What Facebook Means to your Web Marketing Company in 2014

As the internet gets older, the social media websites gain and lose in popularity in a much quicker fashion than trends in the real world. The prime example of this would be MySpace, who was once king of the social media platforms and is now part of the beginning of the internet and lost in times past. Due to this fact, any web marketing company should be concerned if social media platforms such as Facebook have the long-term staying power needed.

As the internet grows, so do the platforms used to access it. As a society, we’ve moved away from our desks and tower computers to primarily using mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. The problem with Facebook is that it’s beginning to join the list of websites that aren’t hip and cool anymore. What demographic this affects the most, are the teens. A survey done last year listed Twitter as overtaking Facebook in popularity those aged 16-18. This was complemented by Facebook’s third-quarter earnings call where it’s been discovered that use of the social media platform on a daily basis had been dropping among teens.

The current trend finds that teens tend to think that Facebook is too mainstream. When Facebook left the world of colleges and universities behind and started including anyone with an email address, those that teens were trying to avoid with the social media platform originally flocked to Facebook. This includes teachers, parents, grandparents, etc. A report done earlier this month by Daniel Miller, a professor at the University of London showed that teens are using Facebook more to stay in touch with family than to keep up with their friends.

So where are teens going for social media if they aren’t using Facebook? Teens are more apt to be using social media platforms that are used for direct interaction. Twitter being one of them, along with Instagram (which is owned by Facebook), instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and SnapChat also saw an increase in use in the past year.

What this means for your web marketing company is that you have to pay attention to where your target demographics hang out online. With these studies done, we now know that teens aren’t hanging out on Facebook. Facebook with its massive userbase will still be useful for web marketing companies for years to come. The question you’ll have to answer is, will this be a trend for all demographics eventually, or will Facebook be able to retain its king like status as a social media platform?