Could Facebook be dead by 2017? The social media giant took the world by storm, but now a study from Princeton says that Facebook could lose 80 percent of its users in a few short years. Can't believe it? You shouldn't--because it's highly unlikely.
There are several issues with the new study. The researchers made a few assumptions about social networks in general; more specifically, they likened social networks to the spread of an infectious disease. They did so since people tend to join networks when their friends do and also leave them when their friends do, according to the LA Times. This is similar to being infected by and then recovering from sickness.
In fact, the researchers turned to Myspace as an example. In this case, users joined and then "recovered" from the social network. Yet there's a flaw when it comes to Myspace; the social media site was actually killed by Facebook, according to TechCrunch. In addition, the study states that there are a declining number of searches for "Facebook." While true, this is mostly due to the rise of mobile apps.
That's not all, either. We search differently than we used to, and more Internet users type "Facebook.com" into their browser instead of doing a Google search for "Facebook," according to Time magazine. In addition, Facebook hasn't made the news recently, which means that there's less reason to type "Facebook" into a search engine.
"Applying models from the biological world to social networks and the broader online world isn't an unreasonable approach to studying the dynamics of what's happening today and why," wrote Alexander Howard, a fellow at the Two Center for Digital Journal at the Columbia Journalism School, to Time via Facebook messages. "Where this parallel falls a bit short is in its predictive value for abandonment."
So will Facebook soon face its demise? It's very unlikely. In fact, Facebook has responded by posting its own article debunking the recent study. More likely, Facebook will be around for a long time to come--on computer screens and on mobile apps across the globe.
