Are Marketers About to Face Facebook Fatigue?

Call it a building generational misstep.

Just as marketers seem to be catching on to social media’s professional usefulness, new data suggests sites like Facebook may be losing some of its youngest faces, today’s college students and recent graduates, who will soon form the next generation of adult consumers. Fed up with the site’s frequent rules changes, feared invasions of privacy, and overwhelmed by the never-ending stream-of-consciousness thoughts that seems to ooze from its millions of users, so-called “Facebook Fatigue” is growing.

The “disease,” which was diagnosed by Inside Facebook, a blog who owes its existence to tracking all things Facebook, (along with social gaming and mobile applications), found that while the number of Facebook users continues to grow, growth rates have slowed. In the US, some 6 million users have defriended the social media site, dropping its total number of nationwide users to 149 million, down from 155 million in recent months, a nearly 4 percent drop. Across the pond, UK Facebook user numbers also took a dip, where 100,000 people –out of about 30 million users – deleted their accounts.

So what’s the big deal if Facebook’s portrait these days isn’t as bright?

The Facebook usage study coincides with marketing research that suggests Fortune 100 companies –if belatedly – plan to ramp up their spending sharply on social media campaigns in 2012. A summer 2011 study by Booz & Co. and Buddy Media, as reported on eMarketer, found that nearly a third of respondents said they expected to grow their social media budgets to as high as 10 percent of their overall marketing budget in the next three years. More than a quarter, (28 percent) predicted their social media spending would surge to 20 percent of their marketing spending.

As with any hot new trend like social media at large and Facebook up close, it’s critical marketers, aided by their in-house and external Public Relations partners, remain fresh with the times. Anyone remember Friends Reunited, Bebo, (short for Blog Early, Blog Often) and MySpace? Well, maybe you remember them, but when was the last time you checked your profile or sent a post? Chances are it’s been a while.

Thanks to the growing bonds between social media and mobile communications, its likely the new medium will continue discovering ways to reinvent itself and maintain popularity. In other words, if it’s not Facebook or Twitter, chances are it’ll be something else.

So is there a building generational misstep?

It’s too soon to tell. But when marketers express confidence over their social media spending plans, remind them that on today’s fast-changing digital high seas, it’s easy to miss the boat.

Two Weeks On, Apple Endures

Two weeks may not sound like a lot of time, but for a company that’s just lost one of the world’s most influential technological and social innovators, it is.

That’s why in the huge wake left by the passing of Steve Jobs, tech writers, bloggers and PR professionals, continue to hang on almost every word the company says, and look for signs, no matter how small, that suggest the company is foundering.

On Wednesday, 14 days after Jobs’ death, the naysayers may have found one.

For only the third time in nearly a decade, (cue the foreboding music) the financially conservative tech giant missed its quarterly earnings estimate – a fact that sent the stocks spiraling downwards by some 22 points before today’s Nasdaq opening. As of 10 o’clock this morning, Apple’s stock was down 5.4 percent.

I don’t know about you, but this latest sign of the purported apocalypse hasn’t caused any iPhone 4 or 4s, or any of my iOS devices to suddenly crash. (My Blackberry, however, is another story) Over the last few weeks, both before and after Steve Jobs’ death, I’ve written about Apple’s long-term vision, its ability to manage its message, and its resilience going forward. So lets set the record straight – a missed earnings call by any other company, like Goldman Sachs and Google, generates news, for sure, but few people start questioning the company’s future. Miss a few more earnings estimates, however, and legitimate concerns mount. Apple Q4 sales still rose 39 percent to $28.3 billion and the company ended its fiscal year with $108 billion in sales.

Only Apple has the bragging rights to call this a “poor performance.”

The Street writer, James Rogers, rightly points out three reasons why the bite into Apple’s profits won’t last: An already better-than-expected Q1 outlook, an expected uptick in iPhone 4s sales, offsetting sales declines in older models, and the staggering $81.6 billion the company has in on-hand cash.

Apple’s aim high and shoot low forecasting approach should serve as an important reminder for PR professionals. No matter how groundbreaking and dare we say media controlling Apple can sometimes be, the company often underestimates its projected performance to its own advantage. (Yesterday’s miss aside) Clients, especially young startups, run the risk of being overzealous when it comes to the type of messaging and marketing campaign they seek to launch. Reigning in those expectations sounds like a good idea to me.

Two weeks without Jobs and Apple’s message still bears fruit. And it will for a long time to come.