Wednesday, May 23, 2012

CHART OF THE DAY: Time Spent On Facebook Has Gone Flat* (FB)

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-facebooks-engagement-has-peaked-and-now-its-falling-2012-5

Note: This post has been edited from its original version, after we learned that the data we initially used was flawed. We have our original post below the chart, as well as an explanation.

Time spent on Facebook on desktop computers in the U.S. has been totally flat for the year, according to data from comScore. For a while now Facebook's engagement had been on the rise, but it appears to have hit a wall.

Part of the reason is that Facebook's users are going mobile, and spending their time there. This is bad for Facebook because it makes almost no money on mobile.

Note: This chart is flawed, comScore told us after we published. ComScore's previous data was unintentionally inflated due to existence of non-user requested URLs. However, ComScore has analyzed data since the beginning of the year using the same filters, and it tells us that the trend for Facebook is flat this year.

 

chart of the day, social network engagement, may 2012

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Original post: Time spent on Facebook on desktop computers in the U.S. has peaked and now it's falling according to data from comScore, via BI Intelligence.

BI Intelligence analyst Alex Cocotas attributes the drop to a "shift to mobile" as well as the rise of rival social networks like Tumblr, and Pinterest.

The shift to mobile is better than losing out to rivals, but it's bad for Facebook's business, because it makes significantly less money from mobile users than desktop users.

As for those rivals, take a look at Pinterest, which seems to have its own engagement problems. Our guess on what's happening there: The company got a lot of buzz, had a crush of new users, which inflated its numbers, and many of those people left.


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