Facebook Numbers Down in U.S.

LOSING FACEBOOK: With news of Facebook’s planned Q1 2012 IPO valuation soaring towards $100 billion comes word that active user levels at the social media site have been declining in critical territories like the U.S., U.K., Norway and Canada. For the first time, U.S. Facebook numbers are off 6 million, from 155.2 million in May to 149.4 at the start of June. And while global traffic and user levels continue to increase worldwide, the rate of growth is slowing, and Facebook could face difficulty meeting its goal of one billion global active users. At present, the site counts 687 million users worldwide. Facebook is now showing some of the same symptoms of decay exhibited by MySpace, including a proliferation of fake accounts, scams and issues over privacy controls. (6/14a)