Facebook should be heralded for using a real user engagement metric in the advertising reach numbers. They could claim every registered user as a "user" but then they'd be lying (like most other services do).
Given the near total saturation in the US, it's not surprising that their monthly actives are starting to show some decay from the quality of installs going down as they grow as well as some seasonal affect.
Basically, the replacement rate of new installs in the US is lower than the number of people who have not been active in the past 30 days. If we had more granular data, I'd be willing to bet the loss is primarily in users who installed recently, not longer-tenure users losing interest or switching services. Like my mom.
there is a certain amount of short-term churn: people who signup and then leave again. if that rate hasn't changed we can ignore them, since the number leaving this month is made up by the number arriving now who will leave next month. it comes out in the wash.
then there's the slower loss of long term users, which needs to be balanced by keeping a few new signups.
so far, the above is more-or-less consistent with what you say. but then you end with a comment that somehow mixes the two, trying to explain a mismatch in the second process with people who "even out" in the first.
it would be better to say that one or both of the following (which describe decline in terms of the two processes outlined above) is happening:
A - the amount of churn is falling off. so the people present for only this month are less than the people who were only there last month.
B - long term uses that drift away aren't being replaced by new users.
because (B) eats into the entire user base, while (A) is relative to the new users per month, only (B) can explain a sustained decline (the first process can't explain a loss of more people than sign up per month).
so we can simply wait and see. if the decline is prolonged then it must be long-term users that are leaving and not being replaced.
as a guess, i would think the short-term churn has increased.
most heavy users of fb that i know are people that signed up a long time ago. it was an important part of their social life and most still use the site.
but recently, i've had a few more (older, less tech-savvy) friends on fb. they 'got around' to joining fb eventually. but because it wasn't as important to their social life to join, and they only bothered doing so after knowing about fb for a few years, they are more likely to drift away.
i don't know if that's true, but it doesn't sound too unreasonable.
Comments
Facebook should be heralded for using a real user engagement metric in the advertising reach numbers. They could claim every registered user as a "user" but then they'd be lying (like most other services do).
Given the near total saturation in the US, it's not surprising that their monthly actives are starting to show some decay from the quality of installs going down as they grow as well as some seasonal affect.
Basically, the replacement rate of new installs in the US is lower than the number of people who have not been active in the past 30 days. If we had more granular data, I'd be willing to bet the loss is primarily in users who installed recently, not longer-tenure users losing interest or switching services. Like my mom.
that seems a little confused to me.
there is a certain amount of short-term churn: people who signup and then leave again. if that rate hasn't changed we can ignore them, since the number leaving this month is made up by the number arriving now who will leave next month. it comes out in the wash.
then there's the slower loss of long term users, which needs to be balanced by keeping a few new signups.
so far, the above is more-or-less consistent with what you say. but then you end with a comment that somehow mixes the two, trying to explain a mismatch in the second process with people who "even out" in the first.
it would be better to say that one or both of the following (which describe decline in terms of the two processes outlined above) is happening:
A - the amount of churn is falling off. so the people present for only this month are less than the people who were only there last month.
B - long term uses that drift away aren't being replaced by new users.
because (B) eats into the entire user base, while (A) is relative to the new users per month, only (B) can explain a sustained decline (the first process can't explain a loss of more people than sign up per month).
so we can simply wait and see. if the decline is prolonged then it must be long-term users that are leaving and not being replaced.
as a guess, i would think the short-term churn has increased.
most heavy users of fb that i know are people that signed up a long time ago. it was an important part of their social life and most still use the site.
but recently, i've had a few more (older, less tech-savvy) friends on fb. they 'got around' to joining fb eventually. but because it wasn't as important to their social life to join, and they only bothered doing so after knowing about fb for a few years, they are more likely to drift away.
i don't know if that's true, but it doesn't sound too unreasonable.