Facebook’s Got Shrinkage

With almost 700 million members, some attrition on Facebook was inevitable but no one expected it to be in the numbers seen over the last few months.  In May alone, the top social networking site reportedly lost 6 million U.S. users along with 1.5 million in Canada and 100,000 in the United Kingdom. Still, even though these numbers seem like formidable losses on their own, they are just a drop in the bucket when taken in the context of Facebook’s total membership.

Why are they leaving?  Some theories range from the mundane (just normal user cycles) to the possible (serious privacy concerns) to the apocalyptic (the death of Facebook).

“It’s probably inevitable: Somehow, someday, Facebook will start to decline, just like its predecessors MySpace and Friendster. Its users will slowly lose interest, moving on to other networks and platforms (possibly Twitter, or whatever emerges from Apple’s iCloud). It seems impossible given Facebook’s colossal user base and rapid growth, but it would be far from the first complacent empire that fell.”

The most likely explanation just may be that Facebook lost users who were probably never really users to begin and never really should have signed up in the first place.

Regardless of the loss, Facebook doesn’t seem all that concerned about the loss (or at least that is the public face they are putting on). What’s their explanation?

“From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions,” the Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement to AFP. ”Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn’t designed to be a source for tracking the overall growth of Facebook.  We are very pleased with our growth and with the way people are engaged with Facebook.”

The most important fact to conclude on is that, even with the defections, Facebook membership actually grew 1.7 percent during in May. You win some, you lose some (and Facebook has been doing a lot more winning).