 months, reaching 21 minutes and 22 seconds for the week ending Feb 23, 2008. This is increase of 73% from the same week last year. One interesting point to note is that during recent peaks in traffic, the average visit time decreases, evidence that these spikes are being driven by less active users of Facebook.
Some of the downturn may be attributed to fatigue based upon excessive activity (e.g. application invites) and privacy concerns, although that is clearly not the case across the entire user base. In fact, many use Facebook as the platform to voice their concerns over these types of issues. Beyond school year patterns, the current decline could just be driven by those who signed up out of curiosity or insistence from friends who are accessing the website with less frequency.
Posted by Heather Dougherty at 03:57 PM
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- Facebook traffic declines – much ado about nothing? (Research News Jul 2007- Feb 2008)
Maybe it’s the zombies or the poking, but there has been a decline in the market share of visits for Facebook. The website has experienced considerable growth over the past 24 months and the market share of visits has recently... [Read More] - SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 26, 2008 (Search Engine Land: News About Search Engines & Search Marketing)
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.... [Read More]
Comments
my impression is that the management always had the wrong philosophy. They got big through smamming ?, and now the lemmings are seeing what he had planned. i think you can search a name for facebook through google ? I figure a lot of lemmings will stay. A lot of people leave their homes unlocked. But I'm guessing some were put off by finally realising what the tactics were, but overall I expect some just to get tired of these sites. If someone gets it more right, I expect people to keep jumping there.
Posted by Jeff H | February 25, 2008 08:04 PM
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Heather- I feel as though most popular social networking sites Facebook is at (or was at in December) the peak of its growth cycle. Facebook is cannobalizing itself with the 3rd party open source applications and veering far from its roots... a place to keep in touch. The beauty of Web 2.0 are the big fonts, simplicity of use, and migration away from ugly websites. Facebook took a big step back with its ad platform.
From a business perspective, it reported $150 million in revenues. I think this showed investors and industry elites how grossly overvalued Facebook is. If it doesn't clean up its site and create an efficient e-commerce aspect it will be toast very soon. Like I said they are at the peak of their growth cycle, and it's downhill from here unless they can reinvent the site.
Posted by Krishnan | February 25, 2008 05:57 PM