PAGE 38 • OMG Magazine | Thursday 2 May, 2013
Millions are leaving
Facebook every month
due to boredom
Facebook is by far the biggest social network on the Internet, but in its most established markets, Facebook is losing users by the millions on a monthly basis.
Farrah Abraham
Farrah Abraham Sex Tape Sold For Nearly $1M: Former ‘Teen Mom’ Star Inks Six-Figure Deal
So much for Farrah Abraham’s claims that she made a professionally produced porn video as a personal keepsake – not that we were buying that for a second, in the first place. Recently, we saw the 21-year-old playing in a bikini with her four-year-old daughter, Sophia, after returning from a meeting with Vivid Entertainment CEO Steve Hirsch – and it appears the meeting was a success. The former Teen Mom star has struck a deal with Vivid Entertainment to sell her sex tape featuring herself and porn star James Deen for close to $1 million, reports TMZ. Vivid seems to be betting that there are plenty of people out there willing to shell out their hardearned money to watch the former reality star get it on for 70 minutes in the film, which will have the ultra-classy title “Farrah Superstar: Backdoor Teen Mom.”
While the large six-figure payday is impressive for a reality star’s porn video, it’s less than Abraham initially hoped to sell it for, as she told Us Weekly that she wouldn’t let it go for less than a “couple million.” Abraham first made headlines earlier this month when news broke that a “sex tape” featuring the MTV star and an unidentified male was being shopped around, but the world learned that the video in question was actually a professional porn video after Deen spilled the beans, because he didn’t want to lie about dating Abraham. Sources told Us Weekly that the former Teen Mom cast member is “desperate” to revive her career since her stint on the MTV show ended in September 2012: “She tried to recruit a boyfriend for ‘Couples Therapy,’” a friend of Abraham’s told the magazine. “But no one would do it.”
According to independent analyst estimates, in the US alone Facebook lost six million visitors last month and has lost over nine million over the last six months. That’s around a four per cent drop. On its own that’s nothing to be too concerned about, but the same visitor retreat is happening in other countries across Europe, including the UK, Germany, Spain, France, Japan, and Canada. So why are so many people fleeing the service? The answer is two-fold. Firstly, there’s competition from other services including the Facebook-owned Instagram and Path, created by a former Facebook employee. You also can’t forget the other big names operating in this space such as Google+ and Twitter. But the second, and potentially bigger problem for Facebook is boredom. Facebook is massive, meaning the amount of people who have an account in its established markets is quite a high percentage. There isn’t much more room for new account growth, and those visitors who have been signed up for years are getting bored with what the social network offers and are choosing to go elsewhere. Time spent browsing Facebook is also dropping, where in the US it has fallen from an average 121 minutes to 115 minutes comparing December 2012 to February 2013. Facebook believes this is because people are using mobile devices more and not sitting in front of a PC as much. The boredom factor is something Facebook will no doubt be keen to address, and the move to mobile platforms is already being countered with initiatives like Facebook Home. But in the short term Mark Zuckerberg’s team doesn’t have much to worry about with revenue predicted to be much higher than last year when the company’s figures are released later this week.