Facebook vs The Other Guys: The active user wars
Recently, Facebook released its first-ever earnings report since going public. The details of that document have been making headlines since then, albeit most of them negative (leave poor Mark Zuckerberg alone!).
Despite the criticism, everyone’s favorite social network did have some impressive numbers to tout. One of the most intriguing figures is that 85% of Facebook’s users are active on a monthly basis (MAUs). If this is remotely accurate, it means that Facebook has officially flipped the 80-20 on its head.
Conversely, there are mounting reports questioning the validity of FB’s users (re: bots and African princes), which has inspired experts everywhere to weigh in. Here is a quick excerpt from an interview at The Real Time Report:
“There’s a misperception generally out there that when it comes to s
ocial media, you have a minority of the users generating a majority of the content,” said Mr. D’Onofrio. “The 80-20 rules does exist, but in the opposite way on Facebook.”
To put some added perspective on this figure, Twitter recently announced that only 27-30% of its user base has taken an action within the past 90 days.
Do you think Facebook is reaching its maximum potential for user activity? Can they sustain this high level of performance? Let us know what you think in the comments.
A few more fun stats for you:
- Monthly active users (MAUs) were 955 million as of June 30, 2012, an increase of 29% year-over-year.
- Daily active users (DAUs) were 552 million on average for June 2012, an increase of 32% year-over-year.
- Mobile MAUs were 543 million as of June 30, 2012, an increase of 67% year-over-year.
Paul Matson is a Social Media Strategist at Razorfish, based in Chicago. When he’s not strategizing the information highway, you can find him working hard to create the world’s next great cat meme. Tweet him at @PaulMatson.
Photo source:http://www.switched.com/2010/06/03/mark-zuckerberg-endures-facebook-privacy-grilling-in-the-d8-hots/
