{"id":29990,"date":"2013-01-17T02:26:43","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T00:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=29990"},"modified":"2013-01-17T09:27:34","modified_gmt":"2013-01-17T07:27:34","slug":"south-africans-are-bored-with-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/29990\/south-africans-are-bored-with-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africans are bored with Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook<\/a> has lost in excess of 238,000, or 3.85% of its users in South Africa over the past three months, according to data from social media monitoring firm, SocialBakers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The site claims that the social media giant has a 12.63% penetration into the country with 6.191 million users, putting it 32nd in terms of countries with the most users.<\/p>\n

Michal Wronski<\/a>, MD of information analysts, Fuseware<\/a>, believes that the decline in users is due to social media fatigue and boredom.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe SocialBakers data is accurate as it pulls directly from the FB API (Application Programming Interface). SA has lost 138,700 people on Facebook in the last four weeks alone (2.24% of its SA user base),\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe this is due to social media fatigue and boredom setting in, as well as the notably decreased quality of home feeds due to a higher injection of brand advertising.”<\/p>\n

“Couple this with the many privacy concerns around the usage of Facebook, it\u2019s not difficult to see why many people are beginning to leave the network,\u201d Wronski said.<\/p>\n

The online analyst opined that users were being drawn to other social sites including Twitter<\/a>, Pinterest<\/a> and Instagram<\/a> as they provide a \u201cmore direct, real-time and less brand-invasive way of accessing the digital social sphere\u201d.<\/p>\n

Data from SocialBakers showed the trend in SA to be a recent one as over the past six months, Facebook had acquired 1,051 million users, a rise of 16.99%.<\/p>\n

Global trend<\/strong><\/p>\n

Developed countries like the US, the highest ranked country in terms of users with more than 167.43 million, and the UK (6th<\/sup>), also showed a decline of 406,360 and 175,920 users respectively over the past three months, leading to suggestions of saturation.<\/p>\n

Over the past month, Facebook lost 668,740 US users, and 946,120 or 2.88% of UK-based users.<\/p>\n

Over that period, developing countries like Brazil – which ranks 2nd<\/sup> behind the US in terms of users (201.103 million) – added nearly 1.85 million users, or 2.83%; while India (3rd<\/sup>) gained more than 1.55 million users, up 2.47%.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/h3>\n

Tech companies still fail at social media<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Facebook unveils new search tool<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Facebook and Internet addiction<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook has lost in excess of 238,000 or 3.85% users in South Africa over the past three months, according to data from social media monitoring firm SocialBakers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":30003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[1687,26,2282,1948,2358,4016,93],"class_list":["post-29990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-fuseware","tag-headline","tag-instagram","tag-michal-wronski","tag-pinterest","tag-socialbakers","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29990"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30025,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29990\/revisions\/30025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}