
Facebook monthly visits down 5% in April - Kroeler
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2018/05/facebook-similarweb-cambridge-analytica.html
======
beager
I love me a good Facebook bashing article as much as the next guy, but these
numbers have no context to implicate the CA scandal as causative. Is this
related to seasonality? Is it outside the bounds of normal fluctuation month-
over-month? Is it US-only or international traffic as well?

~~~
endorphone
This is completely anecdotal, but the whole data privacy issue had me do a
full audit of all of my own activity, overhauling a lot of my activities. I
had mostly used Facebook as a news feed, and in the wake I purged Facebook
from my devices (much better battery life, as an aside, but maybe a placebo),
and visit maybe once a day, sometimes two, just to quickly catch up on
friends. Previously I'd visit dozens of times a day to catch up on surfaced
news, etc. It was my leisure and bedtime go to and now it's a fringe.

I subscribed to the NY Times and Washington Post. I re-bookmarked sites like
Anandtech and Ars for periodic visits. I changed how I use services like
Google at the same time. It's a whole other issue, but just the long
contemplation about this had me switch from my GS8 to what was my development
iPhone 8 as my daily driver.

I know I'm just one person, but quite a few people have made similar
proclamations, and among peers I know several just finally abandoned the site
(the whole fake news things already starting the flow). These sorts of
periodic issues just blend away when a site is on a dramatic growth curve and
it just gets drowned out, but Facebook had essentially peaked, so they're
really in a position to only lose users.

~~~
tracker1
I use FaceSlim myself, which seems to do much better, mostly a web view with a
useragent that gets the older less-gimped mobile facebook website, and can
send/view messages still.

I'm keeping messenger for now, only because my GF is in another state, and
it's the most consistent way to video chat (which is a shame).

~~~
SamLevin88
Messenger is actually the worst variant from what I understand. Apparently
this app's data collection practices are worse than simply using the browser
or Facebook native app

~~~
sundvor
Messenger Lite is probably a lot better. I use that, and FB in a Browser, on
my mobile.

Good thing that FB georestricted the app from Play Store, leaving dodgy
operators to fill its space and deliver spyware bombs instead. /s

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aphextron
It's really funny having gotten rid of Facebook years ago, seeing people talk
about how they're "trying to cut back" instead of just dropping the dumb
thing. It's like listening to drug addicts.

~~~
jpamata
You are assuming that Facebook is intrinsically negative, which is not always
the case. It certainly has its pros and cons. For example, my parents use FB
to find and connect with old friends from grade school. Some use it to know
about local events. Some use it to promote their business or their fledgling
indie band.

Aside from this, in my home country, the Philippines, SMS & telephone services
are expensive. Being a 3rd world archipelago country, infrastructure in the
provinces is so bad that cabled & optic internet is not available for a lot of
people. Facebook is a gem in my country in that they provide free internet for
anyone utilising FB's services with a smartphone (you can buy cheap 2nd hand
android phones there for less than $20). The folks here use FB's services to
keep themselves updated with the world as well as to call/chat. It's a great
way to connect and recently people don't even memorise their phone numbers
anymore and instead, people ask each other for their facebook.

~~~
herbst
Honestly this sounds super evil. By providing free access they essentially
eliminate all the (better) alternatives while having a steadily high
artificial usage rate.

~~~
jpamata
I believe it's one of the reasons why India is rejecting free FB. Unlike
India, the Philippine infrastructure is fragmented and offers little to no
better alternatives which is why most are welcoming them in the country.

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chiefalchemist
Each user making .5 less visits over 30 days? Alone it's meaningless. We need
context.

\- How was length of visit effected?

\- What demographic(s)?

\- One month is not a trend!! Not even two is a trend. You need at least 3 to
see a trend.

\- If the drop was from the previous month, was that month (a typically) up
for some reason (e.g., another MSM driven political "controversy")

This kind of date / statistics / "analysis" abuse really bother me.

~~~
AznHisoka
these questions as well as:

\- is there a seasonality trend? Maybe FB’s trafffic goes down every april
(weather warmer perhaps?)

\- how did the total traffic to all websites change since March? how about to
Twitter or Pinterest? We need a benchmark!

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chrisco255
Personally, I disabled my account. I think it's been healthy. I'm not
necessarily a #deletefacebook supporter, but I do think social media gets
distracting and sometimes depressing. I don't want it influencing my mood as
much. That being said, a good federated, decentralized social network can't
come soon enough, in my opinion.

~~~
matte_black
Begging your pardon, but how is a decentralized social network supposed to be
healthier than a centralized one?

Isn’t it still going to be full of the same garbage?

Isn’t this like quitting cigarettes then getting vaped?

~~~
kuroguro
Isn't vaping way healthier, less smelly and less of a bother to the people
around you? Seems like a decent upgrade.

~~~
matte_black
How does that analogy fit back into decentralized social networks?

~~~
kuroguro
I was trying to say that it's a bad analogy. It seems to contradict what you
said earlier.

~~~
matte_black
I think vaping has been shown to be just as bad for you if not worse.

~~~
fenwick67
It's very hard to be more unhealthy than cigarettes.

~~~
matte_black
And yet vaping rose to the challenge.

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meritt
In my experience, panel-based traffic measurement services (SimilarWeb, Alexa,
Hitwise, Quantcast, ComScore, Nielsen) are useless when it comes to reality
and their primary role serves to make misleading news articles or convince
advertisers to waste a lot of money on overpriced media buys.

I'm not the only one with this opinion: [https://moz.com/blog/testing-
accuracy-visitor-data-alexa-com...](https://moz.com/blog/testing-accuracy-
visitor-data-alexa-compete-google-trends-quantcast)

------
zitterbewegung
Once we see their Q2 results then we might be able to conclude something.
Right now using this datasource its almost guesswork.

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asfasgasg
Is this seasonally adjusted, or just raw? Most big internet properties have
peaks in the winter and troughs during the summer.

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russell_h
So traffic is down 5% from March to April by these numbers.

But there are also 3% less days in April, so that's a lot less significant
than it seems.

~~~
nashashmi
And take into account that college kids are studying for exams. That is a
significant chunk of Facebook visits.

~~~
randomsearch
Surely revision means more Facebook use! Assuming procrastination remains at
historical levels.

~~~
nashashmi
For those like me who don't understand revision, it means review or restudy of
material, derivative of revise, or go over again.

Depends on how they are studying. If on the computer, then more Facebook. If
on textbook, then less.

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alex_young
Appears to be based on this:
[https://www.similarweb.com/website/facebook.com](https://www.similarweb.com/website/facebook.com)

Anyone know if it has any statistical significance? I have my doubts just from
the presentation.

~~~
brettz
I use SimilarWeb Pro and compare it to internal analytics and the variances
are often incorrect. Also this is website visits only when most FB activity
would be on native apps.

If you zoom out you can see that Facebook's web traffic has been on the
downtrend for awhile
[https://i.imgur.com/e9Mgjby.png](https://i.imgur.com/e9Mgjby.png). Also April
has one less day than March which wasn't mentioned.

~~~
AznHisoka
Their stats can be incredibly inaccurate. Yes they have perhaps the biggest
internet panel, but there are still lots more people who dont install browser
plugins (especially those in non-first world countries).

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obblekk
I don't think this data is correct.

FB has 1.4B Daily Active Users. 1.4B * 30 days = 42B visits/month. That's a
lower bound because many Facebook DAUs visit more than once per day.

So the baseline number that this blog cites (~22B visits/month) is almost
certainly incorrect.

-5% from that baseline might be significant, or it could be sampling bias.

~~~
randomsearch
Does anyone have a third party confirmation of that DAU number? I’ve heard
informally that this may be inflated.

------
textmode
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-
poll/thr...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-poll/three-
quarters-facebook-users-as-active-or-more-since-privacy-scandal-reuters-ipsos-
poll-idUSKBN1I7081)

[https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/KimBaraszJoh...](https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/KimBaraszJohn18_be5ba706-b8c3-4ac4-bb48-3cc462bb0e08.pdf)

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callumjones
How is this measured? I think the usage of their mobile apps is significantly
greater than visits to "facebook.com", you could argue then that more
customers are moving to apps only.

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BadassFractal
Realistically, most people have already forgotten or will really soon.

~~~
bluedino
It’s like when people quit going to Chipotle for a few months, but all went
back.

~~~
Retric
Short term hit's still represent huge 'fines' for bad behavior. Chipotle may
nominally make very little per customer but their fixed costs stay the same
either way so their actual losses are far more significant.

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bradgnar
thats legit max one person a month. bfd, nice clickbait.

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SilasX
You couldn't add the rest of the title, which mentions that this is 5%? That's
a much more relevant figure.

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lwansbrough
Facebook has around 1.5 billion _DAILY_ active users. So if we assume a user
only visits Facebook once a day (which seems to me like a laughably
conservative number), this is about 1 day's worth of visits.

Realistically, I'd expect the average user to open Facebook maybe thrice a
day, or more. Which means this is roughly ~1% of their monthly traffic.

The verdict: nobody gives a shit about their privacy enough to change their
habits.

~~~
uhnuhnuhn
It says in the article that the drop equals 5.15% of total visits. Please read
the article before commenting.

~~~
tracker1
Only from the sample... and April has fewer days than March. So it's not
_that_ big a difference. Day of the week composition in a month combined with
a day shorter month could account for that alone.

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erobbins
Demise of Facebook predicted on HN for the 835th time, this might finally be
the one.

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ausjke
Out of how many? 1.3B might be a drop in the bucket for FB.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _1.3B might be a drop in the bucket for FB_

Facebook earned $6.18 per user in Q4 of 2017 [1]. That's about $25 per yyear.
1.3bn users thus represent about $32.5 billion of revenues.

U.S. and Canadian ARPI was $27.76 for the same period [1]. Let's say 880% of
those #DeletingFacebook were from those, or similarly-lucrative, rregions.
Blended lost ARPU thus estimates to $23.44 per quarter. Across 1.3bn users,
that's $128 billion.

Far from a drop in the bucket.

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-
earnings-q4-2017-ar...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-
earnings-q4-2017-arpu.html)

~~~
jwommack
You're making the same mistake a lot of people are pointing out in this
thread, you're conflating Daily Active Users with Visits. If this were a
decline Daily Active Users it'd be a 100% loss, it's clearly not.

You'd have to figure out the value _per visit_ to reach a conclusion along the
lines you're attempting to make.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _You 'd have to figure out the value per visit to reach a conclusion along
> the lines you're attempting to make_

Fair enough. One can roughly adjust those figure by dividing by the number of
times the average Facebook user visits Facebook each month. This is nothing
existential. But it's still, likely, over a billion dollars of lost revenue.

~~~
yosito
> But it's still, likely, over a billion dollars of lost revenue.

I doubt Facebook earns anywhere near $1 per visit.

~~~
aylmao
Umm, it says right on the article.

> Assuming the average Facebook user visits the social network once a day,
> that would suggest an average of about 43 million less users during that
> month. In recent months, Facebook makes about $5 per user, per month -- i.e.
> some $215 million in potential lost revenue.

~~~
yosito
How do you get $1 per visit our of $5 per user per month?

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rajeshpant
And those people who decided not to visit facebook over Cambridge analytica
scandal made 1.5 billion visits on Instagram.

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organicmultiloc
Headline is almost as meaningless as COMPANY IPOS AT $20/SHARE

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nevir
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

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textmode
[deleted]

~~~
throwawaymath
You might want to read the privacy policy for the website you linked before
you use it as a rallying cry against Facebook. The irony is pretty amusing.

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carrja99
Good.

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zenovision
Social networks are boring. 99% of all posts are just attempts to convince
other people that you are better than you really are.

