“Facebook is dying,” says Diamond Bar High School student David Park. With rising questions over its new features and privacy settings, Facebook’s once massive growth rate now touches the other end of the stick.
In July 2012, not only did Facebook experience a 1.1 percent decline in American users, but also an evident decrease in 14 of its 23 involved nations with 50 percent penetration. What had happened to Facebook that caused such change of tide?
“It’s all the changes they’re making! They make so many unnecessary changes that users don’t even like,” postulated DBHS senior Justin Park. “I’ve also been hearing that Facebook now allows the government to tap into private data!”
According to a segment by SourceFed, a YouTube informative channel, Facebook has installed a new software that does indeed allow governmental access to even its “private” communication methods. With such drastic changes, many disappointed users are slowly moving away from the network.
With a small-scale research done at DBHS campus, 14 out of 30 (46.67%) students stated they do not feel as safe as they did on the networking site compared to how they felt a year prior. Also, a whopping 26 students stated their contempt with Facebook’s constant changes that really “made things even worse.” With the introduction of Timeline, Facebook received a barrage of critical reception on teen-dominant networking sites such as Reddit, Twitter, and even Facebook itself. With a heavy online population of teens on the site, losing popular reception of teenage consumers will undoubtedly cause turmoil for the man in charge – Mark Zuckerberg.
Additionally, under the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, Facebook scored a 61, indicating a 7 percent decrease since last year, allowing rival network Google+ to surpass them.
Although Facebook is still a flourishing company, with millions to billions of users, people are now questioning its perseverance. Will Facebook rebound back into a positive growth sequence, or will it succumb to the depths of declination like the once prominent Myspace?
