Neilsen/Netrankings has released some figures which show a monthly decline in Facebook users for the first time since its launch, before it has even managed to fully leverage its traffic volumes into advertising sales.  Its unique audience dropped 5% from December to January prompting many people predicting the demise and claiming Facebook is a fad which will go away as quickly as it arrived.  Have people really already become Facebored?  Or is it simply inevitable that sooner or later there would be a dip in audience as the users who created an account “just to see what all the fuss is about” disappear back to their own world grumbling that it was a load of rubbish anyway?

Mark Ritson, in his article for Marketing, blames the decline on Facebook’s open door policy.  Since September 2006 Facebook has allowed anybody with a valid email address access to their network which was previously exclusive to US students (and before that just Harvard students).  This is where the influx began and over the last 18 months its user base has just grown and grown, until now!  Ritson uses the analogy of being in a hyper trendy bar with his friend, surrounded by beautiful people, drinking beautiful cocktails, listening to great music, before realising the only thing which spoilt the bar, was them!  Two middle aged blokes with expanding waistlines stood out like a sore thumb and somehow made the place less cool.  By opening its doors to anybody in the world, he argues, Facebook has made itself less cool and exclusive, and the seriously cool people, aren’t going to want to be sent a friend request from their mum or an old school teacher!  They want to hang out in a cool environment which similarly cool people, doing cool things and just generally being cool.

So has Facebook’s open door policy caused this dip and is it to be the demise of the worlds largest social networking site?  I don’t know, but I can say that my usage habits have changed slightly since I added my mum and dad as friends!  I am now a lot more careful about what I post and where I post it, although that doesn’t really change the experience too much.  Personally I would blame the 5% drop on the part time users departing, there had to be a dip at some point and I’m sure that’s how the guys at Facebook will see it. 

What it does say to me is that Facebook need to get their act in gear and make this thing profitable, they have an advertising model in place now should start to reap the rewards but it is still not the finished article.  I feel for them in that they are trying to be innovative and make their ads as unintrusive a possible and this is difficult to do but they must find a way.  They have already been chastised for their beacon system and they probably cant afford another mistake like that.  I just hope for their sake, that they don’t rue missing out on a  slice of their $15 Billion valuation which could start to decline a lot faster than their user base if next months figures aren’t more positive.

I have just come across the Yahoo! Buzzapplication which is currently in beta testing.  From what I can see this is very much like Digg and Sphinn in that users provide articles of interest which are then voted on by the users to push them up the listings. 

Stories are given a “buzz score” which is ”derived from search term popularity, the number of times a story is emailed from Buzz, and the number of votes a story receives.”  Which could add a slight element of mystery if it is more than simply a case of adding the sum of all these parts together.  If it is going to work much like the quality score system in PPC then it may change the game a little and avoid all the spamming which takes place in Digg.  There will apparently be a manual editorial team in place to prevent spamming from taking place but how many and how effective they will be remains to be seen.

The other major twist in the tale is the statement from the site “stories with the highest Buzz Scores may be published on the Yahoo! home page.”  this would make the reach of top performing articles massive and the potential of this new application greater than that of Digg and Sphinn as it goes beyond the user base of the programme itself.  Apparently the same editorial team which will monitor the spam will also be responsible for deciding which stories are worthy of the Yahoo homepage exposure.  It will be interested to see what prominence these articles are given as they are free content and so Yahoo! would potentially be losing out on revenue if they replaced any of the paid placements.

It will be interesting to see how this progresses and whether the exposure on the Yahoo! homepage can make it a bigger property than the more established players in social bookmarking.

An application has been developed which allows you to view your Myspace page through Facebook.  The application, developed by Fuser, allows you to check your messages, bulletins and comments without ever leaving the Facebook site.  for the social hardcore this could be a god send and could also be a big dent to Myspace as it will enable users of both to monitor them through one single website, hence less visitors going to the Myspace site.  If users are beginning to migrate from Myspace to Facebook then this could be the final act which prompts a complete switch as they will be able to keep an eye on their lesser used Myspace page without having to visit it.

Additional information

Mars this week launched a Facebook application which allows users to send their friends the gift of a real life Mars bar.  The “gift” will be in the form of a message which, once opened, asks the recipient to enter their mobile number and from this they will be send an SMS voucher which can be redeemed in a participating store.  Twix, Galaxy, Malteser’s and Mars will all be able to be sent with the sender paying via a Paypal account.  This is a bold venture by the guys at Mars but I cant help but think it is a desperate attempt to get involved in social media by a brand which doesn’t necessarily fit.  I am seeing all to often recently companies who know of the buzz around social networking and decide that “we need to be part of that!”  No thought given to whether their brand or product fits or whether the audience they are trying to engage with is part of the social environment they are considering.

To me, social media, social marketing, social networking or however else you want to term it is about engaging with your audience on a personal level, listening to what they are saying and bringing those learnings back into the business.  Too many people are deciding they want to be part of the social phenomenon without thinking whether it suits them, their audience and their product.  The first questions they should be asking are, what am I looking to achieve? Who am I trying to engage? where are these people interacting? Mars is a border line case and they have probably just about pulled it off but in many cases people are missing the mark by a long way just to be involved in the current craze.

As part of its record breaking 2008 marketing budget Cadbury are planning a follow up to their much loved drumming gorilla advert. According to the latest edition of Marketing the new ad will also feature an animal playing an instrument. The original advert was a major viral success achieving numerous blog postings, massive word of mouth and many a parody on Youtube (you can see some of them here). So the follow up has a hard task following in its footsteps, as do he agency charged with creating the ad. The original one worked well due to the human like actions of a gorilla but I cant see many other animals having the same impact without looking too comical. Answers on a postcard what you think the new animal and instrument will be and heres the original again just for fun!