Facebook’s User Fatigue Becomes Gateway for Niche Social Media
Picture this: you’re sitting on the couch curled up in a comfy blanket, a big bowl of popcorn is sitting in your lap, the lights are dimmed and you’re ready to cap the night off with a movie. “I’ll just pick one,” you think. Fast forward 45 minutes later and you’ve not only finished your popcorn, but you’ve moved from Netflix to Hulu to HBOGo and back to Netflix. In the thousands of titles you’ve scrolled through, not one of them appealed to you so you decide to hit the hay instead. Sound familiar? (This happens to me at least once or twice a month).
This scenario happens often and not just while searching for a movie to watch. When was the last time you caught yourself aimlessly scrolling through your Facebook feed before deciding that there wasn’t anything exciting to see? Probably five minutes ago.
The consequences of social media boredom or “user fatigue” can best be exemplified in the significant drops to Facebook’s average users. According to WERSM, Facebook’s “daily active users dropped from 196 million in the third quarter to 195 million in the fourth quarter,” in the United States and Canada in 2020 (Desreumaux, 2021).
According to a PEW Research Center Survey, “42 percent have taken a break from checking the platform [Facebook], and 26 percent have deleted its app from their cell phone” (Perrin, 2018).
Experts have hypothesized that user fatigue directly correlates to the rise in new, nuanced and niche social media platforms we have today. For example, Goodreads, a social media site centered around sharing, reading and reviewing books, has more than 90 million registered users.
Could a business tap into Facebook’s group feature and search for an active book club instead? Sure. However, according to Entrepreneur.com, people “want to connect with a specific type of social community. As a result, niche, closed social groups are gaining more appeal versus public feeds on popular networks like Facebook” (Garcia, 2019).
Depending on the type of business, niche social media platforms may be the ticket to increasing a company’s brand awareness, recognition and traffic. Smaller and more focused platforms provide businesses an opportunity to market towards a highly targeted group of users. For example, if you’re a brewery advertising a new IPA recipe you’ll probably see more of an impact posting to the 9 million users on Untappd versus the 2.8 billion users on Facebook.
Why? When considering the example, Untappd is an application specifically for beer enthusiasts to track and explore all different kinds of beer they’ve had or would like to taste. A brand new IPA recipe and flavor would have a much more significant and even broader impact to those 9 million users because they are interested in beer. Considering Facebook in this example, you could assume that some of its users may be interested in beer but that can’t be said for all 2.8 billion users.
A niche platform offers targeted specificity which is something that these larger platforms aren’t able to reach in the same capacity. Nevertheless, these smaller platforms generally can’t work alone.
A friend of mine who recently gained more than 1,500 followers started developing her Goodreads account which complimented her Instagram account. Her Instagram started to gain significant traction in the book lover circles and people started to care about her thoughtful and insightful reviews. Most recently, she started a weekly newsletter entitled “bee bookish” (with a bee as the logo) where she has a list of what she’s reading, reviews, suggestions and overall comments. She is slowly but surely carving out her own niche and bookworms are starting to notice.
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Desreumaux, G. (2021, January 27). Facebook Continues To Lose Users In The US And Canada. WERSM. WERSM.com. https://wersm.com/facebook-continues-to-lose-users-in-the-us-and-canada/
Garcia, A. (2019, September 23). 3 Reasons to Pay Attention to Niche Social Networks. Entrepreneur. Entreprenuer.com.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/339532
Perrin, A (2018, September 5). Americans are changing their relationship with Facebook. Pew Research. Pewresearch.org.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/05/americans-are-changing-their-relationship-with-facebook/