STUDY: Facebook like an infected virus could lose 80% percent of users

Facebook

There's a study by Princeton University that compares FB to a virus and at that makes the claim that FB could decline in popularity in the future.

Have you been infected with Facebook?

Don't worry, like a viral outbreak, Facebook use will explode before plummeting down to Myspace levels of obscurity, says a new study from Princeton University.

Using epidemiological models used to study the rapid spread of disease, the researchers found that Facebook has "already reached the peak of its popularity and has entered a decline phase."

How bad will it get? Facebook will lose "80 percent of its peak user base between 2015 and 2017," according to the researcers. To explain why social networks are like infectious diseases, the study pointed to similar research done with ideas.

This study hasn't been peer-reviewed and Facebook, which currently boasts 874 million users worldwide, would certainly object to being compared to a viral epidemic. But the company itself admitted in October to losing teen users. Later, a study by digital consultancy iStrategy Labs claimed that Facebook had 25 percent fewer teenage users in 2013 than it did in 2011. (Apparently, American teens are susceptible to a new virus called Snapchat).

 When you think about it, we went from having personal webpages (think GeoCities remember them?) to MySpace to FB to Twitter to Instagram in no time. Even worse than that still, there are always new ways to pass the time on the internet. Well times change I suppose.

Someone said this once in talking about all these social networking sites. Instagram is for those who can't read, and FB is for old people. That's probably how today's teens view FB.

I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg - FB's creator - may one day bring his baby back to its roots as a network for college students and alumni.