(OK yeah I need to get a life – fair cop)

But the startling thing is that there is another drop in users – just five days after I last checked.

Down by 96,500!

Here are the figures:

• November 11: 1,979,840
• December 11: 1,149,060
• December 18: 1,059,700
• December 23: 963,200

Facebook’s advertising platform estimations can’t be that volatile – can they…

WTF is going on.

On December 18, I thought I would double check these numbers against other cap cities. Today’s numbers are in red.

• Adelaide: 250,000 –> 250,100
• Melbourne: 915,160 –> 915,160
• Perth: 379,420 –> 379,400
• Brisbane: 507,400 –> 507,400

Basically flat in a week – so why is Sydney trending down over 6 weeks?

Here is my first post in this startling series.

Firstly with this post on November 11 and then this update on December 11.

There was one really notable thing about the numbers that Facebook’s own advertising platform produced.

Within a month, Facebook told me that the number of 18-24 years olds in Sydney had fallen by 830k.

Such a massive drop that it didn’t sound right. Surely, enough people would have heard anecdotally about a shift like that.

So I checked in again today and the numbers suggest another step down.

Here are the numbers for that specific segment again:

• November 11: 1,979,840
• December 11: 1,149,060
• December 18: 1,059,700

Down by an additional 89,360 in a week!!

I have consistently included ‘cities within 80kms’.

Could this suggest that Facebook’s user profile is ageing and fewer 18 years old are signing up to the service or growing into it?  Would that explain these numbers, I don’t think so.

Looks like a trend – could it be?

Here are the numbers today for the m/f 18-24 age groups in following cities:

• Adelaide: 250,000
• Melbourne: 915,160
• Perth: 379,420
• Brisbane: 507,400

The notable thing is that the sixth segment (the youngest group that I looked at) has declined significantly.

Nov 11: Australia – age 18 to 64 male and female = 9,290,380
Dec 11: 9,290,380 Flat

Nov 11: Australia – age 18-24 male = 2,048,140
Dec 11: 2,048,140 Flat

Nov 11: Australia – age 18-24 female = 2,096,240
Dec 11: 2,096,240 Flat

Nov 11: Australia – age 25-45 male = 3,091,620
Dec 11: 3,091,620 Flat

Nov 11: Australia – age 24-45 female = 3,560,300
Dec 11: 3,563,300 Up by 3,000

Nov 11: Sydney – age 18-24 = 1,979,840
Dec 11: 1,149,060 Down by circa 800k

Either I mucked up my search the first time around or something weird is happening.  Facebook couldn’t lose 800,000 Sydney users in one month could it?

Facebook does include the caveat that numbers are estimations only but still it seems strange that four out of six numbers are exactly the same.  Obviously the social network can’t grow exponentially for ever. How would Facebook handle the PR around a user exodus do you think… that would be an interesting comms challenge?

Back in one month.

]]> http://justanother24hours.com/social-media/is-facebook-flat-lining-in-australia-or-even-worse-losing-users/feed/ 0 http://justanother24hours.com/blogging/facebook-australia-which-ways-are-the-numbers-going/ http://justanother24hours.com/blogging/facebook-australia-which-ways-are-the-numbers-going/#comments Fri, 11 Nov 2011 10:55:29 +0000 Daniel Young http://justanother24hours.com/?p=1450 A little experiment to see which way Facebook’s numbers are going in Australia.

Today – 11 November 2001

Australia – age 18 to 64 male and female = 9,290,380

Australia – age 18-24 male = 2,048,140

Australia – age 18-24 female = 2,096,240

Australia – age 25-45 male = 3,091,620

Australia – age 24-45 female = 3,560,300

Sydney – age 18-24 = 1,979,840

Watch this space – back in a month.

By forcing businesses to become more transparent and distributing the means of media production it was argued that our society would change for the better.

This point of view probably peaked in 2006/7 but bubbled below the surface for a lot longer than that.

I fully subscribe to this point of view.  I still do.

But there are doubts and questions in my mind.

2011 hasn’t done anything to allay my fears.

Since 2008 we’ve seen major abuses of poor by power elites and institutions in almost every sphere of our existence. Yes, these abuses have been exposed but take the global financial crisis as an example and you can see that little has actually changed despite the exposure of the wrong doers.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen the Occupy movement spring up but I don’t believe that any Government is actually really listening.  Yes, they have a voice.  Yes, they’ve gained some media coverage for their struggle and point of view but to what end.  Will anything really change?  The strong arm tactics employed by the police in the UK, Australia and USA would suggest that the traditional institutions still have the right to operate in the way that they see fit.

Taking a slight tangent here the one thing that really concerns me is this.

The companies that are really benefiting from social media are not complying or furthering the principles of openness and transparency upon which their industry is supposedly based.  Companies like Google and Facebook are in fact operating in very shady and opaque ways when it comes to managing information and data.

What hope is there  for greater transparency in society when the companies at the forefront of social media are acting in this way?

Marx argued that religion is the opiate of the people. Will social media one day assume this moniker?

I doubt that most consumers of digital media are even aware of this phenomenon. The political implications are massive.

It has significant implications for the PR and marketing industries. My first thought is that it steers marketers to advertising, which would add up given that this is the primary revenue stream for the sites in question.

http://m.democracynow.org/stories/11898

A significant section of the media/Web commentariat has expressed its dis-satisfiaction with Facebook’s policies and management. I can’t help noticing the irony here.

Individuals who have built businesses and reputations on the basis of  the models that underpin social media and digital advertising are now outraged at the fact that Facebook wants to make money from user data.

Really?

These people have the right to express a view, and Facebook has not managed its stakeholders well.

But…

The issue here is that Facebook wants to access, use and profit from information about its members.  Shock! Horror!

The opportunity to do both of these things is why Facebook and other services like it exist in the first place!

Many seem to think that Mark Zuckerberg provides Facebook as a service out of the goodness of his heart. This sense of entitlement makes us the ‘dumb f*cks’.

Others seem to think that they can re-define the terms of their usage after they agreed to an End User License Agreement, which handed control of their content and data to Facebook.

User data underpins the business model.  What was once considered private information will become more public.

You have a choice.

]]> http://justanother24hours.com/social-media/the-facebook-irony-recent-facebook-outrage-and-privacy-debate-doesnt-ring-true/feed/ 1 http://justanother24hours.com/social-media/hack-100-brian-solis-7-scientific-ways-to-promote-sharing-on-facebook/ http://justanother24hours.com/social-media/hack-100-brian-solis-7-scientific-ways-to-promote-sharing-on-facebook/#comments Tue, 11 May 2010 13:03:00 +0000 Daniel Young http://justanother24hours.com/?p=1123 The second installment in the Hack100 series.  My interpretation of the latest Brian Solis post in less than 100 words:

Content that is short, simple, yet emotive and compelling, works best in social media. Within Twitter shareability is determined by words used and timing.  In Facebook simple language is more likely to be shared.  Content performs better when it contains digits.  Sharing is endorsing.  Content relating to news, personal experiences and video is more likely to be shared.  Certain words and negativity inhibit sharing.  What and how you share says a lot about you.  Use verbs, as these encourage others to share.  Apply these rules and you will benefit.

(89 words) Main message underlined.

Some interesting stats and data in the full version of this post. I’m not sure that there is a specific single take-away from this post, as there are in fact seven.

Some good advice for individuals, businesses hoping to benefit from social sharing in new media.  Many of the ’scientific ways’ are scientific because they are proven by the test of time and reinforced by recent studies in social media but these aren’t laws unto themselves for the social sphere, they apply equally in old media, all forms of communication and marketing.

Solis claims that negative updates are ‘among the least shared objects’ but that’s kinda subjective and doesn’t account for content relating to video of exploding laptop batteries (as an example), which could be construed as negative and is highly shareable.

For the original full version of this post, visit the Brian Solis blog here.

How? 

I unfollowed all of the people that were filling my timeline with what I consider to be inane, self obsessed, nonsensical and worthless tweets.  

Don’t get me wrong, my tweets are occasioanlly inane and pointless but some people seem to spend a large part of their day sharing the most intricate and mindless details of their lives.  

The example that sticks in my mind is: ‘I spilt a lot of water onto the floor during my bath’.   

For a while I thought I should follow these people – some of them supposedly serious people in my industry.  I didn’t want to miss out on anything but after 12 months or more of perseverence (and annoyance) I realised that I wasn’t going to miss anything and unfollowed. 

Twitter is, as a result, far less annoying and vastly more useful, more enjoyable.

It’s like the Shuffle function on the iPOD, a run of great random songs on Shuffle is a great thing.  But there’s always a chance that that run can be rudely interrupted by a random song or the artist that you’ve outgrown or overheard, or your simply bored of.  Or something that you downloaded for a ‘laugh’ once (example: Mel and Kim’s Respectable).   

The next step for me is to edit my iTune library by de-selecting the songs that could barge in and spoil a great sequence of songs on Shuffle.   

People can do what they want with Twitter and its not for me to judge what’s inane and what isn’t – its all relative.  But if you’re finding that you’re on the receiving end of an excessive amount of noise via your social media channels and not enough signal then maybe think about the steps you can take to improve your chances.

According to comScore, Google still has nearly two-thirds of the U.S. search market, but dropped a fraction of a percent from 65.7% in Dec 2009 to 65.4% in Jan 2010 [source: Information Week]. While Google is still the leader in the search space, and Facebook only accounted for just under 400 million searches in January, that is a gain of 13% over December. If this trend continues, Google may have ample reason to fear Facebook.   

The Compete data shows that Facebook is the second most popular site in the US with 134m unique visiter in January 2010, ahead of Yahoo! and just behind Google.

Facebook is in the ascendancy but the company must make changes to its own Search engine if it is to become a genuine rival to Google, the vastly dominant player in the space. 

Facebook, like other social networks, represents opportunity for brands because of the simple fact that this is where a lot of the action is taking place online, as demonstrated by slews and rising traffic.  Switched on brands are  already tapping into the Facebook community.  But Facebook Search serves marketers poorly today as a place of discovery.  Check out my search results for ‘mobile handset’:

Not particularly useful.  Three users groups with 210 members between them.

No sign of the brand sponsored pages where Facebook Users can learn about new products, participate in competitions and promotions, chat with other users and potential customers, communicate directly with the company and link through to relevant pages on the Web.

The Sony Ericsson WorldPage has more than 445,ooo Fans (Sony Ericsson is a client) but the way that Facebook Search works prevents this page, which is clearly relevant to the search term, from appearing. 

This is an issue for Facebook.  

We see the same issue if we run a search for ’sneakers’:

The retailer Sole Provider Sneakers comes out on top here, simply by virtue of having the search term embedded in its company name (also the name of the Page).  Yet Sole Provider Sneakers sells a lot of Nike trainers and a search for ‘Nike’ would not have produced their Page in its results.

Facebook has to play a delicate balancing act here.  Ultimately, user activity, personal profiles, user content, sharing and discussion are the currency of social networks such as Facebook.  The company needs to avoid giving users the impression that they are being marketed to via the network, failure to do this could well become its undoing.

One way around this could be for Facebook to adopt a model similar to Google’s Universal Search, which would allow users to chose and filter the types of results that are presented to them via Facebook Search.  This could be built into the privacy settings that Facebook has been so keen to promote recently.

Interestingly, Google listed Facebook as a formal competitor for the first time in a recent 10K filing, as reported by SearchEngineLand:

Our business is characterized by rapid change and converging, as well as new and disruptive, technologies. We face formidable competition in every aspect of our business, particularly from companies that seek to connect people with information on the web and provide them with relevant advertising. We face competition from:

•   Traditional search engines, such as Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corporation’s Bing.
• Vertical search engines and e-commerce sites, such as WebMD (for health queries), Kayak (travel queries), Monster.com (job queries), and Amazon.com and eBay (commerce). We compete with these sites because they, like us, are trying to attract users to their web sites to search for product or service information, and some users will navigate directly to those sites rather than go through Google.  
• Social networks, such as Facebook, Yelp, or Twitter. Some users are relying more on social networks for product or service referrals, rather than seeking information through traditional search engines. (my emphasis)

Some subtle and simple changes to Facebook Search would accelerate the trend towards Facebook and other social networks as a primary channel for Search. 

The challenge for marketers will (continue to be) to resist the tempation to sell via social networks and to engage with social networking users in a way that adds value, build relationships, earns trust and facilitates creativity and connectivity.  Facebook will have to manage the sensitivities of its users delicately but if managed well Facebook could become a natural home to Search, delivering value to users and marketers alike.