For the first time this year, Facebook saw a monthly decline in its American user base, according to Inside Facebook.
At the start of May, there were 155.2 million Facebook users in the United States. By the end of the month, that number had dwindled to 149.4 million. In addition, the number of users in Canada fell by 1.52 million down to 16.6 million.
Overall, however, Facebook still gained users, seeing a worldwide increases of 11.8 percent from May to June. Mexico and Brazil were the biggest gainers, with one-month increases of 7.6 and 10.0 percent, respectively.
Given the success many businesses have had using Facebook, it may seem logical to assume minor short-term changes such as college graduation caused the aberration. Technology Review points out that Facebook is the "Holy Grail" of marketing, since it allows businesses to turn its customers into marketers and increase local SEO. It's a way to conduct word-of-mouth marketing on a massive scale.
Search Engine Land adds that Facebook still expects to reach 700 million users in the coming months, since much of the company's growth comes from countries that have been late to adopt the social networking service.