Facebook traffic volumes have been seeing a decline in North America recently. The common belief is that each time Facebook reaches the halfway mark among the population of any country, growth in terms of users and traffic there typically stops. A recent informal survey revealed possible reasons for users’ relationships with Facebook altering over the past year. Roughly 40 percent of those surveyed use Facebook less versus a year ago, compared to 30 percent who use it more. Reasons cited include the novelty wearing off and, more important, as friend lists grow, conversations are seen to become less private and more impersonal. Facebook has been running and growing on a network effect, where the bigger your friend list, the more value the network provides. But it could now be the case of too much of a good thing and the Facebook network is now way too cumbersome and huge and is thus losing value. It is overloaded to the extent that it has become intrusive. Facebook users who have more than 300 friends generally utilize Facebook as a means of professional advancement. With those who have less than 300 but greater than 50 friends, it is seen that their status updates posts become less frequent and more impersonal as their friend list grows. A theory is that with less than 50 friends, your network is personal, and with more, it becomes a social network. But once it crosses a hundred or two it is no more a social network but often a professional one. With each milestone, the tone of your posts change. Google’s new social network offering Google+ would do well to guard against the perceived effect of network overload. This is something you should also keep in mind whether you are advertiser or an internet marketing agency.

Tags: Facebook, friend list, Google, network, network overload, personal, post, professional, social, status update

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 6th, 2011 at 4:39 am and is filed under Website Traffic Reporting.