Up till then, the site has been constantly growing for 17 successive months. Still, the data is hardly alarming at this point. First of all, the site is still up 10% compared to the previous quarter and is doing 712% better than it did in January 2007.
Furthermore, it appears that the December – January period was a rough time for the entire social networking in the UK.
MySpace, currently the number two site, also saw its figures go down to 5 million (a 5% drop). Bebo, the next in line, followed the trend but with “less significant” results: a 2 drop to 4.1 million.
On the other hand, there are voices claiming that the booming era is now over and Facebook should better take a good grip on the situation before it has a real problem on its hands. Alex Burmaster, an internet analyst at Nielsen Online told The Times:
"Facebook was never going to be able to carry on growing the way it has, and a lot of people – especially those who’ve been using it heavily – are now starting to get Facebook fatigue. I think when something explodes like that a lot of people check it out because they feel they should, but while getting alerts about what your friends are up to is exciting for a time, that’s inevitably going to die down."