Simon on: Facebook

The people who tell us that the only meeting planners not using social media are either stupid or incompetent are fond of quoting Facebook statistics. 

You know the sort of thing. If Facebook was a country it would be the third biggest on the planet and so on.

It has always struck me that these figures are irrelevant if you’re organising a medical congress in Birmingham but that doesn’t stop them appearing.

But I wonder how they are reacting to some recent statistics from Pew Research Center in the USA?

The figures confirm that the Facebook population is massive but the really interesting figures come further down the paper. 

Only 12 per cent of Facebook users say that it has become more important to them over the past year while 28 per cent say it is less important. The bulk of them say there is no change.

And in the category that has always been regarded as the backbone of Facebook users – those aged between 18 to 29 years, more than a third now spend less time on Facebook than they did a year ago.

Could this mean that users are tiring of Facebook? 

Originally published in Conference News