Reports that Facebook has lost millions of users from its biggest markets have been denied by Socialbakers, the analytics firm whose figures where used for the story.
The report, first appearing in The Guardian, used Socialbakers data to show that a third (33%) of countries on Facebook saw a decline in monthly active users over the last six months, compared to about 11% over the last year. The US and UK saw a drop of 8 million and 2 million people respectively.
In response to the report, Socialbakers has published a blog post explaining to readers that the statistics were “rough estimates” and “not primarily intended for journalists”.
The company says the data was meant specifically for marketers.
Writing in the blog, Jan Rezab, CEO of Socialbakers said: “In this article, I explained the stats in question, revealed the source of the stats, and admonished journalists against jumping to conclusions about them going forward. Well, (The) Guardian did not heed the advice, jumping to an even bigger conclusion this time. The bottom line here is that there is no story.”
Read the full blog post here
