The beginning of the end for Facebook? Below we will try to see why some do not use the platform.
Even if you have never used it, you know Facebook. It is one of the largest social networks in the world, with many users in almost every country.
Now, for the first time in Facebook history, daily active users have stopped growing and in fact they showed a slight decrease. His third trimester 2021, the site had 1,93 billion daily active users. In the fourth quarter of 2021, the number dropped to 1,929 billion.
Yes, almost every site would be happy with such numbers, but this slight drop means problems for Facebook. Let's look at the reasons why Facebook is losing users.
TikTok is becoming great
It is no secret that TikTok is an upcoming force on the internet. In September 2021, TikTok claimed to have over one billion users on its platform.
Στις αρχές του 2022, ο διευθύνων σύμβουλος του Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, αναγνώρισε πόσο μεγάλος ανταγωνιστής είναι η TikTok για την εταιρεία. Αυτός είναι ο λόγος για τον οποίο το Facebook παρουσίασε το Reels, σε μια προσπάθεια να κατακτήσει την αγορά σύντομων video and differentiate itself from Facebook's traditional approach based on status texts.
"TikTok is already as big as a competitor and continues to grow at a much faster rate," said Zuckerberg. "Although we are growing extremely fast, we have a competitor that is growing very fast."
Young people are not interested
Young people flock to TikTok, but it's not the only platform they prefer over Facebook.
The children και οι έφηβοι επιλέγουν να συνδέονται μέσω παιχνιδιών όπως το Fortnite και το Roblox ή πλατφόρμες όπως το Discord, και όχι με το Facebook.
Facebook is seen as a place for older generations and helps to meet family, old friends and classmates. Children prefer the imaginative XNUMXD worlds offered by videosgames, για να συνομιλήσουν με τους φίλους τους και να απολαύσουν μια διασκεδαστική, κοινή εμπειρία.
This is internally recognized by Facebook, as company researchers believe that adolescent Facebook users will decrease by 45% in 2022 compared to 2019.
According to one presentation of the company, “young adults realize the content [of Facebook] as boring, misleading and negative” and “have a wide range of negative associations with Facebook, including concerns about privacy, and effects on their well-being.”
Rising Internet prices
India is the country with the most users on Facebook, having almost twice the number of users as the United Statesehies.
According to David Wehner, CFO of Meta (Facebook's parent company), the growth of Facebook users in India has slowed down due to rising data prices in the country.
In November 2021, all major telecommunications companies in India increased their prepaid tariffs by up to 25%. These changes, of course, negatively affect people with lower incomes. This means that the cost of logging in to Facebook in India has never been higher.
There are no countries for expansion
Το Facebook ξεκίνησε να υπάρχει το 2004, και αρχικά μόνο οι φοιτητές ορισμένων πανεπιστημίων των ΗΠΑ μπορούσαν να εγγραφούν. Τώρα, το Facebook είναι διαθέσιμο σχεδόν σε όλες τις χώρες, αν και είναι απαγορευμένο σε λίγες όπως η China and Iran.
It is unlikely that these bans will ever be lifted. So Facebook has virtually no place to expand geographically.
This puts Facebook in a very difficult position to target new socio-demographic groups or entice older users to return to the platform.
Is Facebook worried about losing users?
Meta has many companies on the Internet with services such as WhatsApp and Instagram, which gives it time to redesign. Although Facebook is not going to collapse in the short term, the company will no doubt have to evaluate how to stop the sinking ship.
