Peaking?
Facebook tracker Inside Facebook has published the results of its latest survey of global Facebook use, and they reveal surprising declines in the number of users in the UK, US and Canada in May.
Global Facebook growth in May was 1.7 percent, taking the total to 687.1. But it would have been a lot higher has the US not shed nearly 6 million users, Canada 1.5 million and the UK 100,000.
It seems that once Facebook use gets to around half of the total population of the country growth starts to level off. Clearly it doesn't appeal to everyone. But even with that in mind the US number especially seems worryingly high for Facebook.
Could it be that mature markets also have more social networking alternatives and Facebook is starting to become redundant to more advanced users?
Inside Facebook stressed that these losses could just be the result of one-off monthly anomalies, but the broader trend seems clear. As you can see from the second table below, the 12 month trend, even in mature markets, has been positive. But the big growth has come from larger developing economies such as the BRIC countries, although China is an exception for many reasons.
It could be argued that, with nearly 700 million users, Facebook doesn't need to sustain rapid growth to be very successful, but if these figures start to level out globally it may be seen as a negative sign by advertisers and provide encouragement to its competitors.
