You may wonder how do engineers justify such a big prediction? For this, researchers analyzed the adoption and abandonment of social networks and thus created a model based on disease-like dynamics, due to social media's infectious nature. They then used the models to analyze Google search query data for social networks from Google Trends. Essentially, the result of Google query data about social networks is representative of their user bases in this study. Scientists say that, like the bubonic plague, Facebook will eventually die out.The social network, which celebrates its 10th birthday on February 4, has survived longer than rivals such as Myspace and Bebo, but the new report claims that the next few years would be disastrous in terms of user base for the network.
According to the study's model, "the search query data suggests that Facebook has already reached the peak of its popularity and has entered a decline phase, as evidenced by the downward trend in search frequency after 2012." Based on findings since then, the engineers said it is fair to say that Facebook will follow the abandonment trends of the model, like MySpace did before it became irrelevant.
The Princeton report claims that if things happen as per their predictive mathematical curve, then by December 2017 Facebook will shrink to "to 20 percent of its maximum size." So while the trend in 2008 was to create a Facebook profile, the cool thing in 2014, will be to walk away from it.
