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The End of Facebook.

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Elijah Holland
Mansfield
English 1000
11 November 2015

The End of Facebook

In 2012, The Guardian stated Facebook would loose 80% of its users by the year
2017. The Guardian based this statement on the research of two students at Princeton .
Using logos, the Guardian tried to get its audience, users of Facebook to believe the site
would be headed towards misfortune in the near future . The facts these two students
submitted were flawed. The two students based the decline on how many times
Facebook was searched into google. A lot of Facebook users use the Facebook app
thats built into their cell phones. By using these apps, a google search is no longer
required to get to the site thus eliminating a need to google the site . As more and more

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browsers gravitate to only displaying one bar to both search and enter the URL for a
site, this number will drop even further by simply auto filling .com when Facebook is
entered into the bar. The fact is Facebook is constantly buying competitors of the site ,
and integrating its self into most mobile apps these days . By doing this Facebook is
cementing its self into our digital lives making it very unlikely that Facebook will loose
80% of its users in only 2 years.
Many news outlets followed The Guardians lead and released their own
articles based on logos, and pathos declaring the decline of Facebook. In June of
2012, Mashable printed an article stating Facebook would end in 2020 . Though this
article had essentially the same stance on Facebooks future as The Guardians ,
Mashable sourced more accurate facts. Mashable compares Facebook to Yahoo,
showing Yahoos value in the year 2000 compared to its value now . Mashables
Audience is a bit broader, by including users of Yahoo, Mashable used pathos to covey
the emotions Yahoo users felt about Yahoos current state compared to its popularity in
the late 90s and early 2000s. This is better than the Guardian but not completely
accurate. Yahoo does not provide the same service as Facebook . Yahoo was beaten
by an arguably better search engine google. This will most likely not affect Facebook

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because Facebook buys its competitors or adapts to better compete with its new rival .
For instance, in 2012 Facebook bought a potential rival , Instagram for $1 billion dollars
to further reinforce their stake in the digital frontier (Facebook Buys Instagram for $1
Billion).
Even CNBC printed an article on Facebook disappearing in the next 5 to 8 years .
CNBCs article pretty much mirrors the two previous sources using the same sources ,
the same rhetorical appeal, and essentially claiming the same message , Facebook will
go out the same way Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and Myspace did. Although Facebook may
seem similar to these properties, Facebook changes with the tides and adapts to fit a
new market. This is something Myspace and Yahoo never did .
Two days after The Guardian published the article Claiming the end of Facebook
they published a new article aimed towards current Facebook users . This article shows
the flaws in how the data was researched. In this article the Guardian used logos in the
correct way by stating actual logical and how their previous research might have been
wrong. The Guardian sourced Mark Develin, an employee of Facebook, who using the
same methods showed a graph indicating air was in decline by showing how much the
term was searched in google. It is obviously ridiculous to think air could vanish just

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because of how many times its googled right? By using this this logic Mark revealed
how manipulated the information made by the two Princeton students truly was . By
using logos Mark indicated how the odds of it going extinct based on how many times
Facebook is typed into google is also utterly ridiculous . While Facebook may not be
the same site that we all know and use today in 2017 or even 2020 , it will most definitely
be around simply because Facebook adapts to fit its audience .

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Work Cited
Garside, Juliette. "Facebook Will Lose 80% of Users by 2017, Say Princeton
Researchers." The Guardian. The Guardian, 01 Jan. 2014. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Rusli, Evelyn M. "Facebook Buys Instagram for $1 Billion." DealBook Facebook Buys
Instagram for 1 Billion Comments. The New York Times, 09 Apr. 2012. Web. 13 Nov.
2015.

Garside, Juliette. "Facebook: Reports of Its Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated ." The
Guardian. The Guardian, 24 Jan. 2014. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Thompson, Cadie. "Facebook Will Disappear in 5 to 8 Years: Analyst ." CNBC. CNBC,
04 June 2012. Web. 13 Nov. 2015.