June 11, 2012
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by Mark Ollig
Are you spending less time on
Facebook?
Although I log onto Facebook most
days to check for any messages from friends and family, I am finding myself
spending less time using it.
When I began using Facebook, every
time I came across what I thought was an interesting story, song, picture, or
video, I would end up posting it to my Facebook page.
And, yes, I would be curious on how
many “likes” and “shares” it would generate.
As all of my Facebook friends know,
I posted a lot of content.
Today, those of us spending less
time on Facebook are not alone, as recent polling data indicates.
Could it be some of us are suffering
from . . . Facebook Fatigue?
There is mounting evidence for this
as a recent polling of Facebook users showed 34 percent labeling Facebook as
“not useful,” “not relevant,” or “boring.”
This new poll was conducted May 31
through June 4 by Reuters, and research marketing firm Ipsos.
The poll received replies from 1,032
people in the US, of which 21 percent responded by saying they were not a Facebook
user.
Of the 79 percent who were users of
Facebook, 50 percent said they spend about the same amount of time on Facebook,
while 20 percent said they are spending more time using the online social
network.
Of those surveyed, 35 percent said
they are using Facebook much less today than they did previously.
Users who responded saying they used
Facebook on a daily basis was 40 percent.
The 18 to 34-year-olds have been
found to be the most active participants on Facebook, as they account for 60
percent of its daily users.
The least-active users are the folks
55 years of age and older. The daily Facebook usage among this age group is 29
percent.
Of the Facebook users surveyed, 80
percent replied saying they never have made a purchase of a product or service
because of an online advertising link or comment made about an advertisement on
Facebook.
“Comments and recommendations from
friends on Facebook do carry a lot of weight, so I’m surprised by the number,”
Gartner analyst Ray Valdes said to Reuters.
This particular survey result must
be a concern to Facebook, especially in light of their recent public stock
issuance.
Reuters also reported Facebook
online advertising sales growth as “slowing.”
“Keeping users coming back is
crucial for all social media services,” Reuters reported Valdes as saying.
Facebook generated $3.7 billion from
mostly online advertising sales during 2011 among its 900 million users. By
comparison, Google earned about $38 billion from its online advertisement
revenues.
Google’s online social media network
called Google+ (pronounced Google Plus), currently has about 170 million total
users.
More people are using the Facebook
mobile app on their smartphones, which means limited screen space available for
revenue-generating advertisements – this could also be a concern for Facebook
and the new shareholders of its stock.
A few weeks ago, Facebook opened
public trading of its stock at $38.
As I wrote this column last Tuesday
evening, Facebook’s stock had closed for the day at $25.87.
Of those surveyed by Reuters/Ipsos,
44 percent said the troubled Initial Public Offering (IPO) of its stock has
left them feeling “less favorable towards Facebook.”
In fact, the disappointing Facebook
IPO has made 46 percent of the survey respondents less favorable towards
investing in the stock market altogether.
The other popular social media
network, Twitter, with roughly 500 million users (a reported 140 million
active), has yet to go public with its stock via an IPO.
Facebook needs to come up with some
fresh, new, user-appealing features.
Their newest feature, called
Timeline, is not at all popular with many Facebook users . . . including me.
In my opinion, the distinctiveness
and content presentation of Facebook’s current online platform is beginning to
wane with its longtime users. It is becoming somewhat mediocre and
over-populated, with too many advertisements and “sneaky” invites from multiple
online web marketing sites who want to gain access to our information, content,
and list of friends.
For now, however, I will continue to
log onto Facebook each day to check the latest content uploaded by family and
friends, and to post the content and comments I want to share.
And, of course, I will keep on
uploading every new Bits & Bytes column to my Facebook page and to my
online blog at http://bitscolumn.blogspot.com.
Facebook could eventually end up
going the way of MySpace and Yahoo, unless Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes
some major platform enhancements and incorporates genuine user-desirable
features.
Mr. Zuckerberg, those of us actively
using your social media network are patiently waiting to see which direction
Facebook will be taking.
