According to ValleyWag, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that Facebook's growth has slowed.
ValleyWag cited an interview with Inside Facebook, when Zuckerberg claimed to be "too obsessed" with Twitter until he noticed that its growth rate had slowed. He then said the same thing happened to Facebook:
We saw our exponential growth rate continue for a very long period of time, and it still does at a super-linear rate, though not quite 3% a week any more.His admission follows years of controversy over Facebook's serious privacy issues, its negligence with regard to hateful and jihadist content, as well as content which incites the murder of Jews.
ValleyWag continued:
In May, after a rash of bad publicity for Facebook, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land dug through Facebook's old user-count announcements to make an intriguing case that growth had dropped off sharply. The social network bragged in April about adding 10 million+ users in three weeks. Generously extrapolate this into monthly growth of 15 million users, Sullivan pointed out, and it's still weak:One astute commenter noted:
....Facebook is leveraged using venture capital, and its backers, some less friendly than others, will surely be concerned about any significant deceleration. The only question is whether the company has alienated a "significant" chunk of potential users yet, or whether that's still a few more messy privacy controversies away.
- August 26, 2008: 100 million
- January 7, 2009: 150 million
(50 million gain over about 4 months = 12.5 million per month)- April 8, 2009: 200 million
(50 million gain over about 3 months = 16.7 million per month)- July 15, 2009: 250 million
(50 million gain over about 3 months = 16.7 million per month)- September 15, 2009: 300 million
(50 million gain over about 2 months = 25 million per month)- December 1, 2009: 350 million
(50 million gain over about 2.5 months = 20 million per month)- February 4, 2009: 400 million
(50 million gain over about 2 months = 25 million per month)- [April 2010: 10 million gain over 3 weeks = 13-15 million per month]
This is what happens when you take your consumers for granted. When you try to slip privacy abuses by, make the interface needlessly complex and constantly changing, you are going to have a downturn. Twitter is lurking behind Facebook like Facebook lurked up behind Myspace, waiting to take its place.
