 January 21, 2014, The Facebook generation may be about to come to an end if Princeton University researchers are correct. A new study predicts “a rapid decline in Facebook activity in the next few years.” The study, conducted by two researchers in Princeton’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, applies the same model used in the study of disease to extrapolate future adoption and abandonment of social networks. In the case of Facebook (FB), the researchers used MySpace as a case study for a social network whose use spread rapidly, like a disease, and then quickly died out when the number of new users declined. The study finds that Facebook is “just beginning to show the onset of an abandonment phase.” The researchers believe that abandonment will accelerate to the point that Facebook could lose 80% of its users between 2015 and 2017. Source: Article, Facebook Slams Princeton Study Saying It Will Lose 80% Of Users: January 23, 2014, Princeton researchers released a widely covered study saying Facebook would lose 80% of its users by 2015-2017. But now Facebook’s data scientists: have turned the study’s silly “correlation equals causation” methodology of tracking Google search volume against it to show Princeton would lose all of its students by 2021. A Facebook spokesperson says “the report that Princeton put out is utter nonsense.” Indeed, it’s flawed throughout. First, it makes a strained epidemiological analogy comparing Facebook to a “disease” that users eventually “recover” from. Facebook may be a massive drain on our attention that some people get sick of, but that doesn’t mean it actually operates like a virus. The researchers then use Myspace as an example of how users recover from a social network and abandon it as if it happened naturally. They make no mention of how Myspace was in fact killed by Facebook. But the critical error in the non-peer-reviewed study is stating that since the volume of searches for “Facebook” began declining in 2012, it must mean there’s an ongoing decline in Facebook usage. Source: Article, Reference-Image: flickr.com |
