Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Facebook and the Originals

Facebook's problem: Ads aren't grabbing users, analysts say
You're shocked, I know.  We answered the question ourselves only a few days ago and I'll reaffirm that I have never actually clicked on an ad on Facebook.  In fact, as an actor, I have been told by producers that if I do see our show advertised, NOT to click it because it would be a waste of the 1,000 clicks they had purchased. 

But for me, the most interesting part of the entire article was early on - "The Reuters/Ipsos poll also found that 34 percent of Facebook users surveyed were spending less time on the website than six months ago, whereas only 20 percent were spending more." I had been noticing that myself -  that some people, namely those that had been on it the longest (my undergrad school was in the 2nd wave to get FB and so I've had an account since October 2004), aren't on all that much anymore.  Many say it just takes up too much time, others want to spend time having meaningful conversations with what we like to call "Real Life Friends".... For most, I think the appeal has just worn thin and it started in 2007 when FB lifted the rule requiring all members to log on with a .edu email address. When that happened, I knew many people who either deleted their accounts all together or drastically cut the amount of time they spent on it. These are the people who accounted for helping build FB into what it is today. What would have happened if they  had been kept engaged?
I'd be very interested in seeing the activity levels of the original, say 1 million users - how many are still on the site? How many still actively use it? Compared to the average user, how much time do they spend on the site?  I think it is important because these first 1 million users were all students and eventual graduates of well respected universities and now are probably between 26-30 years old - a very important demographic for some marketers.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thought this was appropo to some of your observations - namely, users using it less:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303296604577454970244896342.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth