Yesterday Facebook hit an all time high at $58. It IPOed at $38 but sank to $16 soon afterwards. So you’d think that everyone thought the longterm future of Facebook was Hunky-Dory?
Every conversation I have nowadays is about youngsters in particular abandoning Facebook in favour of other platforms. In particular other platforms where their Mum & Dad (or in my case Grandad) are not members. Stats show that teen members of Facebook are flat or declining. However, the silver surfers are beginning to love it.
A research project announced today from Princeton University projects that Facebook will lose 80% of its users by 2017. It makes this assertion by looking at how Google searches for Facebook peaked in Dec 2012. Adding that searches for Myspace peaked in 2008 before going into terminal decline.
The validity of the assertion is suspect but it does chime with the anecdotal evidence. I certainly can see Facebook being mainly for the middle aged in a short timescale with youngsters moving to newer, trendier platforms. In turn, I see platforms being as trendy – and therefore users as fickle – as many fashion items.