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.

From Jacquie:

ClickZ brings you New Year’s Digital Resolutions.

There’s a lot of chatter about the Do Not Track happening in the States right now especially how it is going to affect Canada. I really feel that the issue is lack of proper education about what behavioural targeting really is, but until some education happens all I can do is watch the articles that arise. This latest on by eMarketer states that Men are more open to Online Tracking then Women.

I thought I had the fastest thumb in the west when it came to texting, but a new US report states teens 13 – 17 are sending and receiving on average 3,700 texts per month!

From Charissa:

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you didn’t need to be searching for the DVD remote everytime you wanted to watch a move?  Microsoft is looking to give you the ability to start a movie by waving your arms or talking to the machine!

Very cool! Hopefully Google Translate comes sooner than later…

In 1993 AT&T made a few predictions on what they thought would be developed in future technologies in their You Will ad campaign and were amazingly accurate.

From Alexander:

Fun with Facebook ads. Knowing your demographic can make advertising a bit more fun as Panasonic demonstrates in a Facebook ad featuring the Rage Guy. This is a quickly little ad that plays on a popular online meme.

Set up your social campaign carefully!  Suffolk tourist board embarrassed. How would you like this to be the face of your cities local tourism iniative? Suffolk tourism tried to find the most iconic images that represented their town, and this is what they got. Always keep in mind that orginized groups of people online can serious impact open polling – just ask Justin Beiber

Global Spam is down, but is still responsibly for 50 BILLION messages a day!

Here is a list of mid-late week items that your DSA Online team found interesting:

From Jacquie:

Get back all your embarrassing new Facebook disasters with new download function.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9189778/Download_Your_Facebook_Photos_Posts_and_More

Goodbye Internet Explorer, Hello new and better browsers

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/internet_explorer_drops_below_50_market_share_worl.php

From Alexander:

A little bit of light content for a Friday Afternoon:

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyimages/1452.gif

Here is a list of mid-late week items that your DSA Online team found interesting:

From Jacquie:

Online Censorship Bigger than you thought – http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/09/21/google.transparency/

Boatloads of articles about Netflix in Canada -

• Netflix plants actors in the audience – Apologizes to Canadians
• Blockbuster’s uncertain future
• What Netflix CEOs hope the US won’t notice about Cdn service

From Kathryn:

I love Jacquie’s cross section of articles on the Netflix launch in Canada. While saddened that Netflix left a bitter taste with the Cdn community after their TO hijinks (great local blog post with links to the latest Netflix creative), I am hopeful that they have learned their lesson. Honesty & transparency wins online. How many times do I need to say it? I have been hooked up to my netflix since yesterday and believe me, it’s changed my viewing habits. Not having cable for the past 8 years, it was a special kind of surprise logging into the streaming system. I turned on my TV, I selected a movie, it started. That easy. Even better – the app access is through my PS3, so I don’t have to buy into any other TV streaming system. I am getting caught up on Heroes season 3 as I cannot get back-issues from most local TV station sites. Honestly, I don’t see any reason to return to the station streams. They have not upgraded their service and the ads are still atrocious (loud, repetitive, message burn-out, limited selection). Sorry traditional TV. I believe you’ve lost online. Time will tell if Netflix will continue to provide new and timely content to Canadians, but with a launch complete with MadMen, I’ve got some catching up before I start complaining.

I also don’t think that Netflix is trying to compete with local TV viewership. They are definitely going to woo over the non-traditional viewing crowd and establish a young/tech-saavy viewer audience that will never go back to cable (why buy forced content you don’t care about or support a system that has exclusive deals, ie Canucks + Rogers?). While the TV stations are fighting against each other, negotiating proprietary content lock-outs and worrying about ad dollars, the content is being aggregated in a different way online and users will come. Traditional TV does have some time before they see online erode at their big hit shows, but if Hulu comes North, I officially call local TV streaming dead in Canada.

It’s been a week (or two) of great musical contributions online. It might just be that our network is super conscious of musical videos these days because we’re working on a musical contribution of our own (see the DSA Media blog for future updates), but whatever the cause, I’m happy to bring you this week’s musical link contribution:

I still believe that OK Go’s departure from the traditional label distribution agreement was one of the best things to happen to the internet. I have lost count of how many videos they have released from their Of the blue colour of the sky album (score extra points for the spelling of colour). Each video they put out, I imagine them celebrating their decision:

Weezer follows up their Pork & Beans celebration of memes with a pre-Hurley launch across multiple web-celeb casts: http://mashable.com/2010/09/13/weezer-youtube/

Katy Perry brightens up Sesame Street. But SS & the internet thinks it’s too risqué. What do you think?

Finally, what’s more encouraging than a call from industry professional asking the world of digital media to pick up it’s socks and start working as a community? This AdAge article encouraged the crap out of me this week and gave me hope that we, as a group, can clean up the mess that has become online advertising. Give this a read and then head over to the IAB Canada website. Do you have an idea? Do you want to change the online ad community for the better? Speak up! Currently the IAB is pretty focused in the East and unless you like getting up at 5:30AM PST to be on any of the councils, you’ll likely be frustrated with the process currently in place. But, don’t be discouraged. Send your ideas directly to the IAB Canada council and have your ideas presented by proxy.

UPDATE: Read the excellent first comment below from the president of the IAB Canada inviting western Canada advertisers, publishers & agencies to attend the upcoming Mixx Roadshows in Calgary & Vancouver and be updated on some new developments out West!!