Facebook Losing Out to Whatsapp in Terms of Popularity- Whatsapp Vs Facebook

If latest facts and figures are to be believed, Facebook is losing its popularity.

No longer does it hold the exalted Number One slot for social networking among teenagers and others who spend a considerable part of their time online daily, or use the various social networking platforms to stay connected to fiends, family clients, etc.

Youngsters in particular are getting increasingly hooked to mobile messaging apps like Whatsapp, Kakao, Line and Wechat, etc. and moving over Facebook.

Does that sound like warning bells for Mark Zuckerberg?

Though it does not look like the end of the road for Facebook, they do have reasons enough to be worries.

Facebook itself admitted to having lost to a considerable percentage of teenager users over the last few months, while maintaining that they have not taken any serious steps to look into that.

Reasons For Whatsapp Affecting Facebook’s Popularity

With more than 350 million active users, this comparatively new messaging app which is barely four years old at present, has already left the much older networking giant like Twitter far behind. With nearly 25 billion messages being shared across the globe daily across this platform, it indeed does have a huge presence which cannot be ignored.

Twitter, by its latest count, had only 218 million users. And though Facebook has more than a million of them (almost three time the number of Whatsapp users), it would not want to lose out o its prime segment.

More and more users are moving over to clients like Wechat, Kakao, Line and Whatsapp because of greater privacy, ad free user interface, easier photo sharing and sheer convenience.

Unlike Facebook where anyone and everyone can see you, check your profile, stalk you or send you a message (unless you have been smart enough to adjust your Privacy settings, which 80% of the users do not even know about), you can choose the people you want to be friends with over these newer messaging apps making it an instant hit among youngsters.

Another reason which has been a major contributor toward Whatsapp’s increasing popularity is that more and more people use this app for “staying in touch” by way of creating and joining groups, a feature which was, till recently, confined only to Facebook and Google plus.

I, for instance, have a Family group where we have more than 40 members where we all wish each other on our special days, share what is going in our lives, post our latest vacation and kids’ pics without sharing them with the whole world. The best part is that we can post the silliest comments on them because we know that only the group members are reading it.

It is n not uncommon to see youngsters to form Whatsapp groups where they add up all their classmates. They can then keep each other updated about tests, projects, assignments, play occasional pranks on each other or even post jokes about their teachers without worrying about being seen by ‘unwanted elements’.

Whatsapp popularity and the certain edge it enjoys over Facebook at present can well be gauged from the fact that it is getting more downloads over the Android play store and iTunes at present than Facebook in many countries. Notably, South Africa.

And courts in Saudi Arabia have now given legal sanction to divorce uttered over Whatsapp.
Thank God the Indian courts haven’t done that so far, or else I’d stop sending any Whatsapp messages to hubby at all.

Conclusion

Change, as the adage goes, is the law of nature and the only thing that is constant in this world is change.

Preferences and choices change over a period of time, explaining why what is highly sought after today might be licking the dust tomorrow.

Only those who stay in sync with the changing needs of the customers and evolve with the passage of time can manage to survive in the long run.

Facebook, sadly, has failed to keep pace with the rapidly changing needs of internet users and is therefore losing out to many chat messengers of much newer origin.

Unless they gear themselves to face the challenge posed by these apps which seem to be mushrooming with every passing day, they could well be dethroned in the near future.

Do you see Whatsapp and other similar cross messaging platforms as a potential threat to Facebook?

And what changes would you want to bring about in Facebook to enable it to stay at the top of the charts?