With all the marketers that advertise within Facebook today, the average, everyday Facebook user is paid a lot of attention. These social marketers need Facebook users in order for their marketing efforts to be a success. After all, the entire social experience depends on people to make it work. With Facebook recently hitting the billion user mark, Facebook marketers have not had much reason to worry about lack of traffic. The immense traffic is a huge reason marketers flock to Facebook, as it simply increases their chances for successful performance marketing. Now though, a report is showing signs that people are starting to give up on Facebook to venture to other unique social media experiences.
The report comes from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, and it presents a pretty straight forward chart. The chart shows the plans of people in the age groups of 18-29, 30-49, and 50+, regarding the amount of time they will spend on Facebook in the year ahead. In the 18-29 age group, the majority said that their time on Facebook will not change, at 61%. Then, 38% of this age group said that they planned to spend less time on the network. Only 1% of these people said they want to spend more time on Facebook. For the 30-49 age group, 69% said they will spend the same amount of time, 26% said less, and 4% said more. Finally, for the 50+ respondents, 78% will retain the same amount of time, 17% will spend less time, and 4% will spend more.
- 61% of current Facebook users say that at one time or another in the past they have voluntarily taken a break from using Facebook for a period of several weeks or more.
- 20% of the online adults who do not currently use Facebook say they once used the site but no longer do so.
- 8% of online adults who do not currently use Facebook are interested in becoming Facebook users in the future.
So, although the company in the past has made it seem like all sunshine and good news, it seems that social users are as excited about the network as Facebook has led us to believe. When asked about why these 61% of users took breaks from Facebook for weeks at a time, here are some of the responses Pew received.
Some of the verbatim thoughts from those who took Facebook breaks include the following: “I was tired of stupid comments.” … “[I had] crazy friends. I did not want to be contacted.” … “I took a break when it got boring.” … “It was not getting me anywhere.” … “Too much drama.” … “You get burned out on it after a while.” … “I gave it up for Lent.” … “I was fasting.” … “People were [posting] what they had for dinner.” … “I didn’t like being monitored.” … “I got harassed by someone from my past who looked me up.”… “I don’t like their privacy policy.” … “It caused problems in my [romantic] relationship.”
Clearly, Facebook users are having quite a few issues with Facebook. As the site sees more and more use, it may be getting a bit worn out for users. Of course, marketers should not worry yet about the loss of Facebook users, but if the company decides to make no changes to help users stay excited there could potentially be an issue.
