It’s doomed! It’s another MySpace! It’s another Friendster! It’s another Men Without Hats! It’s John Moe engaging in hyperbole! Yeah, I don’t know about Facebook. It seems pretty entrenched even with the disastrous IPO. But new numbers indicate that the company’s growth is slowing down. Adoption of the service is at its lowest rate since 2008.
That was Facebook’s lowest U.S. user growth rate since comScore began tracking the data in 2008 and was down from 24% growth in April 2011 and 89% in April 2010, comScore said.
At the same time, the growth rate in the amount of time people spend on the social network—otherwise known as engagement—is also decelerating. In April, Facebook users spent more than six hours a month on the site, up 16% from a year earlier. But that compares with a 23% increase in 2011 and 57% in 2010, comScore found.
I get a little dubious about numbers like these because Facebook’s growth can’t grow exponentially forever or the world would have to have trillions of people in a few years. THAT’S MATH. But it makes you think, well, maybe this is all Facebook is. Maybe it’s not the company of the future. Maybe it’s just the company of right at the moment.
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