Facebook's own satirical prediction says Princeton will have no students at all by 2021.
Facebook has responded to Princeton University’s study, which had predicted imminent demise of the social network, with its own satirical prediction that University will be out of business by 2021.
Mike Develin, a data scientist at Facebook, wrote in a note: “Princeton will have only half its current enrollment by 2018, and by 2021 it will have no students at all.” Devlin claimed he had analysed several data points that includes volume of queries on Google Scholar matching query “Princeton”.
Devlin’s analysis revealed percentage of queries had dipped significantly since 2000.
“In keeping with the scientific principle ‘correlation equals causation,’ our research unequivocally demonstrated that Princeton may be in danger of disappearing entirely,” Develin added.
Further ridiculing Princeton University’s study, Devlin further wrote: “While we are concerned for Princeton University, we are even more concerned about the fate of the planet — Google Trends for “air” have also been declining steadily, and our projections show that by the year 2060 there will be no air left.”
Earlier, Princeton University’s study had predicted demise of Facebook by 2017, saying the social network would lose 80 percent of its users between 2015 to 2017. The study was based study of charts produced by the Google Trends service which shows Facebook searches peaked in December 2012, but have been declining since then.
The study conducted by John Cannarella and Joshua Spechler was modeled after the mathematical adoption rates of communicable diseases, which typically peak before declining.
Source: Facebook