Facebook could be overtaken by YouTube in the US, says SimilarWeb

Facebook
CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Reuters/Charles
Platiau

• Facebook has had a chastening couple of weeks, and it’s
  now about to be overtaken by YouTube as the second biggest
  website in the US.
• Market research firm SimilarWeb said Facebook’s monthly
  visits have fallen from 8.5 billion two years ago, to 4.7
  billion in July, while YouTube has been quietly edging
  up.
• Facebook’s losses must be seen in context, however, as
  its portfolio is growing on the back of its app and other
  platforms, like Instagram.

The biggest share price nosedive
in Wall Street history, a shareholder revolt, another
round of election meddling,
and the banning of a notorious conspiracy
theorist only after a rival had acted. It’s been a
cataclysmic couple of weeks for Facebook.

And, according to a study by SimilarWeb, the news is not about to
get any better. In a blog published on
Wednesday, the market research firm said it thinks Facebook
is about to lose its place as the second biggest website in
America to YouTube.

In what SimilarWeb’s Stephen Kraus described as a “paradigm
shift,” he said his projections suggest that “YouTube’s traffic
will pull ahead of Facebook” in the next two or three months.

Facebook’s monthly visits have fallen from 8.5 billion two years
ago to 4.7 billion in July, while YouTube has been quietly edging
up, hitting 4.5 billion last month. You can see the trend in
SimilarWeb’s chart below.

SimilarWeb

There were signs of flattening in
Facebook’s second-quarter earnings in July, when it revealed
that overall monthly active users were flat at 241 million in the
US and Canada. It also lost a million users in Europe, where MAUs
stood at 376 million in the three months to the end of June.

But SimilarWeb said Facebook’s losses over the past two years
must be seen in context. While the main website might be shedding
traffic, Facebook’s network, including Instagram, WhatsApp, and
Messenger, is actually growing. Use of the Facebook app is also
increasing.

“This transition reflects how Facebook is focused, not just on
growth for their main site, but rather on expanding their entire
ecosystem,” SimilarWeb said. As Facebook noted in its
earnings, 2.5 billion people — a third of the world’s
population — now use at least one of its products each month.

YouTube is now the primary destination for video

YouTube, meanwhile, has established itself as the “primary
entertainment/information source for the younger generation” and
benefited from a “growing openness among consumers” to video.

Google remains comfortably the biggest website in the US, with
15.2 billion monthly visits. There’s no danger of Facebook or
YouTube knocking the search engine off its lofty perch anytime
soon.

But another interesting trend SimilarWeb spotted was Amazon
creeping ahead of Yahoo, in large part down to the success of
Prime Day. “If current trends continue, Amazon will soon begin
generating more traffic than Yahoo on a regular basis,” the
market research company added.