Researchers at Princeton had a field day this week when they said that one of the largest social media sites is headed to doom land. Their reports concluded that Facebook would end up losing about 80% of some of its peak users in just three years from 2015 to 2017. As expected the research report naturally went viral.
Mike Develin Facebook’s data scientist did not take this lightly as he was not prepared to let them have the final word on the issue. To reply to this a tongue- in- cheek response was written by Develin saying that if similar methods were used it would seem that studies would reveal that Princeton was headed for an early exit out of the market and that it would disappear forever. He continued to say that one of the main problems with the report was that Princeton researches did not use the appropriate methods to study the social media. This is because they utilized a tool known as Google Trends to find out how many times individuals searched for the word “Facebook” on the search engine Google over the past several years.
The report showed that the search for the social media site has declined over the years. It was duly noted that when Bebo and MySpace were going under, their searches on Google for these terms also declined and this is how they came to the conclusion that Facebook was headed in the right direction. It is however important to note that it was not as simple as it may sound as there were numerous mathematical modeling that was involved to come up with the results.
This led Develin to study the likes of Princeton on Facebook as well as the searches it got on Google and found out that they were also on decline. This also made him declare that the trend suggested that only half of Princeton current enrollment would exist by the time it was 2018. If this goes on it shows that there would be absolutely no students at all by 2021. This was based on strong scientific analysis that goes ahead to show that future generations will only hear stories or image what the institution was all about.
As if this was not enough, he went ahead to drop his punch line that really did it for him. He finished off by saying that despite the fact that they were really concerned about the university, Facebook was thinking more about the planet’s fate. This was more about Google Trends whose popularity has also been steadily declining. During this study, the projections showed that by 2060, people will not be using it to get to know the trends that are happening online. Under this scoff that has been demonstrated by Develin, there is a huge concern about the future of Facebook. The social media site will have been in existence for a decade comes 4th February. Will it be able to last for more decades? Develin suggested that individuals look at the real data usage for Facebook on a daily basis to know the answer to this as his data reveals that it’s still on the upsurge.
