Facebook, the social network that has spread like a “disease”, is losing attractions and will eventually “die out” by 2017 according to researchers at Princeton University.
Scientists compared the growth curve of epidemics to that of Facebook and concluded that the social network will lose 80% of its users by 2017, The Guardian reported.
However, Facebook authorities said the statistics was greatly flawed and the methodology can also be used to calculate the end of Princeton University.
Researchers John Cannarella and Joshua Spechler based their prediction on the number of times Facebook is typed into Google as a search item.
“Ideas, like diseases, have been shown to spread infectiously between people before eventually dying out, and have been successfully described with epidemiological models,” they said.
"Ideas are spread through communicative contact between different people who share ideas with each other. Idea manifesters ultimately lose interest with the idea and no longer manifest the idea, which can be thought of as the gain of 'immunity' to the idea."
Facebook will celebrate its 10th birthday on February 4 this year. The social networking website has survived longer than rivals Myspace, Bebo and hi5.
Facebook stepped in to debunk the research soon after it was published. A researcher for the company, Mike Develin, slammed the methodology of the study which implied that “correlation equals causality”.
Applyinh such principles, statistics show that Princeton University and the air we breathe may be in danger of disappearing entirely, he said.
“We do not really think Princeton or the world's air suppy is going anywhere soon. As data scientists, we wanted to give a fun reminder that some analysis lead to pretty crazy conclusions.”
However, Facebook's Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman admitted to a decline in daily young users, “specifically among younger teens,” during October 2013.
In contrast, Facebook said their overall demographic was increasing, with 1.2 billion users in October. Although desktop users were falling, smartphone and tablet visitors were increasing.
