Facebook: Flash in the pan?

Facebook: Flash in the pan or here for the long haul?

The stakes are high for Mark Zukerberg’s Facebook, but are the users still playing ball? Reports suggest that Facebook will go public in early 2012 with a value of around $100billion. And as we’ve reported before, display ads on social networks were the biggest growth area for ad revenue in the financial year to March 2011, worth over £25 billion in the UK alone.

According to the Boston Herald, Facebook refuted claims that it lost six million US users in May alone and 1.25 million users dropped off in Canada in the same month. Here in the UK reports are rife that the site has lost one hundred thousand users so far in June. Overall the figures are still up, as emerging territories like Brazil and Mexico are seeing the rapid take-up that was once reported in the triad. There’s talk on twitter in the UK that this sort of loss always happens around June, as GCSE and A-Level students suspend accounts to avoid distraction before reinstating them after exams and that US students tend to cancel and restart accounts once graduating from college. However market research agency, Inside Facebook, note that growth on the site does seem to stagnate, and even decline, once penetration reaches fifty percent.

With this being the second month in a row that Facebook’s growth has been slower than normal, we’re all being quick to ask if the bubble has burst? But Facebook will keep growing as it adds new territories, just think how the numbers will grow when China gets onboard. We may not love the site quite as much as we once did but we’re not cancelling our profiles just yet...