Analysis: Socially unacceptable

At the crack of dawn on 25 September, Tom Warren, the outspoken senior editor at technology news site Verge, fired up Twitter and announced to his 75,000 followers that he had deleted the Facebook app from his phone. “I don’t miss it at all” he tweeted triumphantly, accompanied by a neatly arranged set of characters depicting a shrugging emoji. Cue over 300 likes and replies from like-minded Twitter users who said they’d already binned the app or gone so far as to delete their accounts altogether. “Did it a few months ago and never comin (sic) back again. Feels great,” one user wrote.

Warren publicly announcing his decision to abandon Facebook, although not exactly an earth-shattering development, is symptomatic of a growing trend of late as certain social media users feel the need to expunge the service from their lives. Some think Facebook has become too powerful and all-consuming. Plus, many are fed up with their news feeds being clogged with invasive ads – targeted marketing that’s often eerily similar to brands or services they were discussing with friends just hours earlier.

Perhaps, more importantly, users are unsettled by the fact governments and political parties have leveraged the platform to subvert democracy and influence their views and voting choices. Indeed, much of the recent recoil against Facebook began six months ago when news broke that the now-defunct data analytics start-up Cambridge Analytica (CA) harvested the data of as many as 87 million users without their knowledge. The fallout caused Facebook stock to plummet, triggered the #QuitFacebook hashtag, and led to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who tends to duck the limelight, being grilled for 10 hours before Congress. In all, 2018 has unquestionably been Facebook’s annus horribilus.

Public backlash

Of course, all this ignominy and negative publicity has consequences. Research seems to suggest, in the US at least, the CA scandal and general privacy concerns had a significant bearing on users deciding to turn their backs on Facebook, or at least altering their settings. A recent survey with 3,400 Facebook users, conducted by Pew Research Center, found that more than one in four Americans had deleted the app from their phones in the previous 12 months. Moreover, 44% of those aged 18 to 29 had uninstalled the app in the last year. Across all ages, 54% had adjusted their privacy settings, while 42% had taken a break from the platform for several weeks or more.

“The [Pew] figures don’t surprise me at all,” says Gene Oliver, social media executive at Panserve (Marathonbet). “In reality, if someone you don’t know enters your personal space, you move away, don’t you? The same goes for online. Facebook users feel that their digital personal space has been unwillingly, or unknowingly, entered and exploited.” He repeats the oft-quoted saying relating to free-to-use social platforms circulating in the wake of the CA scandal. “Then again, if you’re not paying for it, you become the product.”

While Facebook has been on a charm offensive with TV ads apologising for egregious privacy failings and pledging to return to its roots as a social platform for users to engage with friends and family, one big problem the embattled company increasingly faces is a struggle for relevancy, suggests Tania Seif, head of content marketing and social media at Kindred Group. “Facebook was declining before the Cambridge Analytica scandal and, in my opinion, it’s problems are more a natural outcome of ageing. The platform is about 14 years old now and, for want of a better analogy, it’s simply not where the cool people like to hang.”

Indeed, it’s well-documented that the younger demographic, especially the so-called Generation Z (those born after 1994), are largely turned off by Facebook. In their eyes, that’s a platform for their parents and grand-parents. Instead, youngsters tend to gravitate towards Instagram, YouTube and messaging apps like Snapchat and Kik. Fortunately for Facebook and its investors, as well as owning WhatsApp the California company owns Instagram, which has seen its user base rocket from 30 million in 2012 when Facebook acquired the photo-sharing app for (just) $1bn to over 500 million DAUs and one billion MAUs and today.

A report published in July by Merkle found that ad spend on Instagram soared 177% in Q218 YoY, four times the growth rate of Facebook (40%). Instagram ad impressions leapt 209%, yet Facebook impressions slumped 17% YoY. However, it’s not all plain sailing right now for Instagram; co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have just abruptly announced their departures, with The New York Times implying there are tensions between the pair and the parent company. Also, the ‘falseness’ of the platform has been highlighted lately, with some brands attracting condemnation and ridicule (a recent post by blogger Scarlett London involving Listerine being a classic example).

There is also evidence to suggest some people are taking digital detoxes from social media. Recent research carried out by Origin revealed more than one third (34%) of 1,000 18- to 24-year-olds quizzed in the US said they had abandoned or deleted a social media account entirely. Meanwhile, 58% said they were seeking relief from social media, all of which should be a concern to marketeers. Meanwhile, Twitter seems to be plagued by Russian bots and razor-tongued trolls, while the platform (and Facebook too) have been accused of not doing enough to remove inappropriate – and sometimes deeply disturbing – content.

Taking stock

When Facebook released Q2 results in July that were below analyst projections, it immediately triggered a 20% slump in the company’s market value from $630bn to $510bn – one of the largest one-day falls in US corporate history. Clearly, the crises have taken their toll, yet it should be put into perspective. Even though growth in digital ad sales and user numbers have slowed, the social giant still boasted a staggering 2.23 billion MAU in Q2. That’s still an enticing draw for brands, even if they will struggle to reach younger audiences.

“I can’t see a situation where Facebook will start to appeal to younger audiences again, but let’s not forget the company owns WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram – the most used global social media platforms in 2018,” Seif says. “Facebook as a company will still be a powerhouse.” Also, there’s a big difference between uninstalling the app and going the whole hog and permanently deleting your account. So, they could easily return in the future. In fact, Oliver is convinced the anger around data leaks and privacy will blow over. “It’ll pass – even if it hasn’t already. More and more people sign up to Facebook and other social media sites every day.”

However, he warns: “The issue for the social media companies isn’t that they’ll ever see a decrease in users, it’s that if something like this were to happen again, what happens from then? We’ve already seen the legal fallout to which Facebook and Cambridge Analytica went through and now the updated GDPR implementation in the wake of it. What’s the next step in punishing a social media giant if something like this were to ever reoccur?

Yet as Facebook strives to recover from the scandal-ridden period, you have to question how the platform will evolve – if at all – or whether Zuckerberg and brands will switch focus to Instagram. The only thing you can bank on with Facebook in five years’ time is its user base will be five years older, suggests a sceptical Cormac Moylan, marketing technology manager at Xanadu Consultancy, part of the Matchbook betting exchange. “It’s a platform suffering from stagnation, albeit a rather impressive stagnation of just over two billion monthly active users.

“The younger generation want to connect with each other in a more creative and experiential way; they don’t want streams of content flowing down a newsfeed,” Moylan concludes: “Kids are flying into the future fuelled by augmented reality, while you and I play catch-up on yesterday’s news via the Zimmer Frame that Facebook is slowly becoming.”