THE FOLLOWING MEMO UPDATE IS WRITTEN FROM THE FUTURE! LIKE MAYBE 2014: Remember Facebook? That wacky fad of a few years ago where everyone posted “updates” and “Liked” things and “voluntarily surrendered all their privacy to Mark Zuckerberg”? Wow, what was all that about, huh? For a while there it looked like Facebook was going to be a huge part of daily life forever. Then the IPO happened and investors weren’t all that impressed. But for me, the real change came in July of 2012 when a report indicated falling numbers of Facebook users, suggesting the service may have peaked, the novelty worn off, and the company’s fumbles really having an effect.
From Reuters:
Capstone analyst Rory Maher said he used proprietary software to track user numbers by country over the past six months across more than 200 countries and worked out that the social network had shed users in both the United States and Europe. U.S. users declined by 1.1 percent, he said in a research note.
Of the 23 countries where Facebook’s penetration exceeded 50 percent, only nine expanded their user base over the past three months, while the remaining 14 countries either had fewer users or saw little change.
Back then, we all kind of realized that Facebook was at least plateauing with growth and maybe starting to fade.
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The news wasn’t all terrible for Facebook at the time. Reports indicated that ads were doing well among the few wretched souls still using the dang thing. The company was able to charge 58% more for ads than the year before and the ads were being clicked more often.
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