Facebook is currently facing a major slump. With over 11 million teenage and college students leaving its social network since 2011, Facebook is having a hard time maintaining its user-base. Not only that, it’s having difficulty protecting its revenue and value as a downward spiral in usage, especially within the young consumer group, has made Facebook less appealing to advertisers. After all, a declined usage amongst teenagers and college students disallows advertisers to target a wide range of young consumers. This subsequently causes marketers to yield a smaller return from their advertisements and wastes their time.

 

As opposed to utilizing Facebook, advertisers can now attempt other social networks such as Twitter and Instagram to broadcast their brand. Twitter particularly is an extremely useful digital advertising tool for marketers as its user-base continues to increase. Although Twitter’s audience growth rate has declined slightly from +10% in Q1 2013 to +6% in Q3 2013, it’s still growing substantially and has over 231 million users globally. Moreover, Twitter now offers enhanced advertising products with its new tailored audiences options, making it an extremely prolific advertising tool. 

 

For marketers, this is definitely good news as advancement in other digital platforms and social networks allows us to utilize different ad products and avoid putting all their eggs in one basket. Even though Facebook still has a huge lead over other networks such as LinkedIn and Snapchat, its competitors are booming rapidly and creating products that satisfy both advertisers and users. With this in mind, Facebook has to improve its interface and user-experience if it wants to keep its users and most importantly, advertisers. Without other services that can help them generate revenue, Facebook is stuck with solely garnering ad dollars to sustain its business.  

 

Read more about the decline in Facebook users here.