A new research of Facebook’s user-base has foretold that the social networking site will experience a rapid decline in the coming years, losing 80 per cent of its peak user base between 2015 and 2017. A group of researchers from Princeton University in the US produced the paper using “epidemiological models to explain user adoption and abandonment of online social networks, where adoption is analogous to infection and abandonment is comparable to recovery.”

The study said, “Last decade also presents various cases of online social networks that have risen and fallen in popularity most reputable MySpace. MySpace, founded in 2003, reached its peak in 2008 with 75.9 million unique monthly visits in the US before consequently declining to obscurity by 2011. MySpace was purchased by News Corp for $580 million during its rapid growth phase in 2005 and was sold six years later at a loss for $35 million in 2011. The dynamics governing the rapid rises and falls of social networks are therefore not only of academic interest, but also of financial interest to necessary and emerging online social network providers and their stakeholders.”