Lots of young people decide Facebook isn't cool

[tedster]

Lots of young people have decided Facebook isn't cool anymore, and they're abandoning it in droves.

And because young people are often a leading indicator of what mass market consumers will eventually do (they fueled the early growth of Facebook, for example), Facebook investors should take note...

One of the services kids are flocking to at Facebook's expense is the new mobile photo network Instagram... And Facebook owns Instagram.

[businessinsider.com...]

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Could this be related?

Facebook shares drop 10%, trip NASDAQ 'circuit breaker'

[theregister.co.uk...]

[Digmen1]

I don't think the share price has anything to do with the number of users or whether advertisers will use it.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Really? What price their shares tomorrow if 50% of their users desert them today?

[Leosghost]

Interesting, The doubleclick ad ( from Google ) on that page at el reg tried to "push" me at page load..I have them blocked on that site, because their image ads there jump around too much..

[edited by: Leosghost at 7:51 am (utc) on Sep 25, 2012]

[Digmen1]

Their shares are only dropping because the original buyers realised that they paid to much in relation to the advertising
income.

[Leosghost]

Their shares are dropping because investors ( both those who bought shares at the IPO and those who didn't )have realised that those who bought in at IPO were scammed..

[Digmen1]

I would say that the "investors" who bought in at the IPO were idiots who did not study Facebook.

Even I knew they were not making any money.

[Leosghost]

I recommend to you the comment on el reg from h4rm0ny..here is an extract..the rest is worth reading too..

If you follow the share price, your accusation of deliberate manipulation can work. Each disastrous slide in Facebook shares is precipitated by a short-term building up. It has all the hallmarks of big players trying to do a controlled exit from stock ownership. Build it up artificially and thus stimulate enough interest that people will buy your shares and try to slightly offset your losses with shortselling

Particularly this..

Facebook still has a P/E ratio of over 70 which is ridiculously high.

Also the comments there from amanfromMars 1..

Just so you'll know where your savings and pension went when they disappear again in another "unforseeable" crash, and we ( the little people ) are told to tighten our belts again..

[rasputinsghost]

If its too good to be true........
The Facebook phenomena arrived on the scene and male students got into it to see which of the chicks on campus would put out.
Those students are now parents and are shielding their kids from it (I wonder why - thats another subject)
Every generation of kids will want their own "must have, cool thing" and someone will give it to them.
We have already had one "next generation" thing go down - that was IMHO Twitter.
However, Twitter is as far as I can see, a little bit more "sophisticated" in that its normally more like a news flash.
Most twits are tweeting about stuff that is a little more towards the informative and serious side.
Most faces (is that what you call a facebook entry?) are about their dogs latest "number two" or the number of bubbles in the current latte.
Or just plain pumping their businesses under the guise of being "important" to you.
When you analyze what they are and what they do, they are blogs, plain and simple.
Yes, Facebook has bells and whistles out the yazoo but take the frills, hype and cr@p out and you are left with a blog.
Twitter is effectively also a blog that took a "shrink" pill. Seriously? 140 characters - sheer genius - initially the challenge was how to make a statement or tell a story in 140 characters - It has spawned a new variation of the english language LOL
Am I jealous? Yes - of course I am - Wish I had thought of it.
Whats next?
If I knew, I would definitely not be talking about it on a forum.

In the meantime, get rid of any "social media" stocks and shares - they are going to become dangerous for one simple reason:
The internet as used by private individuals is moving off the desktop pc's and laptops and on to mobile devices like cell phones.

This has 2 implications:
1) Ads use bandwidth and mobile bandwidth is expensive - the browser on my wife's new phone came with an ad-blocker installed and activated - out of the box.
2) People will quickly figure out which sites are "expensive" to visit and will simply not go there.

That breaks a huge hole in the revenue models for sites like facebook and twitter.
And Google Adsense - but that is a different forum.

[Digmen1]

Yes, its all the pop ups and the pop unders that I don't like.
I don't mind looking at Banner ads etc.

The problem will get worse as more people find out about Ad Blockers.

[Leosghost]

Although my mobile phone deal(s) gives me unlimited bandwidth and unlimited calling to a whole slew of countries ( both to mobile and landlines )..( my landline(s) deals do the same :)) I tend to agree, because most countries and telcos don't do those deals..

Agree with all of rasputinsghost's post ( and your other ones since joining :)..and would like to extend a belated "phantomly" welcome to WebmasterWorld rasputinsghost..:)

[edited by: Leosghost at 10:16 am (utc) on Sep 25, 2012]

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

This has 2 implications:
1) Ads use bandwidth and mobile bandwidth is expensive - the browser on my wife's new phone came with an ad-blocker installed and activated - out of the box.
2) People will quickly figure out which sites are "expensive" to visit and will simply not go there.

Expensive? I pay £10.50 per month for an Android phone on a contract with 100 minutes and 500Mb of data, more than enough for my requirements (being sat beside a land line and at a PC most of the day).

I think most young people are happy to pay large contract fees for what has become a necessity for them. I know some who pay £40 or more per month to feed their habit.

I would question what you say because in my experience Facebook usage exploded a couple of years ago with the use of phones for Internet access. I see lots of people in my circle using it who still don't use a PC or a laptop and who would not know how to turn one on. It is all done on their phones. ;)

[Digmen1]

And in many countries in Africa and Asia most people will have a mobile phone, and will probably never get a laptop or a desktop.

[Digmen1]

Here some interesting data for Facebook unusers.

[blog.hubspot.com...]

[Leosghost]

You mean that over half of people only like "brands that give them stuff for free" :) and that the top 3 ways for a "brand to be liked more" are, in order of importance ..
1)"the brand should do more giveaways" ;)
2)"the brand should post less" ;)
3)"the brand should let people hide that they like the brand"..;)

You know that infographic, doesn't show what you think it shows..:)

Giveaways on a $5.00 item..? that is not going to end well..especially if the "brand" has to pay to be in front of the "users"..economics and ROI 101..

[mack]

It was the young people that made FB what it was. Not those people are at the age where they can be customers. I think FB has reached pretty close to its saturation, its not a bad thing that they now have a slightly more "mature" user base.

Mack.

[Digmen1]

I think I will "Like" Ferrari, I need a new one.

Yes I can't give away my $5.00 items, but I do run competitions to create a bit of interest.

[alvin123]

I can't believe there are so many intellegent people on this forum that don't have a clue, although, I understand why webmasters don't like Facebook.

Just bought more shares today @ 20.

Tedster...piling on. LOL

[ZydoSEO]

I agree 100% with Martinibuster's observersations... However, the following almost made me spit my coffee out:

For Facebook haters, accept the reality that Facebook is nowthe booming network in in social media as well as effective too in online marketing world.

Really? You think it is effective? Have you read Forrester's new report that was just released on ecommerce and social?

Less than 1% of all online transactions are influenced in any way by Social Media. Search, PPC, Display, Email, and all of the other traditional online marketing channels influence pretty much 100% of sales online. Social only "assists" in less than 1% of transactions online, and it's rare that social alone ever converts unless it is some FB or Twitter exclusive promo where the company is practically giving there product away at cost exclusively to their friends/fans/follwers. FB "Likes" and company pages in general rarely convert to real sales...

Even their PPC platform has dreadful conversion rates for most companies. It's passive (not targeted) advertising. Yes, you can target to show your ads to users based on demographics fairly well because of all of the profile info they have at their disposal...

However, people are not there looking for products (like they are at search engines), so the traffic generated through their PPC is generally not really "targeted" traffic. People are there to BS with their friends, not because they are looking for some product to buy.

FB ads only get any significant click-thrus the first couple of days that they are new and then their clicks go to nothing... FB recognizes this as a HUGE problem for them internally. They even have a name for it inside of FB... "ad fatigue". Once people have seen an ad a few times, they subliminally block it out and never notice/click on it again.

FB is actually using a friend of mine's product (originally an AdWords ad writing contest platform with a network of ad writers) to attempt to address this. They use my friends network of ad writers to constantly generate new ads for client PPC campaigns every 2-4 days in an attempt to lift click-thrus when the ads become fatigued.

But that is a LOT of work compared to optimizing an AdWords ad once and letting it ride almost indefinitely, and getting very targeted traffic from Google... people that are actually searching for that product/service that you are selling.

Personally, I think FB (and social media in general) as a marketing tool is very ineffective for online marketing. The time and effort required to generate a true sale using social is exponentially greater than that of most other marketing channels. FB and other social sites might be a way to try to help build a brand or better yet, protect one that already exists by using it for reputation management. But for generating conversions/sales, not so "effective" IMO.

All that being said, I do find it VERY useful for reconnecting w/ my friends from high school and college, previous jobs, etc.

[StoutFiles]

I can't believe there are so many intellegent people on this forum that don't have a clue, although, I understand why webmasters don't like Facebook.

Just bought more shares today @ 20.

They could have everyone on the planet using it, but if they can't generate sales with it then it's useless. People go to Facebook to stalk, post photos, brag, and chat. They aren't there looking for something, preferably something to buy, like a Google user.

The stock still has a way to fall.

[alvin123]

The stock has strong support at 20, if it closes below the 60 minute, 200 moving average ( which is at 20.05 ) I'll bail.

I'm not trying to insult anyone, I just think to many people are falling for the negative hype, just like before the IPO when so many people feel for the positive hype.

[Digmen1]

People go to Facebook to stalk, post photos, brag, and chat. They aren't there looking for something, preferably something to buy, like a Google user.

And I watch tv to see comedies and documentaries yet I see ads that make me go and buy or influence me.

[Digmen1]

@ZydoSeo
A very well reasoned post thanks.

May be you are biased towards SEO ?
We all have some sort of bias or angle

[ZydoSEO]

Definitely biased I supposed. But it's because most of my clients are lead gen companies (typically several hundred million dollar/year to billion+ dollar/year companies, and the profit margins on SEO are typically 90+% vs. other channels... and the quality of leads they get though SEO and PPC are MUCH higher than any other channel. On the side I build out my own affiliate sites... And in all of the companies I've been in, social has yet to produce leads or other types of tangible conversions in any trackable, scalable quantities. It's always been a money pit. I'm not saying that companies should not be doing it. Only that the ROI is just not there to date.

[Digmen1]

@Zydoseo
Once again a very detailed reply and why you do what you do with some factual information.

[kemcar]

Fine then it will be better to wait and watch, since that turns out to be the only option left, and a year is not that far too.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Let's not forget that Facebook made some bad errors recently like forcing people to use their universally hated timeline. That earned them a lot of bad feeling and scorn.

I know lots of people who use Facebook but who don't really like it. They use it because all of their friends are there. It would not take much to get people to switch en mass to the one that is waiting in the wings.

[StoutFiles]

And I watch tv to see comedies and documentaries yet I see ads that make me go and buy or influence me.

You mean ads that take over the whole screen and make you wait until they're finished? Kind of a different story. Facebook ads, at the moment, can be easily ignored. All you have to do is hear the responses from major companies that advertise on facebook, it isn't good. People aren't clicking ads, they likely aren't even noticing them. I personally can't remember the ads when I was on facebook last, but I do remember some of the YouTube ones that made me wait 30 seconds.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I remember the last one. It was for incontinence aids - targeted advertising. I hope it was because I made a comment to someone about pissing myself laughing! ;) ;)

[SevenCubed]

^ :)