Well for me Facebook has been and always will be what ever you make it to be!



Also I find these statistics biased and misleading, in order for them to be a 100% reliable indicator of user behaviour, the number of users from this year and last year have to be exactly the same, no increase and no decrease of users. Maybe last year there were only 1.5 million 16-25 year old users, and this year the number has increased to 4 million (these are all fictacious numbers) 50% of 4 million is significantly higher then 55% of 1.5 million, which would show an increase of users not a decrease, even if the slice of pie is smaller then last years'



Also it is too easy to blame a certain demographic, and say these people are making it uncool. As in it's very nature facebook is about networking, and the people included in your network are normally people you know, your friends, those that are in your actual real social network. So if there was a group of 70 year old nursing home residents networking on facebook it wouldn't change your perspective of facebook as you would probably have no interaction with them on facebook anyway.



Instead we have to look at the nature of fashions, what is cool this year, won't necessarily be cool next year, what attracts people today won't necessarily attract people tomorrow, so the problem here is not who uses it, but the vision and attractiveness of the people designing and building facebook, and their ability to keep it fresh and relevant in a constantly changing world.



Simon
DJ_Symcard, Aug 7, 2009 @ 14:32

I think there is lacking information in the presentation of those statistics but I don't think they're misleading. It's just a blog post, the full data are probably presented in some article in a journal that nobody reads. For statistics to be reliable, they certainly don't have to be drawn from identical sample sizes, each sample just has to contain enough people to make a statistical analysis meaningful.



It looks to me like you can do this study standing outside Migros asking 2 questions

1. How old are you?

2. Do you regularly check Facebook.



That's the way I read it. Trends are expressed by fractions of the population. By doing that, you don't have to get the same number of people between the 2 years, or the same number of 15-24s or 25-34s; you just need to stand outside Migros long enough to get a high enough number of people in each bin. The missing piece of information is the size of the sample. Whether you are working in the domain of large numbers or not. These percentage changes: 55% to 50%; 46 to 40% are rather narrow. For example, if the sample is 100 people, then 50% and 55% are statistically equivalent. If the sample is 10,000 people they are not.

hayes, Aug 7, 2009 @ 15:17

Oh, right, yeah. Anyway, the point: these trends aren't the least bit shocking, are they. Didn't the kids find Facebook first? And doesn't it stand to reason that they should get bored of it first as well? Aren't we just on that part of the curve right now? What are the chances that in one year's time the data will be saying that 35-44 usage is waning while it's rising among the 45-54s?





I always wondered about those "teens don't feel safe on social networks" thing. I never read the articles but well, what does it actually mean?

1. They are worried about the facebook database being sold to third parties and their private data being exploited? .... I doubt it.
2. They are worried about those stupid chain messages that say user XXXXXX is a hacker and he will hack your account and slaughter your animals if you don't forward this to everyone in your address book? ..... Maybe, but..... I doubt it.
3. They are worried that their parents will see pictures of them smoking cigarettes.

hayes, Aug 7, 2009 @ 15:25