facebook

Facebook isn’t in any danger of experiencing a MySpace-style implosion anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean the social networking giant isn’t in danger of seeing its clout slowly erode over time. The Guardian reports that a new study from SocialBakers shows that Facebook lost around 6 million visitors in the United States in just the last month alone, which represents a 4% decline of its total user base. The most recent drop in American Facebook visitors is part of a sustained decline, since SocialBakers estimates that the social networking site has seen a drop of around 9 million visitors over the past six months. The good news for Facebook is that its own photo-sharing social network Instagram has apparently picked up the slack and has “seen surges in popularity with younger age groups.”

Facebook seems intent on testing its users’ patience for annoying and invasive content. Unnamed sources have told AdAge that Facebook is working with ad agencies to bring video advertisements to users’ Facebook timelines that will likely “be autoplay and presented in a video player that expands beyond the main news-feed real estate to cover the right- and left-hand rails of users’ screens.” AdAge says that Facebook hopes to make more than $4 million a day just from the new video ads, which it says “could be eagerly sought after by agencies that have plenty of TV ad creative on their hands and not enough TV-like web inventory to place it in.”