Facebook might feel like an infectious disease to many of its 1.44 billion monthly active users, but according to a pair of Princeton University researchers, that feeling just may be valid. In a recent study, John Cannarella and Joshua Spechler of the school’s mechanical and aersopace engineering department concluded that the popular social networking site will lose 80 percent of its users by 2017, starting with a rapid decline over the next two years.
The two used the SIR (susceptible, infected, recovered) model, which maps the lifespan of an epidemic with equations, to pit the growth curves of epidemics and social networking sites up against each other. They found similar results between the two—as more users drift away from the site, their friends will follow suit, just as a disease spreads faster when more people are infected. The study ultimately determined that Facebook is headed for obscurity like Myspace, its popularity predecessor that reached its peak in 2007 but joined the social network graveyard in 2011 when Specific Media Group and Justin Timberlake purchased it for $35 million, a fraction of its $580 million price tag in 2005.
Cannarella and Spechler also based their forecast on the number of times users searched for Facebook through Google. The number peaked in 2012, and it has died down ever since. But while Facebook’s Google searches and general desktop traffic are falling, many attribute the decline to more and more users accessing the website through the app on their smartphones—around 870 million people per month. Mobile access all but eliminates the need to open up your laptop and type “Facebook” into the search bar.
Using that statistic as fuel, Facebook fought back. Mike Develin, a data scientist for the social site, applied a similar method to track Princeton’s online popularity, tracking the school’s Google Trends scores. He concluded, tongue-in-cheek, that the university’s current enrollment would be cut in half by 2018, and by 2021, the total number of students would be zero.
So, who comes out on top? Both parties got a few good jabs in, but ultimately, it’s too close to call.
