The demographic has shifted dramatically over at Facebook and that change could lead to billions in revenue, according to one prominent board member.
iStrategyLabs spent the last six months collecting user demographic data and discovered the number of users over the age of 55 soared from 1 million to nearly 6 million. During the same 6 month period, high school and college users dropped by as much as 22%!
Here’s the breakdown:
At the same time Facebook continues to gray, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mark Andreessen–a Facebook board member–suggests the social network could realize revenue of $1 billion if it would only push harder with its advertising.
“This calendar year they’ll do over $500 million..If they pushed the throttle forward on monetization they would be doing more than a billion this year…There’s every reason to expect in my view that the thing can be doing billions in revenue five years from now,” Andreessen said.
What’s interesting is that the 15-24 year olds are the ones that helped Facebook become the juggernaut it is today, but when you have champagne revenue goals while your audience has a beer budget, you need those with established incomes to pay the bills–or in this case, click on the ads.
Perhaps the key question is can Facebook continue to grow while losing its vocal youth? Arguably, high school and college users were the ones that evangelized Facebook to their older friends and family. Without them, will Facebook’s growth–and revenue–stall?
