With Facebook under heavy fire, people are leaving the platform. According to Business Insider, nearly 1 in 10 Americans deleted their Facebook account after the Mark Zuckerberg hearings. Even Zuckerberg himself claimed there was “no dramatic drop-off in users” since the Cambridge Analytica data-breach.
Even though we cannot confirm the numbers from Business Insider, Google trend data shows an interesting graph line in Google search behaviour worldwide in a period of 5 years:
The data shows the huge spike in interest for deleting Facebook, after having a downward trend for the past five years. It is no surprise people are leaving the platform, with Cambridge Analytica being one of the most recent privacy-issues Facebook faced over the years.
Instagram stays untouched
With the interest in Facebook deletion, one might think Instagram and WhatsApp face the same issues. But, as CBS News reports, it seems many people are unaware of the fact that these networks are all owned by the same company. Techcrunch editor Josh Constine assumes this is on purpose: “Facebook purposefully tries to keep the Instagram brand as separate as possible; they even operate a separate office. There’s no Facebook branding in the Instagram app. You really have to be a savvy tech insider to get that,” Constine said.
And that shows in the trend data: there’s no peak in searches worldwide when it comes to the deletion of Instagram, for example. Even though the trend is at an all time high, this could be due to the fact that Instagram has many more users than it ever had. There’s no peak like we see in Facebook’s interest to delete the platform.
WhatsApp, a company aquired by Facebook in 2014 for 19 billion dollar, is also in the clear when it comes to being popular to delete.
Could this also be due to people being unaware of the fact Facebook owns these companies? It’s a guess, but nevertheless a smart marketing move from Zuckerberg.
