Will Facebook still dominate social media in the future?

Facebook's first quarter 2016 financial report showed that Facebook's first quarter revenue was US$5.382 billion, a year-on-year increase of 52%; net profit was US$1.510 billion, a year-on-year increase of 195%.

Despite this, some industry insiders still believe that Facebook still faces uncertainty in its long-term development, such as whether the number of users can continue to grow, and whether the chatbot and VR plans that have been invested heavily can proceed smoothly. However, Global Web Index (GWI), which focuses on Internet user behavior research, recently released a report that Facebook will still dominate the social field in the future.

80% of Internet users use Facebook at least once a month

Whether directly using or indirectly browsing, the vast majority of Internet users use Facebook at least once a month. This high frequency of use has continued for several years and this trend will continue in the next few years.

As shown in the above figure, the frequency of Facebook users has remained relatively stable at around 80%. However, this does not mean that Facebook users have not increased, because the number of users on the entire Internet is increasing year by year. Although the percentage has not increased, the actual number of users is increasing.

Although user growth in some developed countries such as the United States has reached a bottleneck period, Asia, Africa and South America have become fertile ground for new user growth. According to data, Facebook currently has more than 100 million users in Africa, accounting for more than half of the entire African Internet users.

The daily visit rate of users is significantly ahead of its peers

Data released by Global Web Index in 2015 showed that the Internet provides too many social media platforms for netizens, with an average of 5.5 social accounts per netizen and about 3 active platforms. Therefore, some people say that although Facebook currently has a huge number of users, this trend has diverted the number of users on each platform to a certain extent.

Among all the social media tracked by Global Web Index, Facebook can still be regarded as the most frequently used tool by users. A quarter of users visit it at least once a day, and half of users visit it multiple times a day, which is significantly ahead of many competitors.

The “Like” button drives user activity

Faced with a huge user base, Facebook is very cautious in launching every revision and new design, otherwise it will easily attract abuse.

Survey data shows that the addition of the "Like" button is the most valuable design in the redesign launched by Facebook. More than 80% of people will click the "Like" button to like and share every month, which is a significant increase compared with the same period in 2014 and 2015.

The “Like” button not only brings more traffic to the website where it is installed, but also helps encourage users to interact with it outside of Facebook’s platform, which is very useful for breaking through user activity.

From: Exclusively compiled by NetEase News Academy