A recent report from two Princeton researchers claimed that Facebook is like an infectious disease currently experiencing a spike before its decline and will lose 80 percent of its user base by 2017, which caught attention of Facebook and in its reply the social networking giant claimed that ‘Princeton may be in danger of disappearing entirely’.
Facebook data scientists Mike Develin, Lada Adamic, and Sean Taylor used some of the same techniques used by Princeton researchers to arrive at their conclusion. The trio used parameters such as Facebook Likes, Percentage of Princeton papers in journals, student enrolment, and Google Trends.
They then published a series of charts to support their claims taking into consideration the parameters described above and claimed that “Princeton will have only half its current enrolment by 2018, and by 2021 it will have no students at all”.
“Based on our robust scientific analysis, future generations will only be able to imagine this now-rubble institution that once walked this earth”.
The trio doesn’t seem to be on a tit-for-tat mission, but as is evident from their research, they “wanted to give a fun reminder that not all research is created equal – and some methods of analysis lead to pretty crazy conclusions.”
