Mar 16, 2013

Why are Canadian users abandoning Facebook?

Facebook lost 800,000 users in 3 months 
I notice that Facebook was trending on Google Plus's stream so I checked it. What, Facebook is adding hash-tags? I guess that is now part of their social search. The more Facebook tries to be like Google Plus the more users it alienates. If you look at the two feeds now (stream / news feed) you can hardly tell them apart.
Losing 5% of your users in 3 months must be hard on Mark. I enjoy trying to figure out why people join social network sites so I can be one step ahead in marketing / stock-market trends.  Making to many changes cause a lot of people to look else where. Now that there are a 1/2 billion active users on G+, it is easy to find interesting stories there. Also, there are now 3/4 of a billion users signed up to G+, so most of your real life friends have an account there.  This makes Facebook's changes become a higher risk for people swapping them out for Google Plus.
Last week I showed a friend G+ and showed him how to circle a few users so that his stream wouldn't be just filled with me, but he wouldn't follow through to start making use of G+ so, I must not of explained the benefits of G+ clear enough. However, he is still posting on Facebook so he does want to be hear. I never got him to the point of 10 friends so he still can't be easily found by others searching for his name.
If this keeps up in 72 months there will be no Canadians left using Facebook so hopefully my friends will have learnt to use circles by then.