I've seen several posts circulating in the blogosphere postulating on the demise of Facebook given a drop in the sites traffic over August and September of this year. My immediate reaction was to turn to Hitwise data and provide a little more granularity to provide insight to the question of Facebook slowdown v. seasonality (my hypothesis on the recent drop in traffic).

Here's a monthly Facebook chart with two years of historical data:

Now look at the same chart on a weekly basis:

Finally, lets zoom in on August - October 2006 on a weekly basis:

The 2006 dip is minimized in the two-year chart given the growth of Facebook during the timeframe. At Hitwise, with a sample of 10 million Internet users (which include home, work and educational users), we have the advantage of granularity... even down to producing daily traffic charts. Based on the previous year's pattern, and the uptick in Facebook traffic over the last week, I think the argument that the dip over the last two months is seasonal is certainly plausible.

Bill Tancer

Bill Tancer is General Manager, Global Research for Hitwise. This post was originally posted on Hitwise blog here.

Flickr Image By BeFitt