The sky is falling. Maybe not just yet.
It seems that behemoth social media channel Facebook is suffering growing pains and they’re of the negative variety. In a study that’s been tracking Americans’ use of Facebook for almost a decade, the trend has nearly always been up.
2018, though, is anticipated to be a down year. 62% of Americans 12 and older will use Facebook this year; 67% used it during 2017, according to The Infinite Dial, a survey that Edison Research and Triton Digital have been conducting since 2008 (see top chart).
For the most recent survey, 2,000 persons were interviewed via telephone from January 4, 2018, through February 11, 2018.
Edison and Triton also note Facebook usage is “down or flat in every demographic age group, gender, and ethnicity.” They also asked what social media site or service people use the most. Facebook declined on this, too.
So, is the sky falling?
Instagram and Snapchat use is rising and Twitter seems more popular, considering its brand is mentioned daily thanks to President Trump and other newsmakers using it daily.
The question for brands, then, is your audience migrating away from Facebook? If so, will it be a permanent move?
Another question: Does the reduction in Facebook use mean brands will be moving to another social platform? In other words, is Facebook’s loss another channel’s gain?
Maybe the sky fell and we failed to notice? Business Insider, for example, noted a decline in Facebook use back in November 2017 (vs. November 2016). This was prior to Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg’s January 11, 2018, message that News Feed would feature more “meaningful interactions” (fewer news and marketing items and more family and friends updates).
Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp registered increases in users and time spent in 2017, which may have played a role Facebook’s drop in usage in November 2017, Business Insider says.
For brands, another concern is a decline in Facebook driving traffic to news sites. As you can see in the bottom chart, website traffic coming from Facebook declined precipitously in the second half of 2017. As you can see in the chart below, Facebook’s share of all visits to a sample of 250,000 websites has dropped from 30.9% in the second half of 2016 to 18.2% percent year over year.
Brands should be (and likely are already) diversified, using Facebook as one tool of many in their marketing and communications gameplan; and no, the sky isn’t falling. Facebook remains the largest social media platform. It can absorb slight declines for years and still be the leader.
