Facebook Usage Declines for the First Time in Infinite Dial History
edisonresearch.com
edisonresearch.com
So they acquired what they thought would be the future and would push growth there, which is exactly what is happening.
Or they don't know it and are lacking in contextualuzation.
Either way it's bad journalism.
As best I can tell this is not a news organization, they're simply showing an interesting data point
You have to realize that most tech "journalists" are in their 20s and haven't been though a single market cycle yet. For as long as they can remember, Facebook was a thing they used on their iPhone and it was the top social network and Apple was the top phone maker.
Then I remember that Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp. They're doing great, partially because nobody thinks of Instagram as Facebook.
Google and Facebook have deployed surveillance and monitoring far beyond what a single government can achieve.
There is not a shred of data you can keep secret unless you work outside of the internet or you life entirely within tor, without ever using the same machine to communicate on a different network.
A competition between Vive, OR, and hololens in the AR/VR market would be much appreciated.
That's it? 2,000 people surveyed? I actually don't doubt the conclusions, but given the shoddy website, old publication date, and duplicative pieces with negative outlook (https://www.edisonresearch.com/infinite-dial-2019/ and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19322448), this seems like the work of someone with an ulterior motive.
I would bet serious money with even odds that this article was upvoted with fraudulent HN accounts. I wish I could help investigate.
This is similar to how presidential approval ratings are conducted, for example, by Gallup in which their sample sizes are even smaller.
In the age group 12-34, Facebook dropped from 79% usage in 2017 to 62% in 2019 while Instagram increased from 64% to 66% over the same period, so at least some former Facebook users didn't just migrate to Instagram. They don't have data for WhatsApp before 2019 (23%), so it's still possible that the total number of users in that age bracket actually increased when you pool all of Facebook's properties.
People are largely leaving Facebook as a product, because they simply don't find it as useful or novel as it once was to them.
And in many ways Instagram is now a bit what Facebook used to be in its early days: personal and with very little noise.
Therefore, Facebook as a company isn't failing. Facebook as a product is.
What else there is to do, when the most profitable product of the company has the slowest growth rate of all.
From their study, they show that while Facebook dropped, Instagram increased (34, 36, and 39% from 2017 - 2019, respectively).
WhatsApp doesn't have tracking data for 2017/18, but 2019 shows it at 18%.
Here's their downloadable presentation with additional info: http://www.edisonresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Inf...
I think the switch to stories had an impact. Positive at first, but negative indirectly, as it introduced the “mute” mechanism. At first you could just do this with stories, but now you can mute someone’s posts while still “following” them.
Before, on instagram, if someone followed you, you really knew they followed you. So people sort of self-policed their posts, as they knew they’d get unfollowed if they were excessive. And there was a lot of engagement on posts, because 100% of followers saw it.
But now you can follow but not follow. So on the one hand some people are pushing more posts, on the other hand you have a lot of non-genuine followers. This discourages posting.
I have more followers but fewer likes than before, and I also follow more people and see less. The platform feels more hollow than it used to, in the same way facebook does.
Also similar to FB, the instagram algorithm is always changing. The fact that your feed is less real-time removes part of the essence of instagram. I liked knowing that my feed was a 1:1 connection to the real world. Now it is less that and more a collection of posts from the people I follow. One of my core ideas around young folks leaving facebook is for the same exact reason.
When you are in grade school, life moments occur everyday and sometimes within a few hours. Think of nailing your first skateboard trick, joining bands, or making the varsity team, etc. Those are all potential posts on any social channel. If you are the consumer of those posts, assuming the same age as the poster, you want to see them in a real-life sequence. It would feel fake or hollow to see the posts (that happened in your school, maybe at your game) contextualized against ads or in a wrong order.
I like it but it’s also being filled with drivel and self-promotion to the point of becoming monotonous.
Am I dumb or does anyone else not understand what "currently ever use" means exactly in this context? How is that different than just saying "currently use"?
"Ever" implies independence of time, but matched with "currently" it means what?
(English is my first and only language; I might just be dumb)
My guess would be that "currently ever use the service" means "currently use the service, even if just sporadically."
As you say, "currently use the service" would have been sufficient.