Social networking site Facebook has seen its first drop in UK users in January, new industry data indicates.
Users fell 5% to 8.5 million in January from 8.9 million in December, according to data from Nielsen Online.
This was the first drop in user numbers since July 2006 when Nielsen began compiling data on the site.
Nic Howell, deputy editor of industry magazine New Media Age, said the site was no longer as popular among its core audience of young people.
"Social networking is as much about who isn't on the site as who is - when Tory MPs and major corporations start profiles on Facebook, its brand is devalued, driving its core user base into the arms of newer and more credible alternatives," he said.
Facebook, along with its main rivals Bebo and MySpace, lets users set up personal web pages and communicate with each other.
Alex Burmaster, European internet analyst at Nielsen Online, said that it was inevitable that the site's early growth rates could not be sustained and user numbers were likely to plateau.
Nielsen's figures showed that there are 712% more Facebook users than a year ago.
"Just as one swallow doesn't make a summer, so one month of falling audiences doesn't spell the decline of Facebook or social networking," Mr Burmaster said.
"However, real growth potential lies in the niche networks - those based on a particular lifestyle or interest, such as travel, music, wealth or business," he added.
The data showed that MySpace users had fallen by 5% in January, while Bebo's audience had fallen 2%.
Less popular social networking sites such as Windows Live Space, BBC Communities and Friends Reunited saw a rise in users in January, Mr Burmaster said.
Monday, 4 February 2008
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
What do parents think of Facebook?
Research has shown that more than a quarter of eight to 11-year-olds who are online in the UK have a profile on a social network site.
With none of the websites actively enforcing a minimum age limit, the watchdog Ofcom says parents need to keep an eye on what their children do online. So what do parents think? I set off to find out.
ROGER, 37 from Kent
I have worked in the internet for the past 15 years but I resigned as the director of a company that set up a social networking site in 2003. The company wanted a network aimed at young teenagers and I felt this was unacceptable.
I was told by ex-colleagues that it took 24 hours for them to find their first paedophile had registered and was trying to groom kids. It ended up with the police getting involved.
My daughter uses Facebook and despite using a profile with anonymous settings ticked and not using her real name, I was able to show her how I was able to find her school, name, form, where she lived and view her profile all without even having to register on Facebook.
I think the only way to protect your kids is to have an honest relationship and speak to them about the issues.
The danger is when you overreact then they will become secretive and actually blocking them would be to cut down on their social life, an important part of growing up.
Every month I ask my daughter for a list of all the people she has connected to and I say to her who is this ? Do you know who this person is ?
Steve, 46 from Medway
A number of children in my son's primary school set up a hate page on Facebook about him.
When I complained to Bebo the response I got was: "If you don't like the page don't look at it." They couldn't have been less helpful.
I complained to the police and a brilliant community policeman went round to the houses of the children who had set up the page and it was pulled.
But until the police got involved they did not remove a single person who set up or contributed to this page, despite being informed that they were all aged 10 or 11.
Alex, 36 from Sittingbourne
I have a 13-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter and the trick is to stay one step ahead.
I am not from an age where I knew what Facebook and Bebo were. So I made an effort to find out for myself and I made sure I was active on Facebook before my children wanted accounts for themselves.
When they wanted to go on Facebook I helped them and made sure the privacy settings were adequate.
We are now Facebook friends, and I monitor activity every day. I do check who their friends are and make sure they don't change their privacy settings.
I think social networking sites are perfectly safe as long as parents stay one step ahead. As a parent you have to keep up with the times and not let your children become social outcasts because you do not allow them to use these sites.
MATTHEW, 56 from Bobbing nr Sittingbourne
I am a Scout leader and last year a 12-year-old girl in my Scout group registered on a lesser-heard-of social networking site and spontaneously put her MSN messenger address in.
Within hours someone had added her and was sexually harassing her online. When I heard about this it was reported to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.
It is clear that this incident is not isolated.
Particularly since then, but also a little before, I have made educating young people about sort of 'dos and don'ts' online something I really care about and take quite seriously.
I use Facebook myself to some extent, the difference is that I am aware of how to safely do this.
With none of the websites actively enforcing a minimum age limit, the watchdog Ofcom says parents need to keep an eye on what their children do online. So what do parents think? I set off to find out.
ROGER, 37 from Kent
I have worked in the internet for the past 15 years but I resigned as the director of a company that set up a social networking site in 2003. The company wanted a network aimed at young teenagers and I felt this was unacceptable.
I was told by ex-colleagues that it took 24 hours for them to find their first paedophile had registered and was trying to groom kids. It ended up with the police getting involved.
My daughter uses Facebook and despite using a profile with anonymous settings ticked and not using her real name, I was able to show her how I was able to find her school, name, form, where she lived and view her profile all without even having to register on Facebook.
I think the only way to protect your kids is to have an honest relationship and speak to them about the issues.
The danger is when you overreact then they will become secretive and actually blocking them would be to cut down on their social life, an important part of growing up.
Every month I ask my daughter for a list of all the people she has connected to and I say to her who is this ? Do you know who this person is ?
Steve, 46 from Medway
A number of children in my son's primary school set up a hate page on Facebook about him.
When I complained to Bebo the response I got was: "If you don't like the page don't look at it." They couldn't have been less helpful.
I complained to the police and a brilliant community policeman went round to the houses of the children who had set up the page and it was pulled.
But until the police got involved they did not remove a single person who set up or contributed to this page, despite being informed that they were all aged 10 or 11.
Alex, 36 from Sittingbourne
I have a 13-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter and the trick is to stay one step ahead.
I am not from an age where I knew what Facebook and Bebo were. So I made an effort to find out for myself and I made sure I was active on Facebook before my children wanted accounts for themselves.
When they wanted to go on Facebook I helped them and made sure the privacy settings were adequate.
We are now Facebook friends, and I monitor activity every day. I do check who their friends are and make sure they don't change their privacy settings.
I think social networking sites are perfectly safe as long as parents stay one step ahead. As a parent you have to keep up with the times and not let your children become social outcasts because you do not allow them to use these sites.
MATTHEW, 56 from Bobbing nr Sittingbourne
I am a Scout leader and last year a 12-year-old girl in my Scout group registered on a lesser-heard-of social networking site and spontaneously put her MSN messenger address in.
Within hours someone had added her and was sexually harassing her online. When I heard about this it was reported to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.
It is clear that this incident is not isolated.
Particularly since then, but also a little before, I have made educating young people about sort of 'dos and don'ts' online something I really care about and take quite seriously.
I use Facebook myself to some extent, the difference is that I am aware of how to safely do this.
Thursday, 17 January 2008
'Voices of Medway Podcast'
I recently had a go at creating my first podcast. The breif that I was assigned to find some interesting and colourful shops and interview the people who run them. And Rochester in Kent, a wonderful blend of ancient and modern in the heart of the "garden of England", seemed like the perfect place to visit.It is a city steeped in history, dominated by a fine Norman Castle and Cathedral, bounded by the maritime traditions and spirit of past British naval dominance on the River Medway. And whats more, it has a unique blend of independent shops and some very nice shopkeepers too...
Click below to listen to the podcast:
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Facing the Future Facebook Style
Independent journalist Bill Thompson ruminates on the inevitability of Facebook being in the news in 2008...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7178954.stm
The coming year is not going to be a comfortable one for Facebook.
It might just manage to avoid upsetting its users with new services such as Beacon, the misjudged advertising feature that told your friends about your purchases.
It might spot fake profiles of famous people, like the two Bilawal Bhutto entries that fooled both Facebook and some newspapers, and remove them before they get noticed.
And it could even avoid falling victim to one of the frauds that are likely to be perpetrated against users of all social network sites.
But even if Facebook is lucky it will still get a lot of coverage.
Because during 2007 it became the social site of choice for journalists, politicians, bloggers and others who see MySpace as for the kids and LinkedIn as too business-oriented for friends.
Face off with blogger
The spat has helped highlight the issue of data ownership and data portability, and may even lead to more careful consideration of who can do what with the information found around the internet.
Bill ThompsonThat means it will be the focus of attention in any story about the impact and evolution of online activity simply because it is the site that MPs and columnists know about.
It also means that when Facebook is directly involved in a story then it will be bigger than it may otherwise have been.
We saw this recently in the fuss over the site's treatment of Robert Scoble, one of the more significant technology bloggers and a former Microsoft employee and evangelist.
Scoble, who has complained that Facebook limits him to 'only' 5,000 online friends, used a program to read each name, e-mail address and date of birth and import them into another social service, Plaxo Pulse.
When you sign up for Facebook "you agree not to use the Service or the Site to harvest or collect e-mail addresses or other contact information of other users from the Service or the Site by electronic or other means for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails or other unsolicited communications".
Since Scoble was using an automated script to harvest addresses he was clearly breaking this condition, so Facebook suspended his account just as it would for any other user.
However Scoble is an A-list blogger so when he wrote about his suspension it generated a storm of comment.
At first people were broadly on his side, criticising Facebook for acting as if it owned his network of contacts.
Others then weighed in, pointing out that the birth dates and e-mail addresses Scoble had taken didn't belong to him but to his Facebook friends, many of whom might not want to be imported into Plaxo without their consent.
Company and blogger have now made up, with Scoble having achieved his goal of enhancing his notoriety and outsider status by standing up for users right to have access to 'their' data - even when that data is personal information about other people.
And Facebook has backed away from another PR embarrassment, although not without some loss of face since it is unlikely that an unknown accountant from Basingstoke would have been allowed to return after such an egregious breach of the site's rules.
The spat has helped highlight the issue of data ownership and data portability, and may even lead to more careful consideration of who can do what with the information found around the internet.
But it also shows how important Facebook has become as the focal point for any discussion of this type. It is our lightning conductor for many of the issues which are emerging as important in the new, online world, and that will ensure that it will be dragged into stories to make a point, even when it is not directly involved.
Of course the chances are that the site will also merit some coverage because of the way it grows.
In his list of technology predictions for 2008 noted computer scientist Ed Felten includes 'a Facebook application will cause a big privacy to-do', and he's not alone in this belief.
One reason for this is that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg comes from the generation that grew up with the network in their lives, for whom the boundaries between offline and online relationships have always been indeterminate and to some extent irrelevant.
Zuckerberg's instincts are those of the children who flock to MySpace, Bebo and YouTube, not those of the older users who are now using the tools his company has developed.
This culture clash is an interesting reversal of the old order, in which teenagers would grow into a world defined by their parents and have to learn how to assert their own desires and demands.
Adults going online for the first time are entering a world that has been shaped by the interests, desires and concerns of the younger generation, a world that does not operate according to the rules they have followed in real life.
It is hardly surprising that there are differences of opinion, or that the practices of the various social sites sometimes cause concern for parents, politicians or teachers.
It will be interesting to see whether some compromise can be achieved in the coming months and years, or whether the rapid rate of network development means that even Mark Zuckerberg will end the year complaining that the youngsters are just not behaving responsibly online.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7178954.stm
The coming year is not going to be a comfortable one for Facebook.
It might just manage to avoid upsetting its users with new services such as Beacon, the misjudged advertising feature that told your friends about your purchases.
It might spot fake profiles of famous people, like the two Bilawal Bhutto entries that fooled both Facebook and some newspapers, and remove them before they get noticed.
And it could even avoid falling victim to one of the frauds that are likely to be perpetrated against users of all social network sites.
But even if Facebook is lucky it will still get a lot of coverage.
Because during 2007 it became the social site of choice for journalists, politicians, bloggers and others who see MySpace as for the kids and LinkedIn as too business-oriented for friends.
Face off with blogger
The spat has helped highlight the issue of data ownership and data portability, and may even lead to more careful consideration of who can do what with the information found around the internet.
Bill ThompsonThat means it will be the focus of attention in any story about the impact and evolution of online activity simply because it is the site that MPs and columnists know about.
It also means that when Facebook is directly involved in a story then it will be bigger than it may otherwise have been.
We saw this recently in the fuss over the site's treatment of Robert Scoble, one of the more significant technology bloggers and a former Microsoft employee and evangelist.
Scoble, who has complained that Facebook limits him to 'only' 5,000 online friends, used a program to read each name, e-mail address and date of birth and import them into another social service, Plaxo Pulse.
When you sign up for Facebook "you agree not to use the Service or the Site to harvest or collect e-mail addresses or other contact information of other users from the Service or the Site by electronic or other means for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails or other unsolicited communications".
Since Scoble was using an automated script to harvest addresses he was clearly breaking this condition, so Facebook suspended his account just as it would for any other user.
However Scoble is an A-list blogger so when he wrote about his suspension it generated a storm of comment.
At first people were broadly on his side, criticising Facebook for acting as if it owned his network of contacts.
Others then weighed in, pointing out that the birth dates and e-mail addresses Scoble had taken didn't belong to him but to his Facebook friends, many of whom might not want to be imported into Plaxo without their consent.
Company and blogger have now made up, with Scoble having achieved his goal of enhancing his notoriety and outsider status by standing up for users right to have access to 'their' data - even when that data is personal information about other people.
And Facebook has backed away from another PR embarrassment, although not without some loss of face since it is unlikely that an unknown accountant from Basingstoke would have been allowed to return after such an egregious breach of the site's rules.
The spat has helped highlight the issue of data ownership and data portability, and may even lead to more careful consideration of who can do what with the information found around the internet.
But it also shows how important Facebook has become as the focal point for any discussion of this type. It is our lightning conductor for many of the issues which are emerging as important in the new, online world, and that will ensure that it will be dragged into stories to make a point, even when it is not directly involved.
Of course the chances are that the site will also merit some coverage because of the way it grows.
In his list of technology predictions for 2008 noted computer scientist Ed Felten includes 'a Facebook application will cause a big privacy to-do', and he's not alone in this belief.
One reason for this is that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg comes from the generation that grew up with the network in their lives, for whom the boundaries between offline and online relationships have always been indeterminate and to some extent irrelevant.
Zuckerberg's instincts are those of the children who flock to MySpace, Bebo and YouTube, not those of the older users who are now using the tools his company has developed.
This culture clash is an interesting reversal of the old order, in which teenagers would grow into a world defined by their parents and have to learn how to assert their own desires and demands.
Adults going online for the first time are entering a world that has been shaped by the interests, desires and concerns of the younger generation, a world that does not operate according to the rules they have followed in real life.
It is hardly surprising that there are differences of opinion, or that the practices of the various social sites sometimes cause concern for parents, politicians or teachers.
It will be interesting to see whether some compromise can be achieved in the coming months and years, or whether the rapid rate of network development means that even Mark Zuckerberg will end the year complaining that the youngsters are just not behaving responsibly online.
Monday, 24 December 2007
Facebook Challenged by ad-free Rival
Badoo, a social networking website which offers users the chance to pay to be popular while banning all advertising, is set to launch into an increasingly crowded UK market.
At the moment, Badoo is a relatively unknown web brand. However, Google recently rated it number two on its "fastest rising" list - behind the iPhone and ahead of Facebook - in its annual report based on the most popular web searches.
The fledgling company positions itself as a "natural evolution of existing social network and blogging sites".
Badoo's unusual business model works against the received wisdom of the primarily advertising-led efforts of established firms such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.
"We wanted to be advertising free in order to have a 'clean' site so our users weren't subject to adverts which we know can be a turnoff," said Neil Bryant, the managing director of Badoo.
Revenue is derived by technology named Rise Up. For $1 in the US, €1 in Europe's eurozone and £1 in the UK, users can choose to have their profile moved to the top of a rolling list of profiles - in a blend of Digg and a Reuters ticker - that all users can see.
"With Badoo users don't have to add friends - they have immediate access to get their profile in front of the site's entire online community," said Bryant.
For security, users can block any "undesirable" or annoying profiles from seeing, or appearing, on their web page as well as keep information such as birth dates secret.
Asked whether this Rise Up function can provide enough revenue, Bryant said that 20% of Badoo's 12.5 million users access the function once a month
Thus far, Badoo has developed a strong following in Latin American countries, as well as France, Spain and Italy.
Next year, cracking the UK is a top priority. However, until Badoo has significantly more customers than the current UK user base of around 100,000, the Rise Up function will remain free.
Badoo is also trying to carve a niche in the celebrity market, just as MySpace has in music and Bebo has with youth.
The website aims to approach celebrities to get them to build official profile pages - bogus profiles will be deleted.
"Badoo users love sharing information about themselves, their friends and celebrity so Badoo has decided that the quickest way to get the message out about the site is to get celebrities to spread and demonstrate the word," said Bryant.
A PR-led push, fronted by as an as-yet-unnamed celebrity, is due to launch in February.
Written by Mark Sweney: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/dec/24/web20.digitalmedia
At the moment, Badoo is a relatively unknown web brand. However, Google recently rated it number two on its "fastest rising" list - behind the iPhone and ahead of Facebook - in its annual report based on the most popular web searches.
The fledgling company positions itself as a "natural evolution of existing social network and blogging sites".
Badoo's unusual business model works against the received wisdom of the primarily advertising-led efforts of established firms such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.
"We wanted to be advertising free in order to have a 'clean' site so our users weren't subject to adverts which we know can be a turnoff," said Neil Bryant, the managing director of Badoo.
Revenue is derived by technology named Rise Up. For $1 in the US, €1 in Europe's eurozone and £1 in the UK, users can choose to have their profile moved to the top of a rolling list of profiles - in a blend of Digg and a Reuters ticker - that all users can see.
"With Badoo users don't have to add friends - they have immediate access to get their profile in front of the site's entire online community," said Bryant.
For security, users can block any "undesirable" or annoying profiles from seeing, or appearing, on their web page as well as keep information such as birth dates secret.
Asked whether this Rise Up function can provide enough revenue, Bryant said that 20% of Badoo's 12.5 million users access the function once a month
Thus far, Badoo has developed a strong following in Latin American countries, as well as France, Spain and Italy.
Next year, cracking the UK is a top priority. However, until Badoo has significantly more customers than the current UK user base of around 100,000, the Rise Up function will remain free.
Badoo is also trying to carve a niche in the celebrity market, just as MySpace has in music and Bebo has with youth.
The website aims to approach celebrities to get them to build official profile pages - bogus profiles will be deleted.
"Badoo users love sharing information about themselves, their friends and celebrity so Badoo has decided that the quickest way to get the message out about the site is to get celebrities to spread and demonstrate the word," said Bryant.
A PR-led push, fronted by as an as-yet-unnamed celebrity, is due to launch in February.
Written by Mark Sweney: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/dec/24/web20.digitalmedia
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
Facehooked!
Facebook seemed to come from nowhere to everywhere in 2007.
One person in eight in the UK has become a registered member.
Why has Facebook been so successful against stiff competition from other social network sites?
And as the company tries to turn its popularity into profits, will its millions of members stay faithful?
The site was launched by student Mark Zuckerberg with two friends in their dorm room at Harvard University in February 2004.
It was initially intended to let his fellow students check each other out and make friends online.
By December 2004 it had grown to have nearly a million users among students at top American colleges.
It arrived in the UK in 2006 and by March 2007 was making headlines as more than a million people had joined up.
Now seven million people in the UK are on Facebook and there are more than 50 million worldwide members.
Full article can be read here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7151690.stm
One person in eight in the UK has become a registered member.
Why has Facebook been so successful against stiff competition from other social network sites?
And as the company tries to turn its popularity into profits, will its millions of members stay faithful?
The site was launched by student Mark Zuckerberg with two friends in their dorm room at Harvard University in February 2004.
It was initially intended to let his fellow students check each other out and make friends online.
By December 2004 it had grown to have nearly a million users among students at top American colleges.
It arrived in the UK in 2006 and by March 2007 was making headlines as more than a million people had joined up.
Now seven million people in the UK are on Facebook and there are more than 50 million worldwide members.
Full article can be read here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7151690.stm
Friday, 2 November 2007
Murdoch: "Facebook and Myspace can co-exist"
Rupert Murdoch managed to utter the 'F" word as he delivered News Corporation's quarterly profit results - Facebook.
The social network site owned and run by Harvard graduate, Mark Zuckerberg, has exploded in use since it opened membership to the general public, boasting an audience of more than 50 million in its pitch to advertisers.
In July 2005, Mr Murdoch paid $US580 million for Facebook rival and market leader MySpace, and was keen to spruik its advantages.
"Obviously MySpace's most talked about competitor is Facebook," Mr Murdoch conceded.
"While it has grown rapidly over the past several months, it is still only 45 per cent of MySpace in terms of unique users," he said.
But While the two sites battle it out for popularity, Mr Murdoch spoke of their ability to co-exist.
"The two platforms are very different in the user experience," he said.
"MySpace pages become a home on the internet, it's where they discover people, content and culture.
"Facebook, on the other hand, tends to be a web utility, similar to a phone.
Recent research conducted by 'Nielsen' has shown that 74 per cent of Facebook users are also Myspace users.
The social network site owned and run by Harvard graduate, Mark Zuckerberg, has exploded in use since it opened membership to the general public, boasting an audience of more than 50 million in its pitch to advertisers.
In July 2005, Mr Murdoch paid $US580 million for Facebook rival and market leader MySpace, and was keen to spruik its advantages.
"Obviously MySpace's most talked about competitor is Facebook," Mr Murdoch conceded.
"While it has grown rapidly over the past several months, it is still only 45 per cent of MySpace in terms of unique users," he said.
But While the two sites battle it out for popularity, Mr Murdoch spoke of their ability to co-exist.
"The two platforms are very different in the user experience," he said.
"MySpace pages become a home on the internet, it's where they discover people, content and culture.
"Facebook, on the other hand, tends to be a web utility, similar to a phone.
Recent research conducted by 'Nielsen' has shown that 74 per cent of Facebook users are also Myspace users.
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