U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

that sounds like a drop in the ocean that is fb's massive and growing userbase

Article discusses the differences in measuring what a user counts as, so the numbers are difficult to pin down exactly. Anecdotally, I still _have_ my account, but no longer log in. It has been 2-3 months now, so I ought to be counted as such - that is, not an active user despite having an account. I don't use insta or whatsapp or messenger either - but I still have my FB account.

I wonder how many people there are like me, with nearly dead accounts but could still be 'counted' if you wanted to.

Facebook growth numbers haven't been strong lately, but it's still growing [0]. With 2.3B monthly active users 15M isn't much to worry about unless a specifically profitable sub-population is doing the leaving.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...

> How the study was conducted: A total of 1,500 persons were interviewed to explore Americans’ use of digital platforms and new media. From January 3rd through February 4th, 2019, telephone interviews were conducted with respondents age 12 and older who were selected via Random Digit Dial (RDD) sampling through both landline phones and mobile phones. The survey was offered in both Spanish and English. Data was weighted to national 12+ U.S. population estimates.

I wouldn’t put much faith in this estimate. While facebook’s is probably an overestimate of people actually engaged in their platform, this survey doesn’t seem very useful to me.

Note: personal opinion bellow

It seems to me that the overall interest in Facebook is decreasing. The social network hasn't had any interesting feature added to it in the last couple of years. It's becoming boring and boring, so that's why I believe people are leaving.

Still, Instagram and WhatsApp are running strong with barely no competition. We don't see any news about their user base decreasing and news channels don't seem to dislike them. Facebook is doing a good job making sure their biggest three platforms are seem as independent from one another, keeping Instagram and WhatsApp almost free from controversy.

Personally I see no loss for them here. Besides, they will promptly acquire any new players that look promising, or shamelessly copy them as they did with Snapchat.