Survey of Facebook Users Show Many Are 'Bored'
A new survey suggests that Facebook users may actually be getting bored with the social networking site after a botched IPO and those new sentiments have investors worried.
The survey, conducted by Reuters and Ipsos Public Affairs, asked respondents how frequently they visited the site, the amount of time spent on Facebook and their overall attitude towards the social network.
With over 900 million users, Facebook is by far the most popular and widely used social network ever. But recent events have actually dampened users' feelings of the site. The poll found that around 44 percent of respondents said Facebook's troubled IPO made them feel less favorable toward Facebook.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Facebook will most certainly survive these turbulent times, but they may need to introduce some new feature or aspect to allow users to rekindle that excitement some say they once had.
That is the most important thing, according to Ray Valdes, an analyst at Gartner Inc.
"Keeping users coming back is crucial for all social media services," he said. "Facebook continuously has the challenge of Facebook fatigue, of the novelty factor wearing off, and therefore they have to introduce new kinds of interaction."
Facebook is hoping that its "Timeline" feature will allow users the added connectivity so that they would keep using Facebook as their primary social network. Valdes also explained that the recent $1 billion purchase of the mobile photo-sharing app Instagram was done in order to draw more users to the site.
The survey explained that the most active age group was the 18 to 34-year-olds with roughly 60 percent of those respondents stating they were daily users.
But of that age group 34 percent stated that they were on the site for a shorter amount of time citing their main reasons were because Facebook was "boring," "not relevant" or "not useful."
