Facebook Is Losing UsersA drop in membership, but why?

By Kari Lipschutz
Courtesy of Adweek.com

In January of this year, we were faced with an inexplicable phenomenon. Birds were falling dead from the sky. Now we may be faced with a similarly baffling conundrum. Facebook is losing users.


According to Inside Facebook, a news service dedicated to tracking Facebook trends, the social networking site lost 6 million of its American users last month, bringing the U.S. total to 149.4 million and marking the first drop in membership in more than a year. Canada, the U.K., Norway, and Russia also experienced losses. Despite continued growth in worldwide membership numbers, the loss of users in early adopter countries could be a harbinger of things to come.

Facebook Insider observed that membership growth in a country tends to grind to a halt once half of the country’s total population is logging on. There aren’t many teased out explanations to the phenomenon just yet, but short attention spans for technology and increasing frustrations with privacy controls could be plausible causes.