Is Facebook losing users? Report says U.S., Canada growth slowing

June 13, 2011 |  9:56 am

Facebook’s growth is slowing, particularly in the U.S. and Canada, which have both suffered major traffic drops recently, according to a new study.

“Facebook is still growing towards 700 million users, having reached 687 million monthly actives by the start of June,” said Eric Eldon of Inside Facebook, a research and marketing group, in a report about the world’s most popular social network’s Web traffic.

“Most of the new users continue to come from countries that are relatively late in adopting Facebook, as has been the trend for the past year,” Eldon said. “But overall growth has been lower than normal for the second month straight, which is unusual.”

The social media giant gained 11.8 million new users worldwide in May, down from 13.9 million new accounts in April, Eldon said. Previous to those two months, Facebook had grown by an average of 20 million new users a month for the last 12 months, he said.

“While there have been a few months that have registered lower growth numbers, they have not been back to back,” Eldon said.

The data come by way of estimations from Inside Facebook (which runs the Inside Facebook website with studies and news items directed at developers, journalists and marketers).

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