First Signs of Facebook Growth Slowing

Specialist site Inside Facebook, which tracks the progress of the social network and its develeopment platform closely, broke the news first: the world's leading social network has seen a slow-down in its growth rate in the past month.

Just when the company had started to turn a profit, Inside Facebook has matched its own data with other studies to detect a slown-down at the social networking site.

The change is very, very relative though: the site, which normally gains 20 million new users every month has 'under-performed' by only adding 12 million in May 2011.  The total number of active accounts is now close to 700 million.

North America saturated while Facebook evolves elsewhere

The current slow-down can mostly be explained by the huge coverage that the site now has in the United States and Canada.  Half of the American population now has a Facebook account (around 140 million in total) and it's increasingly likely that the other half doesn't want one.

Inside Facebook has, however, neglected one part of its analysis though: the changing way that people are using new features on Facebook.  The social networking site is very clear about its intentions to win over ordinary users looking to connect with friends, leaving professional networking to other sites like LinkedIn.  Things have also changed for big businesses, with groups returing to their original purpose of uniting groups of users behind a certain cause, while corporate giants create their own Fan Pages.  That's eradicated the need for companies to create fake accounts to connect with their customers, which might partly explain the decline.

After a period of rapid growth in the social media sector, with some rather strange developments along the way, it seems that we might be seeing the first signs of a rationalisation of the marketplace and the number of actors.  No company can expect to see growth figures as explosive as in the early years with mature technology.  Facebook's current slow-down is similar to the one experienced by mobile phone manufacturers: once a market reaches maturity, it doesn't disappear but instead keeps on evoloving.  There's no sign of Facebook disappearing just yet ...


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