New data suggests that Facebook's fatigue is settling

User metrics are among the most important operational measures for Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) investors. Despite persistent privacy scandals, these numbers have not really registered a significant decline or other negative trends. Overall, the company's user indicators remain remarkably resilient in the face of controversy, and last quarter's sales were primarily related to financial advice, as opposed to user concerns, which now account for more than 2.2 billion users. assets per month. .

Nevertheless, investors must watch for any potential signs that the use and commitment could be threatened.

To make a break

The Pew Research Center today released estimates regarding the use of Facebook among American adults, and the results suggest that fatigue on Facebook could be manifested among broad layers of users in the US. 39; company. The results are based on data collected during surveys conducted from May 29 to June 11 (n = 4,594), a few months after the revelation of Cambridge Analytica.

In the past year, 42% of respondents said they left Facebook for several weeks or more. Another 26% of respondents said they removed the application of their phones, while 54% of users surveyed changed their privacy settings. Making privacy settings more visible and accessible was one of the changes Facebook made following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which raised awareness of the cost of privacy associated with many free online services.

The data echoes my personal experience. For the record, I only register again every few weeks on Facebook, and my wife completely deleted her account after the Cambridge Analytica story. Many of my friends are also less engaged with the service over time.

It is difficult to reconcile the data with reported measurements

In nominal terms, the results are a bit worrisome, especially the figure of 42%. That's nearly half of those surveyed who take extended holidays on Facebook. There are several ways to look at this result in the context of user actions reported by Facebook. Any user who has taken several weeks off would no longer be considered a daily active user (DAU), but would probably still meet the criteria of a MAU.

Facebook defines a MAU as any user who logs in to Facebook or Messenger in the last 30 days prior to the date of the measurement. In other words, during a quarter, a user could be inactive for two full months, register once in the third month of the quarter, and then count as MAU. This could explain why UAMs have not really changed much in the past year, but it is harder to reconcile the results with SAD stability. AAUs and UAMs in the United States and Canada have fluctuated around 185 million and 240 million, respectively, in the past year.

Concerns about Facebook's fatigue are popping up every two or three years, but ultimately, Facebook is still reporting resilient user measures every quarter. Although Pew's methodology is sound, it seems that we can not extrapolate the results of the respondents to all Facebook users in the United States, since North American DAUs did not fluctuated only by less than 1% on a sequential basis. four quarters.