By Chris Lee

30 June 2011 is “Social Media Day”, according to social media blog Mashable. The site is encouraging people to hold social media meet-ups to press the flesh in an offline environment.

The culture of social media is clearly here to stay, but which channels that social interaction happens over is under some scrutiny. Facebook has been hit by talk of falling numbers of North American users, while 100,000 accounts were apparently closed in the UK last month. With experts claiming that “one size fits all” no longer works in social media, with boutique networks potentially prevailing instead, NMK asked around for answers.

On the defensive

Facebook was quick to defend its figures, pointing at continued global growth. In a statement, Facebook said: “'From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions. Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn't designed to be a source for tracking the overall growth of Facebook. We are very pleased with our growth and with the way people are engaged with Facebook. More than 50 per cent of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day.”

Evolving phenomena

For Rupert Staines, managing director of online ad platform Radium One, there are no clear signs that Facebook or Twitter’s dominance of the Social Web is challenged. Rather, he argues, their uses are changing.

“Consumers are increasingly turning their Facebook pages into a more private space to share content with close friends and family, rather than those they’ve met once or went to school with years ago, and have never spoken to again,” he told NMK. “The truth is that the whole Web has become social, where people increasingly share, communicate and produce, rather than search, read and consume. So when it comes to a credible threat to Facebook and Twitter’s dominance, it’s not just new technologies that will undoubtedly challenge, but it’s the sheer force of an individual's freedom to express across the whole web!”

BBC blogger Gary Andrews believes that Facebook will be challenged by a number of niche, more specialist networks.

“Facebook has shown us the value of browsing the Web socially and, for many, has become a daily or weekly way of keeping up with friends and a social life, and for big-to-medium brands it’s a great tool. But when it comes to engaging in niche areas, the one size fits all approach that’s normally so effective for Facebook, falls down somewhat,” he said. “For small to small-to-small medium interests, websites, brands, etc, Facebook is a good news feed and traffic generator but may not necessarily be the best place to grow the community.”

Future gazing

Having seen other social networks Friends Reunited, Bebo and MySpace all lose significant membership, usage and traffic over the last few years, Facebook and Twitter know they need to continually evolve to keep the public coming back for more.

Peter Thomson, head of social media at Babel PR, social sharing will be key to this evolution.

“Twitter and Facebook’s only chance for long term survival is to become part of the invisible operating system of social sharing,” he argued. “That means you might never visit Facebook’s own website because you’ll be logged into Facebook within Amazon, TripAdvisor or Yelp. Twitter’s integration deep inside the next version of the iPhone iOS is the biggest announcement that no one is talking about. Because it makes Twitter a permanent part of the invisible mechanism of social content sharing.”