Commentary

Facebook's Global Growth Slowing

While no one would argue that attracting a billion users in less than a decade is anything less than epic, Facebook’s glory days of exponential growth may be ending, as a slowing growth rate in the U.S. appears to be matched by a broader slowdown in global growth as well.

Looking at the milestones in Facebook’s global growth over the last two years, it passed 500 million users in July 2010; 550 million in September 2010; 600 million in December 2010; 650 million in February 2011; 700 million in May 2011; 750 million in June 2011; 800 million in September 2011; 850 million in January 2012; 900 million in April 2012; and 950 million in August 2012.

Although the timescale is obviously very rough, that means it took an average of about 2.33 months to add every increment of 50 million users from July 2010 to September 2011 -- compared to an average of 3.67 months for every increment of 50 million users since then.

Again, when you’re measuring growth in increments of 50 million, you’re still doing pretty well, whatever the timeframe is, but it does suggest that the social network may be reaching some natural limits for its global growth.

The U.S. slowdown is well established. Last month I wrote about data from comScore showing that Facebook had fewer unique U.S. visitors in June 2012 than it did in June 2011, marking the first time that the world’s dominant social network has experienced a year-over-year decline. In June 2011 Facebook attracted 160.9 million unique visitors; the number declined by 1.1 million, or 0.7%, to 159.8 million unique visitors in June 2012.

1 comment about "Facebook's Global Growth Slowing".
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  1. Khalid Low from Reindeer Company, September 7, 2012 at 6:09 p.m.

    Could the reason be that the ones not signed up are either too young to know or too old or do not have access to a computer or a cell phone?
    1 billion is a seventh of the world's population and it is more than likely FB has hit everyone it possibly can.

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