Facebook Use Has Been Dropping Since the 2016 Election, According to SimilarWeb

Re:Facebook Use Has Been Dropping Since the 2016 Election, A... by AznHisoka on Thursday May 17, 2018 @07:38PM (#17097203)

This data is meaningless because:

1. There is no benchmark and we need one because SimilarWeb is based on a panel. The less people in that panel, the less total traffic to any website.

2. Most likely cause is more app usage and less desktop usage.

Also can we please stop using SimilarWeb as some sort of authority reference? Their panel isnt humongous. Despite the fact they pay Chrome extension owners and later hijack the code to track everyone who installs it.

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Re:Facebook Use Has Been Dropping Since the 2016 Election, A... by bonniemuffin on Thursday May 17, 2018 @09:49PM (#17098018)

I was also noticing this-- that the graph shows desktop+mobile WEB, but not native app use. If people are switching from mobile web to native app, this graph would decrease even if more people are using facebook every day, right?

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Re:Facebook Use Has Been Dropping Since the 2016 Election, A... by seano314 on Thursday May 17, 2018 @10:03PM (#17098087)

Agreed.

By chance do you have references on SimilarWeb paying "Chrome extension owners and later hijack the code to track everyone who installs it"? Curious to learn more about exactly what they're doing here.

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Re:Facebook Use Has Been Dropping Since the 2016 Election, A... by AznHisoka on Thursday May 17, 2018 @10:53PM (#17098318)

https://www.howtogeek.com/180175/warning-your-browser-extens...

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Re:Facebook Use Has Been Dropping Since the 2016 Election, A... by dx034 on Friday May 18, 2018 @04:15AM (#17099554)

I agree that they can't track native app use but think their data might not be too far off. I just compared a few pages where I have access to traffic data and similarweb estimates aren't too far off, more exact than I had expected. But that could be different for very popular sites.

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Re:Facebook Use Has Been Dropping Since the 2016 Election, A... by jazoom on Friday May 18, 2018 @09:00AM (#17101071)

Similarweb's guess of my site's traffic has been absurdly wrong for years. It thinks the traffic has been wildly fluctuating but it's only ever gone up.

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