Facebook sees traffic dip

The Guardian has reported that Facebook growth fell during May this year in the US, UK, Canada, Norway and Russia. Now approaching 700 million users, Facebook seems to have hit a limit in terms of expansion in the countries in which it has been successful at the early stages. It is thought that many users may have stopped using the site entirely.

Much of the data gathered is sourced from the site Inside Facebook which indicates that in the US the site lost about 6 million users, going from 155.2 million at the start of May to 149.4 million at the end of May. The drops in these stats has held back the typical growth figure which is expected from the site and it is reported that, without new sources of growth, it's audience may become limited.

Eric Eldon of Inside Facebook commented that if China were to allow Facebook into the country growth could "take off again towards 1 billion users" but that getting inside the country "could both give access to hundreds of millions of users and compromise its reputation in the US and many other countries around the world." China continues to follow a repressive approach to internet use with sites such as Twitter and Facebook being banned to Chinese citizens, who outnumber the total US connected population.