I’m confused. The stats are telling me that more and more people are spending their time on Facebook. It is the social network of choice with over 350 million active users and new people flocking to the site at the rate of 650,000 per day. Yet people from all walks of like that I talk to are increasingly telling me they don’t use it that much and that they have a range of problems with it form it being maddeningly slow to being annoyed by fan pages and apps. I spent the holiday period questioning people from all walks of life that I met if and how they used Facebook and the response was overwhelmingly negative. Nearly everybody I spoke to had an account and checked it more than once a week but when I pressed further they couldn’t really come up with the answers as to why they used it or what for and there was an alarmingly negative tone towards the service that I hadn’t expected. Lets start off by looking at some of the stunning statistics around the service provided by Facebook themselves…
The Statistics
More than 350 million active users
50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
More than 35 million users update their status each day
More than 55 million status updates posted each day
More than 2.5 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts) shared each week
More than 3.5 million events created each month
More than 1.6 million active Pages on Facebook
More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans
Average user has 130 friends on the site
Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
Average user clicks the Like button on 9 pieces of content each month
Average user writes 25 comments on Facebook content each month
Average user becomes a fan of 2 Pages each month
Average user is invited to 3 events per month
Average user is a member of 12 groups
Quick Twitter Question
Then while researching this post I asked the following question on Twitter…”What do people honestly think of Facebook and how often do you use it?” and got the following range of answers…
Mobile Use The Future?
I don’t use Facebook much myself apart from for work but the one area that I do use it and see value is their mobile apps. I use it on the iPhone and it allows me to share content and see what people I know are up to. More and more people are using Facebook on the go and accessing from mobile devices when Facebook is blocked in Work. Indeed you just have to look at these stats from Facebook themselves to see just how big mobile is becoming for them…
- 65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
- People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
- There are more than 180 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products
I’d expect mobile to become far more important and help to accelerate the amount of content that is shared on Facebook over the coming years given that the devices we are using are better enabled to let us share content on the go.
Conflicts Of Interest
From everything that I have seen while researching this people seem to really love Facebook as a communication tool as it’s a great way of keeping in touch and sharing content. The problems seem to arise around applications and the noise around the stream. The big issue is that advertisers, marketers and brands have realized that they need to hang out in a place that has over 350 million users and it is a great opportunity to convert some of those people in to customers. Facebook are stuck in the middle somewhere trying to keep two very different groups of people happy and that is not the easiest thing to do but if they do get it right and keep both camps happy all the way through to IPO they will justify the faith of their investors and make a small fortune.
A solution
What about a solution for people who don’t want to see ads or applications and just want to use all the great features on the site without being targeted by brands and advertisers? What about a paid service? $5 a month to have a stripped down version that was clean and didn’t feature all the rubbish. Would you be willing to pay that sort of money? $60 a year for an amazing free platform free of brands, apps and advertising? If Facebook did have that option and even 10 million users (less than 3%) signed up they would be raking in $50 million a month. Would it work? Would people be willing to pay?
What Do You Think?
Do you log in every single day like the millions of others? Is the platform not for you at all? Are you happy with it as it is or would you like a stripped back version with no ads and just some simple tools to communicate with your friends and family? Where do you think Facebook is headed?
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Personally I love Facebook, over 50% of my trafic comes from there. I mostly use it for the Page feature and I only friend people who are really my friends.
For all the negative feedback about farmville, mafiawars,etc. I agree with you, but now it’s history with Facebook Purity:
http://steeev.freehostia.com/wp/2009/03/19/facebook_purity_cleans_up_the_facebook_homepage/
Yeah I had a ton of people who liked the business who used to send friend requests before pages existed so now that they are there it is much better as easier to keep business and personal apart.
I don’t like Facebook all that much either. I’m more of a twitter kind of guy and then moving from twitter to e-mail if needed. I mostly use Facebook because everyone else does, but I maybe log-in a few times a week and don’t do much unless someone has contacted me, although I have upped my activity there the last month.
It is amazing Henri how many people said that they logged in all the time but didn’t really do anything with it just like you! I defo prefer Twiter myself too but there is far more rich media content type stuff that you can do with Facebook. Each to their own I suppose
Facebook is a strange animal. You can’t dismiss the stats, but it really is like a department store. Too much of everything for everyone. Customization would really help here.
I find facebook is used more for personal interactions, not business related. I get my business info mainly on facebook and RSS feeds. Facebook brings me closer to those I know offline, family and friends. At the end of the day, its simply a tool. If it brings you value… great! If not, its simply a waste of time.
You the beauty of Facebook is that here is a lot of customizing you can do under the hood and playing with settings etc but the fact is that most people don’t really bother and wouldn’t have a clue where to start with that sort of stuff.
Hi Niall, I am only starting to come to terms with facebook, but so far I find it a cumbersome tool particularly for biz networking which is my main interest. That been said, you can’t ignore the stats so perhaps I just have lots more to learn
Yeah it is useless really for business networking unless you want to do business with your circle of friends. I’d defo be sticking to Linkedin and Twitter for that sort of networking
To me, Facebook as a user experience is about a 2 out of 10. I can’t stand it, yet, I can’t ignore it either.
This may sound strange, but I wish there were truly a “friend” facebook and a “business” facebook. I use facebook for business way more than for friends. Most of my “friends” are now business acquaintances and although you can separate somewhat now with lists, it’s still not easy.
In general, I find the whole system incredibly clunky and unintuitive. It’s like when you were a kid and you built a lego tower that started out with a small base but then you started making it wider and bigger as you built it up to the point that it became very unbalanced and fell over. Facebook feels like it’s about to fall over. It feels so cobbled together and top-heavy.
John your comment has described the whole problem better than I ever could in a whol blog post. I defo agree when you say that it is clunky and top heavy. I have never enjoyed the experience on the site and I really just don’t feel comfortable surfing around it. Don’t even get me started on the FBML that they use on the “Pages”, that is a whole different blog post in itself!
Niall, I went through a similar thought process when I along with my friends were often complaining about Facebook and how useless it was. However, there is no better substitute and I think that’s where much of the frustration comes from. Many of us have invested the time to build our profiles, establish our networks, upload our photos, and fan and follow our favorite celebs/companies/causes that the likelihood of doing that all over again elsewhere is extremely low. Unfortunately, Facebook touts openness but a simple way of transferring your information from one platform to another hasn’t been well executed as far as I know.
In the meantime, I think we all may say we’re on it a little less and may not interact with it as much but the numbers speak for themselves.
Yeah it is true that physically and emotionally we have all committed a lot to Facebook over the last few years. I think it acts as a central hub for us all in that there are far better places to store our pitures online but because we are on Facebook already and it is in front of us we just add them there. I can’t see anything competing with it in the long run so we better get used to it
I haven’t really dug into Facebook as much as I should. It’s a huge resource.
I’d be willing to spend a collaborative day on Skype or Wave with anyone who wants to work on fan pages or business pages. We would learn a lot! This week is full, early next week would be great!
Done a couple of posts on here Dave that cover pages in some good detail including videos of how to set them up and some other posts on the 10 best Facebook pages for small businesses etc. You should be able to get the hang of i quite quickly with your programing skills, took me a bit longer as had to learn it all from scratch!
http://lite.facebook.com/ – facebook without all the crap
If you don’t like all the farmville stuff (which I hate) try the facebook lite version http://lite.facebook.com/
Cheers Daniel and MJ, have started using lite a little bit more myself recently. The big problem here is that as soon as lots of people started using it there is no way it would stay ad free
I love FB. I think it is great for personal relationships and I think it still has great potential for business use as well. Like any good highly dynamic interactive site FB will need to evolve or go the way of MySpace (remember them? lol).
I hate failbook completely. But I still use it because I’m a hypocrite and it’s a good way to keep in touch with friends. I have real trouble maintaining friendships over time and failbook at least let’s me keep tabs on what past friends are doing and gives me a point of contact if I ever need to talk to them or get in touch for something.
Also, it’s a get stalking tool to find out more about a person without being too overt. I usually do research on women who I may potentially want to date on failbook, because sometimes I misjudge women due to the fact that they’re so good looking. Don’t hate me for it, I am after all a simple man who is at the mercy of his hormones. Anyway, failbook let’s me look at their page and see what they’re into and what they like. I have particular warning flags I look out for. Examples include being fans of idiotic trends, being a fan of Twilight, etc. If I see any of these, I immediately lose interest. Which then leads to some confusion because the girls look at the fact that I’ve added them on failbook and think I am interested.
This is why I’ll never use failbook for business. It’s there for my own amusement and fun. However with all the advertising and invasive fan pages and groups lately it has become much less fun.
Although I did find it highly amusing when failbook started the group polls to gauge customer satisfaction over the changes they implemented and had a ration of about 1 million for every 10k for.
I love facebook and it’s a good plate forum for meeting friends and marking free of cost.