Tech

Facebook share value holds steady despite reported drop in users

by Charlie Smith on April 29th, 2013 at 10:03 AM
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      Subsequent to this article being posted on Straight.com, the CEO of SocialBakers, Jan Rezab, posted the following statement on the company's website:

      Sometimes, journalists get stats wrong. The Facebook stats found on our page are not primarily intended for journalists, but rather Ad estimates for marketers.

      We previously published a clarification to one of The Guardian’s articles three months ago (read more inClarification to Guardian on Facebook losing UK users). In this article, I explained the stats in question, revealed the source of the stats, and admonished journalists against jumping to conclusions about them going forward.

      Well, The Guardian did not heed the advice, jumping to an even bigger conclusion this time.

      We state, quite clearly, on our site that these figures are rough estimates and cannot be used to determine Facebook traffic. Again, we explained this to The Guardian when they published a similar story some months ago.

      To other journalists out there, the same thing applies to the UK and US Facebook stats as it did three months ago:

      • Around 50% of the UK's entire population is on Facebook – which is amazing!
      • About 15% of people in the UK are under 13 years old therefore “not allowed” on Facebook
      • 16.5% of people in the UK are older than 65 and typically not on Facebook (only 4% of 65+ year olds out of the 33M are on Facebook in UK)

      The bottom line here is that there is no story.

      --------------------------

      Here is the article that appeared on Straight.com before the statement was posted by Jan Rezab:

      This morning, the Guardian published an article indicating that Facebook may be starting to wear out its welcome with users.

      It cites an analysis by SocialBakers noting that the social-media site lost six million U.S. users last month—a drop of four percent.

      Over six months, the losses are even higher: nine million in the U.S. and two million in the U.K.

      "The problem is that, in the US and UK, most people who want to sign up for Facebook have already done it," new media specialist Ian Maude at Enders Analysis told the Guardian. "There is a boredom factor where people like to try something new. Is Facebook going to go the way of Myspace? The risk is relatively small, but that is not to say it isn't there."

      In light of this article, I decided to check out if there was any impact on Facebook's share price.

      Well, not exactly, at least not yet. The stock opened at $27.16 today and remained at that price a half hour before markets closed.

      That's a far cry from its all-time low of $17.55.

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