• Read Write Web, Tuesday, July 7, 2009 12:53 PM

Is Facebook losing its cool factor? According to estimates provided by Facebook to advertisers that were archived for trafficking by iStrategyLabs, college and high school users of the site have declined in absolute numbers by 20 and 15%, respectively, in just six months. At the same time, the number of Facebook users aged 55 and over has jumped from under 1 million to nearly 6 million in the same time period. As Read Write Web's Marshall Kirkpatrick notes, this means there are more Facebook users over 55 today than there are high school students using the site. "Facebook cannot be excited about this," he says.

How did iStrategy come up with these dramatic numbers? It's pretty simple, actually-anyone can go to Facebook's self-serve advertising program and see the company's estimated user demographics numbers. IStrategy simply captured that data six months ago and saved it for comparison now.

According to the chart, which you can see if you click through to the story, young people by age are up a small amount, but young people by school enrollment are down. Meanwhile, users with undeclared education levels are way, way up, implying that many high school and college students may no longer be listing their schools on the site. That's a big change for a company that started out as a networking site for college students, Kirkpatrick says. "We wouldn't be surprised if Facebook stopped showing advertisers the number of high school and college students soon and relied only on the age distribution."

Read the whole story at Read Write Web »