Why Facebook Still Wins When We Use Facebook Less

Mobile apps usually measure success by how engaged their users are. Are people coming back at least once a month to their service? If not, there’s a problem. Yet that idea doesn’t apply to the granddaddy of social apps, Facebook.

You’d think it would, since recent studies are showing that people who use Facebook, particularly those under the age of 25, are going on the social network less and less. They’re not as engaged as they once were. They’re being lured away by other apps like Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp and Pinterest.

The researchers at GlobalWebIndex, which does some of the most comprehensive surveys on social-media use, have even quantified it: In 2013 the average internet user had 4.7 social media accounts. In 2014 that went up to 5.2. While around 80% of the world’s internet users outside of China have a Facebook profile, they’re adding more and more competing accounts each year. (You’re more likely to juggle six or more social accounts if you’re in China or if you’re under 25.)

“Every wave of research, we see people using more service than they previously have been,” says Tom Smith, CEO of GlobalWebIndex, which counts the advertising arms of Google GOOGL -0.31%, Twitter TWTR +0.39% and Yahoo YHOO -0.73% among its clients. “The younger you are, the more you use. People are layering in more and more services.”

That presents a complicated problem for advertisers. They have to target people across an increasing number of platforms with different types of content. But it’s not a problem for Facebook, thanks to the company’s strong grip on our digital identities through Facebook Login (previously called Facebook Connect).

A quick refresher: Facebook launched Facebook Login in 2008 to make it easier for app developers to cross reference users who were already linked on Facebook. It also offered an easier way for us to log in to apps and avoid thinking up yet more user names and passwords.

Now more than 12% of the most popular apps and websites use Facebook Login, according to sales intelligence firm Lead Ledger. It’s the most popular social login for mobile apps, preferred by 44% of app users, according to a July 2014 study by digital ID manager Janrain, ahead of the 37% who prefer using Google IDs.

Having got in so early, Facebook has done better than pretty much any other web service at digital identity – much better than Google Plus, to the chagrin of those who believe there should be healthier competition over the job of identifying you across different apps. Twitter only just got in the game in October with its Digits service, so it’s also a ways behind.

This is why Facebook can still win as we use other competing apps, even at the expense of the time we spend on Facebook. Thanks to Facebook Login, Facebook offers one of the few mobile advertising networks that advertisers can use to target us across multiple competing platforms.

In one way it’s a more attractive prospect for ad networks than Yahoo’s Flurry or Google Analytics, which app makers put into the backend of their apps, and which can’t always identify who you are. With Facebook Login, app users willingly put forward not only their name but their likes, dislikes and social graph.

“From an advertising point of view, [less engagement on Facebook] is not necessarily a problem, especially now with the direction Facebook is going,” Smith says. ”You can target Facebook users across apps and you’re not targeting a specific application but that user anywhere they’re online.”

Facebook’s ability to track and identify us across apps is going to become all the more important as people use mobile services more and more at the expense of the desktop Web. On desktop, advertisers track us via cookies, but there are no cookies on mobile. Just behind-the-scenes networks like Facebook or Flurry.

“The nature of what Facebook needs to be successful is changing,” says Smith. “In the past it was that everyone needs to be actively engaged.”

Nowadays it’s fine if people become more passive on Facebook, lurking on the site rather than posting or not visiting it at all. What matters is how much we’re using those other apps that use Facebook to identify us. “The more we spend with mobile the better it is for Facebook because so few other companies can do what Facebook can do on mobile.”