Has Facebook hit its peak here in the US?
It seems that the recent news regarding Facebook is that it is not "liked" as much as Google+. And that is the result from a American Consumer Satisfaction Index survey which has released their results today. And those results are creating quite a stir because of the improvement of Google+ and the decline of Facebook. It may well be that Facebook has become way too saturated here in the US with just about everyone having a Facebook page. And those pages are not as well received as they once were because of the recent changes for Timeline and the increasing of advertising.
It seems that everyone one has a Facebook page and that includes your parents and more than likely your grandparents, depending on your age. As a result, Facebook has tried to become all things to all people. And that is just not possible to achieve. In the survey results from ACSI show rankings for those in the Social Media area with some very startling results. This is based on questions to gauge user satisfaction with the various social media sites. The biggest one is just how far down the chart Facebook has moved to the bottom for those who were measured in the most recent results. As an example, MySpace is no longer being measured. So Facebook came in at the bottom at 61 which is 5 points lower than the score a year ago. Seems there is a trend playing out here for user satisfaction.
Above Facebook is LinkedtIn at 63. At the top of the scale is Google+ and Wikipedia, both at 78 points to represent the user satisfaction levels. Given that Google+ has not been out yet a year, they have grabbed people's attention for their interface and the survey shows that. When Google+ came out, there was a lot of discussion about how they were going to do. And when the growth was not there, some wrote them off. But, Google wanted Google+ to be something different and it does not want to be like Facebook. Which this does prove out.
Facebook has had problems for the past few years with privacy, or the lack thereof. They seemed to be in the news because they were revealing too much information about people when they should not have. Then there were the changes to the interface, most notably Timeline. Users have not been as happy as they should and this recent survey results show that to be the case. I have been observing that the number of posts that I am seeing from people has dramatically dropped of. This could be because everyone is tightening things down that much more or they are just not adding wall posts like they used to.
And competition from the likes of Pinterest at 69 does not help. It seems that more folks are posting pictures over there than at Facebook. Pinterest has a clean interface along with Google+. Facebook has cluttered up the interface with advertising trying to increase revenue and the screens are not as nice as they once were. Google+ has continued the Google idea of clean and uncluttered screens. As long as Facebook continues to add things to the screens, they will continue to remain at the bottom.
Another item in the survey which Facebook took a hit for and Google+ got points is the mobile interface. Facebook continues to struggle with their mobile interface and if they cannot get that corrected, Google+ will continue to be the beneficiary in the user satisfaction surveys. For now, Google+ seems to be doing all the right things.
Facebook has challenges ahead of them here in the US and around the world. Recent information has Facebook seeing declines in users in the US (1.1%) and in a number of other countries. With this kind of news, they may see more of that as people look to other interests because of the user satisfaction survey.
And then there is the price of their stock........
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