DSA Online | New Media Updates

A rather dubious report has been circling the internet today, and since it’s been picked up by several large news providers, I thought it merited commenting on.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/06/are-people-using-facebook-less-growth-slowing-u-s-canada.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/20110613/tc_digitaltrends/facebooktrafficplummetsintheus

Facebook is not failing in Canada, despite what these misleading stats would have you believe.

The articles use stats without enough context and leave out key information to sensationalize a story. Aside from general seasonal fluctuations that have been commented on by others already, the numbers they are using are misleading or flat out wrong.

The numbers being quoted are from Facebook’s self-serve advertising interface, and represent total active users within the last 30 days; it is not a accurate list of membership. These numbers are estimate at best, as when you apply targeting parameters such as geographic areas, the reach in a given area will often exceed the actual population. This number represents all active profiles, included multiple profiles, and doesn’t differentiate between inactive users and deleted profiles.

In Canada, ComScore is the primary measurement tool for measuring online activity and it has reported growth in Facebook’s reach in Canada every single month since May 2009 (as far back as I have info on file). Their numbers actually exceed Facebook’s profile count, as they estimated a reach of 21.1 million users in May (84% of the estimated online population). The extra traffic would be non-registered users that still end up viewing Facebook pages (fan pages, pictures linked from other sites etc.)

The most glaring problem I have with this article is that  they are using a slow down in new user growth as an indicator that the site is losing steam. As mentioned, Facebook already reaches 84% of Canadians, growth has to slow as a market reaches total saturation. Countries with high penetration simply don’t have any population left to add to the numbers. Look at Reddit.com in comparison: in Canada the estimate reach of Reddit increased by over 450% since March 2010 (noting that the traffic does swing wildly month to month), in the same period Facebook grew by only about 4%. Yet Facebook’s actual number increase was 937,000, compared to reddit’s increase of 345,000. Yes, Facebook’s percentage growth is small, but the actual increase in traffic is huge.

There are also glaring omissions from the source article when reported by newspapers:

“Bugs in the Facebook advertising tool that we draw this information from, seasonal changes like college graduations, and other short-term factors, can influence numbers month to month and obscure what’s really happening.”

…and this bit, covered by the LA Times, but ignored by Yahoo:

“Still, by the time Facebook reaches around 50% of the total population in a given country (plus or minus, depending on internet access rates in that country), growth generally slows to a halt, as we’ve noted before.”

That million user drop in Canada?

“Canada also fell significantly, by 1.52 million down to 16.6 million, although it has been fluctuating around that number for the past year.”

Facebook is an easy target and has generated a lot of backlash on privacy and security issues in the past; news sources know it makes a great headline. However, these articles are entirely based on a single report based on numbers generated by a self-serve advertising platform that is known to be a broad estimate at best. The source article admits these numbers are prone to fluctuation and even opens their article with the following quote, omitted by the newspapers:

“As we note below, we’ll need to wait to see what the long-term trends really are before knowing if Facebook is continuing to grow in the US and other countries.”

That omission speaks volumes about the quality of this content.

As a parting item, the poster of the original report has a follow up article today: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/06/13/available-data-shows-facebook-user-numbers-growing-quickly-or-slowly-or-falling/ This article indicates that other reporting source cannot corroborate the initial findings, and ComScore number in the US match the trends I’ve mentioned for Canada.

I like routines. I set the alarm on my phone before bed. It goes off. I hit snooze. I hit snooze again. And then, on the third prompt, I turn off the alarm, sit up in bed, and thumb through the morning’s email on my phone.

If you subscribe to as many group buying services as I do, you’ll probably find an inbox full of daily deals. Every morning, most services deliver their email at a scheduled time, which is hours before I’m awake. And in my early morning fog, I skim the lump of deals and usually forget about them within minutes as I move on to my next task.

But every day, one service gets my full attention, simply because they aren’t on a set schedule. Sometimes their email comes late morning, other times early afternoon, but always after the early morning rush. Do they do it intentionally?

It’s a common marketing strategy to schedule emails and tweets around 9am to hit the rush of office workers during their morning routine. Since most of my group emails arrive between 6-7am, I started to wonder if it was just a case of eastern-based companies not paying attention to western time zones.

As a test, I signed up for a few of these services with Toronto as my location, and I found that the emails were adjusted for time zone, coming a few hours earlier, around 3-4am my time or still 6-7am local. So it appears to be a strategic attempt to appeal to our inner early bird to catch the deal worm, or simply let the early risers generate momentum and ‘tip’ the deal as soon as possible to maximize the buying window.

But in a saturated market, it’s not surprising that some are choosing to stand out with a more unpredictable approach. They may risk getting missed on a hectic day, but the staggered delivery has definitely demanded more of my attention.

While preparing an SEO review for a client, I stumbled upon notice of some revisions to the Google Algorithm. In an attempt to cut down spam and promote original content, the update filters down auto-blog software and websites that simply copy and paste other people’s content onto their own site. Imagine the frustration of pounding out your electronic Iliad on, say, the connection between Stephanie Meyer books and increased divorce rates in Canada, and then seeing other sites poach your content (without adding any value) and outrank you on search results.

For some, the race is now on to find ways to exploit this latest change, but, as has been said ad nauseam, content is king. Establishing and following best practices remains important for SEO results, but it’s refreshing that Google has made it easier for writers to focus more on message and less on bending their words around shifting SEO targets.

From Alexander:

This isn’t online related, but past reports indicate that people that time shift their view (watching recording TV on a PRV/DVR) make up a very small percentage of total viewing. This may be the case for the overall market; however, last week’s episode of Fringe showed very different numbers, with time-shifting accounting for 42% of viewers.   Though this is a single case, representing a single show, it does show that different audiences can have very different consumption habits.

San Francisco may be banning the unsolicited delivery of Yellow Pages phone books. This could be another nail in the coffin for the Yellow pages, as hard copy directories becomes increasingly irrelevant in our society.

From Zac:

After months of anticipation and delays, the iPad-only magazine The Daily launched yesterday. A $30 million (and counting) investment backed by Rupert Murdoch, the subscription based service offers an interactive news experience for viewers. But as should be expected, the early reviews were mixed.

On Mashable, Patrick Kerley discusses whether The Daily could do for news what iTunes did for music. He notes that even with a price point of $39.99 a year, it’s still about forty bucks more than the average online consumer would like to pay.

Meanwhile, Lauren Indvik is quite critical of The Daily’s content, saying that the news section is “extremely weak.” After Egypt and the snow storm, the top stories were about convicted murderers making kid toys and a canine version of Studio 54 in Manhattan. Ruh-roh.

For advertisers, the potential is intriguing. The Daily includes interactive and customizable ad units, which, coupled with the targeted subscription profile, creates an interesting niche product. Early sponsors include HBO, Macy’s, Pepsi and Verizon.

From Jacquie:

You’ve seen a couple of links or posts in the past several weeks regarding behavioural targeting and it’s future, why it’s good or bad, and our thoughts on it. Since it’s such a hot topic I’ve seen several articles relating to the issue , but this one really stuck with me. It put things a little in perspective; that maybe instead of freaking out about BT and what’s collected (and should Johnny be embarrassed that Betty from advertiser A knows he watched porn online last night), we should be paying more attention to who has the data collected and how can that data be used more effectively. Maybe we should all be educated a little more on the data conversation…

And to follow up to last weeks links about Netflix…you can find the list of providers and their performance here.

From Shannon:

Though the stats in this article are primarily from the US, it is interesting to see what our southern neighbors are watching as 2011’s top tech trends