Facebook is losing users in the U.S., Britain and Canada. The news has investors, advertisers and media companies all scratching their heads simply because it’s so unusual. We’ve all been following the meteoric rise of Facebook for just over seven years now, and the thought of it slowing down is a very difficult idea to digest.
A closer look at Facebook’s global usage shows that it’s actually still growing quite quickly in other countries (Mexico and Brazil continue to add a few million new users per month); and the fact that it has yet to enter China, the country with the largest population of all, should be an indication that it ise nowhere near the end of its reign. It is very likely that sometime shortly after its rumored hundred billion dollar IPO in the first quarter of next year it will find its billionth user.
In Pictures: Keeping Kids Safe On Facebook
That said, there is one simple rule that we all need to remember as Facebook navigates beyond the plateau in growth in the U.S.: Kids don’t want to be friends with their parents. It’s a sad thought certainly, and it looks worse in print than in reality. Many kids have great, honest, trusting relationships with their parents. But when it comes to your personal social graph, at some point during the teen years you realize that you need your space—and Facebook is taking that space away from American kids by serving up access to their thoughts, comments, photos and friends . . . to their parents.
