The life cycle of social media

Abstract

Using weekly data on the interest for 17 social media via Google trends and using quarterly data on actual users for 3 social media, it is reported in this letter that the life cycles of social media mimic those of durable consumer goods. On average, the popularity of social media peaks after 4 years since entry.

Keywords:

• social media
• life cycle
• forecasting
• maturity

JEL Classification:

• L69
• L86
• M30

Acknowledgements

The author thanks an anonymous referee for helpful suggestions.

Notes

¹ See for a related model applied to Facebook data: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.4208v1.pdf

² To test for potential changing parameters P and Q an auxiliary regression is run of the residuals on a constant and the variables and . Only in case of Picasa the p-value is smaller than 0.05 (i.e., 0.0242), and hence it seems that the parameters are constant throughout the estimation sample.