The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Gordon Young Facebook Twitter

Gordon Young's draft leader: The trouble with Facebook

Author

By The Drum Team, Editorial

June 21, 2011 | 3 min read

Facebook reacted arrogantly to suggestions that its popularity is on the wane.
 According to some it has lost 6m users in the US alone. These reports are ‘Wrong. Every. Single.Time’, a UK Facebook spokesperson huffed to The Drum.

There is no doubt the reports of Facebook’s demise are exaggerated. It will be a feature for years to come. However, reports of its decline have hit a nerve, particularly with a mega IPO on the horizon which could value the site, which has 600m users and makes profits of around $500m, at $50billion.

In many ways Facebook continuing to grow at the rates it has claimed in the past would be even more logic defying than its valuation.
 It has benefited massively from being in the right place at the right time. It was the social media site which broke through just as the market for mass-social media reached tipping point.
 Its popularity was fuelled by the fact it was already popular amongst opinion formers.

However, now those opinion formers are starting to leave, could the herd follow? In our view that's a real risk; although viable alternatives will have to emerge first. And these could well take the form of more niche, specialist sites.

For the reason people feel dissatisfied with Facebook, as we have pointed out here in the past, is that the site – as a mass market, all things to all men proposition – is not well defined.

People have different social personas for different groups. They speak to families one way. Friends in another. And social acquaintances another way altogether. And business relationships are a new study in anthropology in themselves.

That is why Facebook works well for users like students or teenagers; most of their contacts tend to be drawn from a single group.

However, the older you are the more social layers you acquire. Which is why after posting a series of holiday snaps it can feel a bit creepy getting a 'Like' from the wrong sort of person.

There is no doubt social media will remain a new and exciting facet of communication. But in terms of its evolution Facebook has helped it slither out of the ocean and on to the beach. New things will now emerge and they might have better legs.

Gordon Young Facebook Twitter

More from Gordon Young

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +