40% of people have left social media in the last year

[csdude55]

[cnbc.com...]

It looks like Youtube is king, with 94% of the 18-24 age group.

The study doesn't poll children, but I know that none of my nieces or nephews (ages range from 11 to 19) use anything but Snapchat, Youtube, and (to a much lesser degree) Instagram. My oldest niece (19 and in college) laughs when someone mentions Facebook... to her, it's a site for her grandma.

Personally, I would love to leave Facebook, but if I do then I'm pretty sure that I would lose my business's fan page, and then a competitor could snatch it. I couldn't tell you the last time I looked at the News Feed, though.

[keyplyr]

I removed my business page a few months ago when Facebook was caught selling user's private info to 3rd parties and political campaigns. I didn't want the branding of my business to be associated with that fiasco. I had several thousand followers.

I've seen no negative affect from leaving Facebook. In fact, removing that FB page from Google & Bing's index has had a positive effect since it often scored higher in the SERP than my business page.

[tangor]

Recent report indicates that the 18-35 demographic has left at a 51% rate over the last two years.

Social media is kind of like the emperor and his new clothes. Exposed. :)

[lucy24]

Your 11-to-19-year-old relatives are spending their time in YouTube comment threads? Now there’s a thought to make the blood run cold.

[tangor]

Or hot! Rage against the machine is pretty appropriate at times. :)

[csdude55]

Your 11-to-19-year-old relatives are spending their time in YouTube comment threads

Technically speaking, I have no idea if they interact with the comments, or if they just watch the videos. I know the 11 year old loves to watch gamers showing tips and secrets, but that's the extent of what I actually know.

[engine]

I've heard that many times about FB being "less attractive" to younger audiences.
Of course, FB does need new users to keep moving forward, but, OTOH, the older audience has more disposable income, which means that advertisers should find that more appealing to target than 11-19 yo.

[csdude55]

OTOH, the older audience has more disposable income, which means that advertisers should find that more appealing to target than 11-19 yo.

True, but the study shows that the current 18-24 group has also been losing interest in Facebook, and have moved on to other things (eg, Snapchat and YouTube).

We've all seen this same trend plenty of times in the past. Teens latch on to something, and smaller kids follow them in an attempt to look cool. Then parents try to follow them, either in an attempt to protect them or to stay cool themselves. But then it's not cool anymore, so the teens leave and go somewhere else. Then the small kids follow them, then the parents follow them.

Based on the history of other such things, unless Facebook changes something drastically then people will continue leaving in droves. The privacy concerns, fake news, and Russian advertisers are all just the catalyst.

But luckily for the corporation, they own Instagram so that still appeals to the younger crowd. And they own WhatsApp, which still appeals to immigrants and people in other countries. So Facebook dying won't kill the corporation.

I removed my business page a few months ago

@keyplyr, maybe you can give me some insight... once you did that, was it possible for someone else to create a permalink to your old page?

Meaning, if your old page was facebook.com/keyplyr and you canceled it, could I now go and register facebook.com/keyplyr for myself?

That's been my concern... someone else would "steal" my account and pretend to represent me.

[keyplyr]

@csdude55 - my FB biz was a verified business. I also have my company name registered with the United States Trademark & Patent Office. No one else could do all that.

However, even when my page was up and active, over the course of 10 years 3 different people put up a page using my company name with a slight variation in URL.

I had to go through the tedious process of getting FB to remove those pages, one doing it voluntarily.

Without my page being up and active now, I assume a SE search may return similar named FB pages in the SERP however the rule of law still applies and if I detect anyone using my company name, I will go through that process with FB again. It shouldn't matter whether my page with FB exists or not.

But if the URL no longer exists, I assume it can be created (again.)

But, IMO FB does not check these things proactively. They are not representing my rights as a business owner. All indication shows they do things until caught, then react with as little effort as possible.

An alternative to removing your biz page is to just make it inactive, then block it from SE indexing. These choices are in the setting for that page somewhere.

I chose to remove my page because of human rights violations.

[robzilla]

The thread title seemed to suggest that 40% has quit social media altogether, but it's just people deleting at least one social media account, citing privacy worries. Still seems rather high to me, I don't generally trust this sort of study; but they make for good headlines.

[tangor]

The metric uttered was a LOWER UPTAKE for fb, ie.:

The kids don't play there no more. Why? Anyone's speculation.

Me, I think they are more wired on "parental overview" and fb has revealed themselves to be very helicopter "parents" more than willing to enforce timeouts and early curfews. If you get my drift.

IOW, ain't fun no more, nanny!

[ChanandlerBong]

I used to play FB's game, spending a little every day to promote posts that linked to pages on my site.

then, in about 2014, noticed a cliff-edge change in number of likes/clicks. Watched it a week and then contacted them, asking why my 1000 likes a day was now 100. I read elsewhere that they'd "updated" their algo and many others were seeing the same and furious. FB support replied, I kid you not, "you had a day last year with only 150 likes and you never wrote to us".

that day, btw, was christmas day 2013. So anyway, I lost 90% of my impressions because they suddenly got expensive, FB lost 100% of my ad spend on their site. I'm sure they're still crying into their coffee. I dread to think how many algo changes there have been in the intervening four years!

I don't blame them for wanting to increase revenues. Shame that I, one of their early ad adopters, got whacked.

[csdude55]

then, in about 2014, noticed a cliff-edge change in number of likes/clicks. Watched it a week and then contacted them, asking why my 1000 likes a day was now 100.

I did a test several years ago that I thought was interesting.

At the time, I had about 2,000 followers on my business page and about 800 friends on my personal page. So I made a post on both that said something like:

"I'm running a test... if you see this post, please just Like it. Don't share it, and don't comment, just click the Like button. Thanks!"

I had about 180 Likes on the business page, and about 80 on the personal page.

Now, obviously everyone that saw it didn't follow the instructions, but still, I expected a lot more than that! But then I realized that their stats only talk about how many accounts exist, not how many are active or how many are fake.

I've done test after test since then, and always have similar results. So at least in my small area, I believe that only about 10% of the people that have an account actually use it or look at their Feed; the rest are either fake accounts (scammers), duplicate accounts (my dad has at least 5 because he can't remember his password, and thinks he has to have one for his computer and another for his phone), or dead accounts (or maybe they just use Messenger and don't look at their Feed).

[RhinoFish]

148% returned.

[tangor]

Back when VC was required to keep fb afloat for the next go around (and before the IPO) every account, active or not, was a growth number. When the scammers came along and bloated that metric fb presented it as real growth and... well, we see the results of that history.

IIRC in just the last year or two fb did a clean up of something like 77M (million) fake, inactive, bogus, etc accounts ... but compared to their reported 2B (billion) users that not even chump change. I suspect that fully 60% of the reported number is fake. When webmasters factor in their geo specifics the numbers become even more absurd ... exceeding the total populations of entire nations!

That's one side.

But it is obvious that the "cool factor" so highly prized by the young just isn't there any longer and many have moved on to more fresh presentations.

One also has to remember that 18-49 ten years ago is now 28-69 and as they have aged they have either bought all in on the platform, or have outgrown it (I suspect the latter).

It is unlikely that fb is deleting/managing long dormant accounts with any reality (as reported to shareholders and the public) but have no doubt they know exactly how many real users there are and that number is significantly LESS than what is reported.

[tangor]

As for numbers and retention, we only have to look at WW for an example where nothing is discarded (not suggesting it should be!) and those who are new might have a different perception of activity, etc.

[NickMNS]

One also has to remember that 18-49 ten years ago is now 28-69

I have always had the impression that as I get older I start to age faster, but from 49 to 69 in ten years, now that is aging fast. Lol

Yes WW is probably a good example, I am guessing by casual observation that the number of fully engaged members is relatively small <100. I don't know what the official number is but I assume that the same dynamics must hold for FB, where there are 2B members in total but the active and engaged members must be in the low millions. But even in the millions, that is huge, but maybe not enough the justify the stock valuation.

[csdude55]

I suspect that fully 60% of the reported number is fake.

In the last 2 quarters they've removed 1.3 billion fake accounts:

[recode.net...]

Which is just over 50% of the number of users they claim to have. But I know for a fact that's not all of them, because like I said before, I've reported several in the last month that they have not removed.

So I agree, 60% would probably be a low estimate. And as long as there are companies out there that create fake accounts to sell Likes, and as long as they allow people from known-scammer countries (Nigeria, Romania, Lithuania), their number of fake accounts will increase exponentially while their number of real users will decrease exponentially.

But even in the millions, that is huge, but maybe not enough the justify the stock valuation.

Perception is reality. Most stock buyers have no idea what's going on, they hear "2.2 billion users" so they think it's huge, and buy. They lack the ability to differentiate between active users, fake users, etc.

With Congressional hearings, though, and more and more attention being focused on fake accounts, I doubt that this lasts much longer.

[Leosghost]

We ( those who are naive enough to use them ) are threatened every day.
FTFY :)

[domainstronglily]

Actually if your target audience is kids and teenagers, you should worry about that. But if your customers are older than 24, I guess the losing is not a big deal.

[tangor]

The empeoror's new clothes have been revealed in recent months. The down tick will continue ... that and the loss of glitz factor for the kiddies who have already moved along.

Up next: Congressional hearings.