Are Britons Falling Out Of Love With Facebook?

It was quite surprising to find out this week that as many as 600,000 Britons shunned Facebook in December, prompting concerns that the most popular social media platform was running close to saturation in its key markets.

The number of UK users that stayed away from the platform last month translated into a 1.86% drop in Facebook’s audience in the country, data from social media monitoring expert SocialBakers showed. While seasonal drops in Facebook usage over the festive period are not uncommon, as people try to avoid going online in order to have a refreshing holiday period, the UK was the sole country of the channel’s 10 most developed markets to see a seasonal decline. This could suggest that Facebook’s growth going forward will be strongly reliant on developing markets, the Guardian reported.

Currently, the UK is Facebook’s sixth-largest market in terms of subscribers, recording 33 million unique visitors in December. This represents a 53% market penetration rate, second only to the US, where Facebook captured 54% of the market. The US proved to be Facebook’s busiest territory, with 169 million unique visitors each month. Brazil ranks second with 65 million monthly visitors, followed by India with 63 million users a month.

According to Jan Rezab, CEO of Czech-based media specialist SocialBakers, while Facebook use in the UK could be reaching its saturation point, the outflow from the social network in December should not be considered a proof of a massive exodus.