Researchers
at Princeton University has predicted that the most popular social network
site, Facebook could see a mass exodus of up to 80% of its users between 2015
and 2017.
The researchers
have likened Facebook’s rapid growth to the spread of an infectious disease
which spreads to many people and then die out over time.
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| Image: vr-zone.com |
“Ideas, like
diseases, have been shown to spread infectiously between people before
eventually dying out, and have successfully described with epidemiological
models,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
“Ideas are
spread through communicative contact between different people who share ideas
with each other. Idea manifesters ultimately lose interest with the idea and no
longer manifest the idea, which can be thought of as the gain of ‘immunity’ to
the idea.”
The popular
example used was the social network MySpace which was founded in 2003, reached
its peak in 2008 with 76 million unique monthly visits in the US before fading
into obscurity by 2011.
However, this
research should be taken with a pinch of salt because it is only a theory
without hard facts to support it. Although Facebook has expressed concerns
about reduction in young teen users, it has not shown a big decrease in its
overall user base.
The study has
also not been peer reviewed and did I say it was conducted by engineers? I guess
only time will tell if Facebook will dominate for a long time. It must be noted
that Facebook was founded a year after MySpace in 2004.
Realistically,
it looks more like Facebook knocked MySpace out rather than people getting fed
up of MySpace.
Via Telegraph
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Facebook could lose 80 percent of users by 2017 says researchers