14 ms·

Facebook is Dying

112 points by silkodyssey 16y ago

fnid2 16y ago
As a consultant to the dot-com industry around the turn of the century, I traveled a lot. I took a lot of long cab rides from airports to downtowns. I talked to lots of cabbies. At some point, I knew the end was near. I knew the end was near when cabbies started asking me if it was a good idea to invest in some particular technology stock or another. Why are cabbies investing in Juniper Networks? Recently, I started another side business. One of my cousins who knows almost nothing about technology came to me and said, "Let me tell you something. I know how you can get your business started and I want to tell you about it." At this point, I was already skeptical, but she continued... "There's this thing on the internet called Facebook and millions of people use it and you can make millions of dollars there..." Oh no, I thought. But I knew the end was near for facebook. I've known for quite some time. Years in fact. I can't explain to them why I don't join facebook anymore than I could explain to those cabbies why they shouldn't put their money in to Juniper Networks or pets.com. Decisions like that can't be rationalized to those who see a bright future in their bets. But history tells us a lot and history moves very fast on the internet. Facebook is not sticky. Share prices are not sticky. Users can leave and investors can sell -- and they do. And they will. Facebook will fall far and it could, and I suspect is falling fast.
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
  Facebook is not sticky? hundreds of millions of people logging in every day and consuming the site for a high number of pageviews redefines sticky.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    I think whether it is sticky or not is not the right item to focus on (though it obviously is). The question of whether or not they have serious user churn is the interesting one.
    - fnid2 16y ago
      I don't believe it is and here's why. It's easy to link to your facebook profile. If you create an orkut profile, you can add a link to your facebook profile there and simply stop using facebook. Eventually, it'll get too costly to maintain the infrastructure to support facebook or the customers -- that is, the advertisers -- will think another ad network is hotter and people will forget about facebook. You could say, "But all my messages are in there. All my photos and my farm..." But I'm a techie and I have had computer hard drives fail and take my life with them. Within a week, I forgot all about it. Sure, I wish I had that awesome paper I wrote for some class or another or the code for some program I wrote in high school that drew pretty pictures with mathematical formulas, but I'm okay with out it and life goes on. And life will go on without facebook. Life goes on without myspace and linked in and friendster and...
- m0th87 16y ago
  My technically inept family members have been using Google for years. But I don't see their shares tumbling.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    I'm sorry, I don't see your point. Could you elaborate?
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - m0th87 16y ago
      I think it's a false dichotomy to compare the tech bubble with facebook. The former was an economic phenomenon that was dependent on the continued supply of new money from increasingly clueless investors (essentially a pyramid scheme, like all bubbles). The latter is a business with a ton of users and a disturbing amount of information on those users. They have several options for further monetization that don't necessitate unsustainable growth. I do hope facebook fails because of its stance on privacy, among other issues. But I don't think its situation is at all comparable to that of the tech bubble.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - ananthrk 16y ago
    I don't think he is referring to facebook aboption as an indicator here, rather the fact that someone clueless said that there are so many people using it and millions can be made
- kristiandupont 16y ago
  You've known for years that the end is near for Facebook and yet facebook has been and is growing insanely. I am tempted to repeat jacquesm's comment about all os us dying above..
  - fnid2 16y ago
    No, now... You're putting words into my mouth. I have known for years that people would complain about facebook's privacy violations and their pressure to make money would cause a user revolt. I've also said they will change their privacy policies to the worst interest of their users. Don't discount the validity of that prediction simply because I did not put a time stamp on it. Many people have said, and probably will say soon, that facebook will always be around and always be part of our lives and as integral to it as television. Those predictions are bad predictions, yet people argue them. I did put some date based predictions in another comment above, what is your prediction?
    - kristiandupont 16y ago
      I have not seen anyone predict that Facebook will last forever. I personally wouldn't say that about any company. I myself predicted that apps would be the demise of fb. I received so many invites that I couldn't keep up - and it was accelerating. But they solved that problem by taking apps off of peoples primary pages. App developers complained and some probably missed showing what kind of ninja they were, but looking at it now, it looks like they made the right decision. I wouldn't be surprised if they manage to fix current problems as well.
- patrickgzill 16y ago
  It will fall, no doubt about that, however you are early on the curve and thus are underestimating the amount of time it will take to first hit its apogee and then decline.
- julio_the_squid 16y ago
  That's funny, I often think of a similar maxim in the book "Groucho and Me" by Groucho Marx. Essentially, he said that in 1928-29, he knew it was time to get out of a certain stock once his taxi driver started talking about it. It's a great book, you can find most of the text here : http://books.google.com/books?id=tFsnGr2SQJ0C&printsec=frontcover http://books.google.com/books?id=tFsnGr2SQJ0C&printsec=f... though I can't find the section about the cab driver. The whole part about the 1929 stock crash is great.
- philk 16y ago
  Recently, I started another side business. One of my cousins who knows almost nothing about technology came to me and said, "Let me tell you something. I know how you can get your business started and I want to tell you about it." At this point, I was already skeptical, but she continued... "There's this thing on the internet called Facebook and millions of people use it and you can make millions of dollars there..." Oh no, I thought. Another negative indicator for FB: I've also had some of my more tech-savvy friends tell me "I don't really use Facebook much anymore, I've switched over to Twitter". I'd suggest that "losing early adopters" might be an even better indicator of decay than having random laypersons tell you about a company.
- mjfern 16y ago
  I don't think this analogy works, given the significant differences between investing and product adoption. Just because a product has become mainstream doesn't indicate that the "end is near." In fact, I would argue the contrary, particular in this case. There are significant network effects in social networking. As the number of Facebook users increases, the value of Facebook to existing users (those already on the network) increases. Now, not only can I use Facebook to communicate with my college and grad-school friends, but I can use Facebook to stay in touch with my extended family, more distant friends, acquaintances, etc. If I want to maintain these relationships, I'm forced to either stick with Facebook, or rebuild my social network elsewhere. If I wanted to rebuild my network elsewhere, I would have to convince most of my social network to defect to the new service, otherwise the new service is of little value. Facebook's recent moves around privacy (and changes in functionality) are clearly unnerving its customers; however, this alone won't cause the collapse of the service.
  - fnid2 16y ago
    I think it's bubble-nomics. People sign up for services for the same irrational reasons they buy stocks -- they perceive a future value.
lukeqsee 16y ago
Wow. This is the 5th post of the demise or disgust of Facebook -- today. Are we just hating on them, or are these posts signaling a drastic change in our posture towards them? I don't know, but I suspect FB will have to respond to these cries, or risk their hacker users.
- fnid2 16y ago
  You gotta understand, for hackers, most things are binary: black or white. Either facebook is great, or they are evil and the switch just got flipped. Hackers are trend setters on the web. Watch them.
  - lukeqsee 16y ago
    Quite true. I guess it was a rhetorical question. It seems the switch is either flipped, or very, very close to being flipped.
  - Aetius 16y ago
    Trends are fleeting. Lock in is forever.
- potatolicious 16y ago
  I predict FB will continue to ignore the cries of hackers and other internet enthusiasts - we are a tiny minority of their user base, and nobody will ever believe that the world will revolt against Facebook just because of a bunch of in-the-know geeks said so. I also predict Facebook would be wrong on that point... hackers and other "hardcore" insiders are most often, as another poster has said, trendsetters. It's well known, for example, that hardcore gamers drive an impressive portion of sales to casual gamers - they're the ones that spread the buzz, or in this case, anti-buzz. Time will tell if this is the beginning of the end for Facebook (I suspect not), but this whole privacy fiasco is going to be a bit more than a blip from a tiny vocal minority, that's for sure.
- Tangurena 16y ago
  Facebook is more like AOL: aimed at the non-hard-core users. "Hackers" represent a tiny fraction of computer users, maximizing market share and maximizing stock value would mean catering to everyone except the "elite." Furthermore, as FB tends to cater to the popular crowd, I'll refer you to a PG essay on the impedance mismatch between the populars and the nerds: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
anonjon 16y ago
If I had to compare Facebook to anything, I would say that it is turning into Microsoft Project 2003 I'd more compare it to windows 95. It sucks but is ubiquitous, so you can't stop using it.
lsb 16y ago
Like Microsoft is dying?
- potatolicious 16y ago
  A bit, yeah. Granted, given their size and cash in the bank they'll hobble along for quite a while longer - decades perhaps - but their days as a fast-growing industry leader are almost done (if not so already). One of their two cash cows is doing well, the other (larger one) is losing market share rapidly to a competing desktop OS, as well as having its profitability absolutely shredded by low-cost computing (read: netbooks). Their cash cow is almost milked out, and their desperate forays into other fields have been met with little success. The Xbox division is the only bright spot in a long, long, list of failures (even that has profitability issues, but at least the product is winning) - Zune? WinMo (though we will see how the new version does)... Seen any Surfaces around lately? Their domination of the internet browser has not been so for years now, and keeps slipping ever further. For now, their customer base seems to be heavily reliant on the stickiness of existing institutional installations - this historically does not bode well for the company, when a large portion of your income is from customers who are legacy-locked into your product. It seems peachy until a more agile startup comes and eats your lunch.
  - JoeAltmaier 16y ago
    Ok, not to digress too much, but Microsoft is not an industry "leader" and perhaps never has been. A leader has to know where they're going. Microsoft expands "vegetatively", trying everything and putting money behind what wins. DOS sold well for 10 years; Microsoft pushed DOS. And NT, and CE, and Windows Mobile. They "lead" until margins; then they abandon and rush off to whatever is winning this quarter. This is nothing like leadership; its what a follower does, except in this case Microsoft is following their own shadow. It leaves us all spinning from technology to technology trying to guess if this next great thing is going to last.
jacquesm 16y ago
We're all dying, but that doesn't mean we'll be dying tomorrow. Titles like that should come with a qualifying end-date. Otherwise it's just about some undefined point in the future. If facebook is dying I'd like to see some proof. I'm very much of the opinion that facebook is transient, but I'd be very careful to stick an end-date on it smaller than at least 5 years in to the future, and a lot can happen in 5 years. In my own circle of friends facebook is definitely past its prime, indicating that there is a lifecycle to a facebook account, if that is a universal truth then we should see a downturn in facebook traffic in the next 12 months or so.
- fnid2 16y ago
  It's much easier to predict what will happen than it is to predict when. For example, I can make the following predictions: Facebook will collapse India and China will erupt into violent war We will experience a water crisis Oil will run out (that one is actually easier, about 3 decades) Iran will be invaded These are all fairly obvious predictions. Sometimes math can be used to zero in on dates, but for most of us around here, we simply do not have enough information to calculate exact dates. We can only speculate. The article is analyzing the future of facebook, saying today, that it will not be around at some point, which is contrary to many current opinions. But I say the media will start to discuss an inflection point in Facebook before the end of the summer. They'll talk about how its oldest users are leaving, but its still getting new members. It will talk about a decline in the length of the average lifetime of a facebook account. It will say fewer people are logging in as much. Fewer new apps are being developed. Again, all by the end of the summer. By the end of this year, we'll start to see lots of "will xyz.com replace facebook?" Apple could launch a social network. Bloggers/journalists will ask, "When will apple create a social network?" They'll start to point out growth in other social networks, they'll talk about where the facebookers are going. All this by the end of 2010. By the end of 2011, facebook will be passe among the internet elite. The oprahs of the real world will start saying you can interact with them somewhere other than facebook. Commercials on TV will mention some other network instead of mentioning their facebook page like they do now. By the end of 2012, the blogosphere will be talking about what mark did wrong, why people thought it was different, why it was the same, lessons the new start up social networks can learn from his mistakes. By the end of 2013, facebook will be a distant memory...
GiraffeNecktie 16y ago
One data point: management at my large government enterprise are suddenly getting all jiggy with social networking and want to do an internal Facebook (for no discernable business reason). That's a sure sign that something has passed it's prime.
- nradov 16y ago
  IBM is actually trying to build a business around that through Lotus Connections and related products. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/connections/ http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/connections/ And, by the way, I'm not criticizing IBM for that. It's a useful product and can add a lot of value for large enterprises.
faramarz 16y ago
What a crock of shit. Pardon my french. If you're going to close your account, the world doesn't need to hear about it. Those of you jumping on the bandwagon to close your accounts probably can't come up with a real reason why you joined the service in the first place. So stop your whining. 2 bloggers ranting about their demise doesn't count for the rest of the population. Facebook is here to stay. you know why? because it's the only app that you, your mother and your grandmother (mine anyway) are on and navigating with ease.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  They seem to be somewhat desperate though, judging by the sign-off screen: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_happens_when_you_deactivate_your_facebook_acc.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_happens_when_you_d...
  - faramarz 16y ago
    Thats not desperate, that's a great retention technique! Every startup can learn from this. If you don't have a practice to retain your users, you don't care about the success of your business.
    - potatolicious 16y ago
      Holy hell, that screams dating site unsubscribe system. I didn't realize Facebook was that low about account deactivations.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      That's not a retention technique (even though it may work as such), that's a last ditch attempt. A retention strategy makes sure that people never reach that page.
    - pyre 16y ago
      That's a retention technique in the same way that, "Don't break up with me! I Love You!" is a relationship reparation technique.
mburney 16y ago
I check my facebook account quite often but don't actually use it for anything. Only about 5% of my friends frequently update their status. It is strange how the habit has remained with me despite the content being no longer relevant to my life. Reminds me of what Nietzsche said about religion. God is dead (even though churches are not). Does anyone have statistics on the ratio of "facebook site hits"-to-"actual usage"?
c00p3r 16y ago
Hey, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart. =) Where is myspace,com today?
badave 16y ago
Well, something can only grow exponentially for so long.... It's growth might be dying. It might be reaching its teenage years. Unfortunately it's only a matter of time before its a big company that can't keep its startup mentality.
michaelkeenan 16y ago
I'd like to bet against the notion that Facebook is dying. I suggest this metric: on May 7, 2015, Facebook will still be one of the top five websites in the USA, measured by Alexa traffic ranking (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/Facebook.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/Facebook.com), and it will still be the most popular social networking website in the USA, again measured by Alexa traffic rankings. USD$200, winnings go to the winner's favorite charity? Feel free to suggest different terms, metrics, betting amounts, or to make it a personal bet, not a charitable bet.
- dtby 16y ago
  Book it.
- fnid2 16y ago
  I'll take the top 5 metric charity bet. I bet that by May 7, 2015, Facebook will not be in the top 5 sites as ranked by Alexa. I think it's an easy metric free of dispute. In 5 years, we may argue, "What is a social network?" But I highly doubt facebook will be in the top 5. I choose my high school as the recipient of your money when I win. :) I'll be back here in 5 years to see who the winner is. Adding an item to my calendar now. Will respond to this post with the identity of the recipient institution.
  - sasmith 16y ago
    What if Alexa is no longer around?
    - fnid2 16y ago
      Yeah, I thought about that, or what if HN isn't around. There is http://www.longbets.org http://www.longbets.org This is the perfect bet for there. If alexa isn't around, we can substitute the most popular website ranking website.
      - qeorge 16y ago
        LongBets.org is awesome! Thanks for sharing it. This wager is tailor made for it.
albertsun 16y ago
The only part of Facebook that is useful to me now is as a directory. I think the time is ripe for a start-up to challenge them in that field.
- techiferous 16y ago
  Yep, that's the only way I've been using it during the past year. As an address book.
alxp 16y ago
"Your engineers are running the aslum." This is always the cliché, but I'm sure it's much more likely that some product manager in charge of "community pages" has their own idea of how things should work and insists that the devs make it work and the devs are just doing what they can to please the different bosses.
char 16y ago
I'm generally pretty understanding about typos and occasional grammatical errors in articles, but this entire post is pretty ridiculous. I'll take that back if this person is a non-native English speaker, but if not, I really find it difficult to take anything he says seriously.
- TheBurningOr 16y ago
  Thomas Baekdal is danish.
Aetius 16y ago
Facebook launched in 04 and grew quickly. Then as now, people were saying it was dead, that Twitter would overtake it, that they would run out of money, that they would be the next Friendster, MySpace, AOL. It hasn't happened. They're closing in on 500 million (yes half a billion people use it!), and still there are nonbelievers. My not so witty prediction is Facebook will IPO and probably fetch a 200 billion valuation in 2 years and yet still the naysayers will persist, like flies in China. Some things never change.
- UnknownSource 16y ago
  I totally agree. Let's face it, we all hate facebook, but there are no good alternatives yet. Orkut and networks like friendstar are hopeless still, and whilst I'd love to remove myself from facebook, the reality is that most invitations people receive to do things are by facebook these days. I can hardly wait for better alternatives though.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    I guess I use it differently, because for my uses, Facebook and Twitter are almost equal contenders currently. Nobody in my social group ever uses Facebook invites, so the main thing is the status updates and replies. Facebook has somewhat of an advantage over Twitter on that still due to: 1. more generous length limits; and 2. a series of replies to a status going into a thread instead of the main flat status-update namespace; and 3. "likes" are a useful way of acknowledging a status without actually replying. Twitter's main advantage is that it feels less spammy and has nice 3rd-party clients; I'm always playing whack-a-mole with hiding Zynga games and Quizzes from my FB feed.
    - UnknownSource 16y ago
      Not a fan of Twitter at all honestly.. But thats just me..
junklight 16y ago
You go and tell that to all the people I know in real life that use facebook - the mothers in the school playground for example. Facebook is so big most of its users don't care about any of that stuff. For them it has one simple function - its a good way to interact with friends and family. These are people who probably couldn't program the VCR to record a program in advance, who shrugged their shoulders when our (uk) government left all their children's records on a train, whose technical knowledge is minimal. Facebook is doing just fine - just techies who worry about the details who are going off it. For the mainstream it works just fine. (and as an aside - one of the weirdest things ever is hearing people who would have thought that me and my mates playing D&D when we were younger was geeky and strange - talking about things like farmville in just the same way)
motters 16y ago
I agree with much of the criticism of Facebook in this article, and that it's certainly not going to be the last word in social networking.
j_baker 16y ago
Why does everyone seem to hate facebook here? I'm trying to think of the last positive story I've seen about them.
- RyanMcGreal 16y ago
  Geeks hate Facebook in large part because we tend to pay more attention to things like privacy and control over personal data than the typical user.
plesn 16y ago
Ok, so now I need a social network obeying the following constraints: - I control my data. My data are where I decide they should be, on my server or web-hosted somewhere. So it is decentralised and everyone has it's node. - It's based on a standard API, not a product. It defines identities (openid url?), associated publishing of data (defined by its url), relation between data (like a comment on a photo. So some JSON here), and mainly access rights on this data by other identities. - friends I accept are based on some sort of authorized_keys mecanism, with more detailed access rights. - I can define some data-stores elswhere, like my photos being on Flickr... Of course I loose some control, but I can revert this. - there is a canonical open source implementation I can install at home. - I can easily move my account or some of my data seamlessly, have my url point to it. It should be easier than moving a blog if you own your domain! So it's just the web, openid, and some standards, or am I missing something. Is someone making this ? edit: I precised some ideas.
- gamache 16y ago
  You are basically talking about the World Wide Web itself.
  - plesn 16y ago
    All parts exist on the web (OpenID, OAuth, JSON, RSS, microformats, etc...), but not in a usable form as easy to use as Facebook.
jsz0 16y ago
It got so complex that people had no other choice than to look at simpler solutions The big difference is these extended features, inconsistencies, and functionality overlaps don't really effect the core usability of Facebook for the masses. Most people look for the text box, write something, and click Share or they use the 4 icons under the same text box for video, photos, events, links. That's it. Very simple.
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  Simple, it is not. I've used it for months, still don't have any idea what the tabs are for, not sure who can see what I post, not sure where my "wall" is. Not because I'm an idiot, but I have an arrogant disregard for confusing interfaces and refuse to spend even a few minutes decoding their arcane controls.
tdoggette 16y ago
Okay, so I meet someone and decide that we ought to keep in touch. We swap phone numbers, and I say, "add me on Facebook when you get home." They say, "nah, I don't use Facebook anymore. Do you have a _______ account?" Someone should really fill in that blank.
tptacek 16y ago
This is a definition of "dying" that appears to reduce to "becoming less and less likeable to the author of the article".

112 points by silkodyssey 16y ago

fnid2 16y ago

As a consultant to the dot-com industry around the turn of the century, I traveled a lot. I took a lot of long cab rides from airports to downtowns. I talked to lots of cabbies. At some point, I knew the end was near. I knew the end was near when cabbies started asking me if it was a good idea to invest in some particular technology stock or another. Why are cabbies investing in Juniper Networks? Recently, I started another side business. One of my cousins who knows almost nothing about technology came to me and said, "Let me tell you something. I know how you can get your business started and I want to tell you about it." At this point, I was already skeptical, but she continued... "There's this thing on the internet called Facebook and millions of people use it and you can make millions of dollars there..." Oh no, I thought. But I knew the end was near for facebook. I've known for quite some time. Years in fact. I can't explain to them why I don't join facebook anymore than I could explain to those cabbies why they shouldn't put their money in to Juniper Networks or pets.com. Decisions like that can't be rationalized to those who see a bright future in their bets. But history tells us a lot and history moves very fast on the internet. Facebook is not sticky. Share prices are not sticky. Users can leave and investors can sell -- and they do. And they will. Facebook will fall far and it could, and I suspect is falling fast.

jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
Facebook is not sticky? hundreds of millions of people logging in every day and consuming the site for a high number of pageviews redefines sticky.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  I think whether it is sticky or not is not the right item to focus on (though it obviously is). The question of whether or not they have serious user churn is the interesting one.
  - fnid2 16y ago
    I don't believe it is and here's why. It's easy to link to your facebook profile. If you create an orkut profile, you can add a link to your facebook profile there and simply stop using facebook. Eventually, it'll get too costly to maintain the infrastructure to support facebook or the customers -- that is, the advertisers -- will think another ad network is hotter and people will forget about facebook. You could say, "But all my messages are in there. All my photos and my farm..." But I'm a techie and I have had computer hard drives fail and take my life with them. Within a week, I forgot all about it. Sure, I wish I had that awesome paper I wrote for some class or another or the code for some program I wrote in high school that drew pretty pictures with mathematical formulas, but I'm okay with out it and life goes on. And life will go on without facebook. Life goes on without myspace and linked in and friendster and...
m0th87 16y ago
My technically inept family members have been using Google for years. But I don't see their shares tumbling.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  I'm sorry, I don't see your point. Could you elaborate?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - m0th87 16y ago
    I think it's a false dichotomy to compare the tech bubble with facebook. The former was an economic phenomenon that was dependent on the continued supply of new money from increasingly clueless investors (essentially a pyramid scheme, like all bubbles). The latter is a business with a ton of users and a disturbing amount of information on those users. They have several options for further monetization that don't necessitate unsustainable growth. I do hope facebook fails because of its stance on privacy, among other issues. But I don't think its situation is at all comparable to that of the tech bubble.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- ananthrk 16y ago
  I don't think he is referring to facebook aboption as an indicator here, rather the fact that someone clueless said that there are so many people using it and millions can be made
kristiandupont 16y ago
You've known for years that the end is near for Facebook and yet facebook has been and is growing insanely. I am tempted to repeat jacquesm's comment about all os us dying above..
- fnid2 16y ago
  No, now... You're putting words into my mouth. I have known for years that people would complain about facebook's privacy violations and their pressure to make money would cause a user revolt. I've also said they will change their privacy policies to the worst interest of their users. Don't discount the validity of that prediction simply because I did not put a time stamp on it. Many people have said, and probably will say soon, that facebook will always be around and always be part of our lives and as integral to it as television. Those predictions are bad predictions, yet people argue them. I did put some date based predictions in another comment above, what is your prediction?
  - kristiandupont 16y ago
    I have not seen anyone predict that Facebook will last forever. I personally wouldn't say that about any company. I myself predicted that apps would be the demise of fb. I received so many invites that I couldn't keep up - and it was accelerating. But they solved that problem by taking apps off of peoples primary pages. App developers complained and some probably missed showing what kind of ninja they were, but looking at it now, it looks like they made the right decision. I wouldn't be surprised if they manage to fix current problems as well.
patrickgzill 16y ago
It will fall, no doubt about that, however you are early on the curve and thus are underestimating the amount of time it will take to first hit its apogee and then decline.
julio_the_squid 16y ago
That's funny, I often think of a similar maxim in the book "Groucho and Me" by Groucho Marx. Essentially, he said that in 1928-29, he knew it was time to get out of a certain stock once his taxi driver started talking about it. It's a great book, you can find most of the text here : http://books.google.com/books?id=tFsnGr2SQJ0C&printsec=frontcover http://books.google.com/books?id=tFsnGr2SQJ0C&printsec=f... though I can't find the section about the cab driver. The whole part about the 1929 stock crash is great.
philk 16y ago
Recently, I started another side business. One of my cousins who knows almost nothing about technology came to me and said, "Let me tell you something. I know how you can get your business started and I want to tell you about it." At this point, I was already skeptical, but she continued... "There's this thing on the internet called Facebook and millions of people use it and you can make millions of dollars there..." Oh no, I thought. Another negative indicator for FB: I've also had some of my more tech-savvy friends tell me "I don't really use Facebook much anymore, I've switched over to Twitter". I'd suggest that "losing early adopters" might be an even better indicator of decay than having random laypersons tell you about a company.
mjfern 16y ago
I don't think this analogy works, given the significant differences between investing and product adoption. Just because a product has become mainstream doesn't indicate that the "end is near." In fact, I would argue the contrary, particular in this case. There are significant network effects in social networking. As the number of Facebook users increases, the value of Facebook to existing users (those already on the network) increases. Now, not only can I use Facebook to communicate with my college and grad-school friends, but I can use Facebook to stay in touch with my extended family, more distant friends, acquaintances, etc. If I want to maintain these relationships, I'm forced to either stick with Facebook, or rebuild my social network elsewhere. If I wanted to rebuild my network elsewhere, I would have to convince most of my social network to defect to the new service, otherwise the new service is of little value. Facebook's recent moves around privacy (and changes in functionality) are clearly unnerving its customers; however, this alone won't cause the collapse of the service.
- fnid2 16y ago
  I think it's bubble-nomics. People sign up for services for the same irrational reasons they buy stocks -- they perceive a future value.

lukeqsee 16y ago

Wow. This is the 5th post of the demise or disgust of Facebook -- today. Are we just hating on them, or are these posts signaling a drastic change in our posture towards them? I don't know, but I suspect FB will have to respond to these cries, or risk their hacker users.

fnid2 16y ago
You gotta understand, for hackers, most things are binary: black or white. Either facebook is great, or they are evil and the switch just got flipped. Hackers are trend setters on the web. Watch them.
- lukeqsee 16y ago
  Quite true. I guess it was a rhetorical question. It seems the switch is either flipped, or very, very close to being flipped.
- Aetius 16y ago
  Trends are fleeting. Lock in is forever.
potatolicious 16y ago
I predict FB will continue to ignore the cries of hackers and other internet enthusiasts - we are a tiny minority of their user base, and nobody will ever believe that the world will revolt against Facebook just because of a bunch of in-the-know geeks said so. I also predict Facebook would be wrong on that point... hackers and other "hardcore" insiders are most often, as another poster has said, trendsetters. It's well known, for example, that hardcore gamers drive an impressive portion of sales to casual gamers - they're the ones that spread the buzz, or in this case, anti-buzz. Time will tell if this is the beginning of the end for Facebook (I suspect not), but this whole privacy fiasco is going to be a bit more than a blip from a tiny vocal minority, that's for sure.
Tangurena 16y ago
Facebook is more like AOL: aimed at the non-hard-core users. "Hackers" represent a tiny fraction of computer users, maximizing market share and maximizing stock value would mean catering to everyone except the "elite." Furthermore, as FB tends to cater to the popular crowd, I'll refer you to a PG essay on the impedance mismatch between the populars and the nerds: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

anonjon 16y ago

If I had to compare Facebook to anything, I would say that it is turning into Microsoft Project 2003 I'd more compare it to windows 95. It sucks but is ubiquitous, so you can't stop using it.

lsb 16y ago

Like Microsoft is dying?

potatolicious 16y ago
A bit, yeah. Granted, given their size and cash in the bank they'll hobble along for quite a while longer - decades perhaps - but their days as a fast-growing industry leader are almost done (if not so already). One of their two cash cows is doing well, the other (larger one) is losing market share rapidly to a competing desktop OS, as well as having its profitability absolutely shredded by low-cost computing (read: netbooks). Their cash cow is almost milked out, and their desperate forays into other fields have been met with little success. The Xbox division is the only bright spot in a long, long, list of failures (even that has profitability issues, but at least the product is winning) - Zune? WinMo (though we will see how the new version does)... Seen any Surfaces around lately? Their domination of the internet browser has not been so for years now, and keeps slipping ever further. For now, their customer base seems to be heavily reliant on the stickiness of existing institutional installations - this historically does not bode well for the company, when a large portion of your income is from customers who are legacy-locked into your product. It seems peachy until a more agile startup comes and eats your lunch.
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  Ok, not to digress too much, but Microsoft is not an industry "leader" and perhaps never has been. A leader has to know where they're going. Microsoft expands "vegetatively", trying everything and putting money behind what wins. DOS sold well for 10 years; Microsoft pushed DOS. And NT, and CE, and Windows Mobile. They "lead" until margins; then they abandon and rush off to whatever is winning this quarter. This is nothing like leadership; its what a follower does, except in this case Microsoft is following their own shadow. It leaves us all spinning from technology to technology trying to guess if this next great thing is going to last.

jacquesm 16y ago

We're all dying, but that doesn't mean we'll be dying tomorrow. Titles like that should come with a qualifying end-date. Otherwise it's just about some undefined point in the future. If facebook is dying I'd like to see some proof. I'm very much of the opinion that facebook is transient, but I'd be very careful to stick an end-date on it smaller than at least 5 years in to the future, and a lot can happen in 5 years. In my own circle of friends facebook is definitely past its prime, indicating that there is a lifecycle to a facebook account, if that is a universal truth then we should see a downturn in facebook traffic in the next 12 months or so.

fnid2 16y ago
It's much easier to predict what will happen than it is to predict when. For example, I can make the following predictions: Facebook will collapse India and China will erupt into violent war We will experience a water crisis Oil will run out (that one is actually easier, about 3 decades) Iran will be invaded These are all fairly obvious predictions. Sometimes math can be used to zero in on dates, but for most of us around here, we simply do not have enough information to calculate exact dates. We can only speculate. The article is analyzing the future of facebook, saying today, that it will not be around at some point, which is contrary to many current opinions. But I say the media will start to discuss an inflection point in Facebook before the end of the summer. They'll talk about how its oldest users are leaving, but its still getting new members. It will talk about a decline in the length of the average lifetime of a facebook account. It will say fewer people are logging in as much. Fewer new apps are being developed. Again, all by the end of the summer. By the end of this year, we'll start to see lots of "will xyz.com replace facebook?" Apple could launch a social network. Bloggers/journalists will ask, "When will apple create a social network?" They'll start to point out growth in other social networks, they'll talk about where the facebookers are going. All this by the end of 2010. By the end of 2011, facebook will be passe among the internet elite. The oprahs of the real world will start saying you can interact with them somewhere other than facebook. Commercials on TV will mention some other network instead of mentioning their facebook page like they do now. By the end of 2012, the blogosphere will be talking about what mark did wrong, why people thought it was different, why it was the same, lessons the new start up social networks can learn from his mistakes. By the end of 2013, facebook will be a distant memory...

GiraffeNecktie 16y ago

One data point: management at my large government enterprise are suddenly getting all jiggy with social networking and want to do an internal Facebook (for no discernable business reason). That's a sure sign that something has passed it's prime.

nradov 16y ago
IBM is actually trying to build a business around that through Lotus Connections and related products. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/connections/ http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/connections/ And, by the way, I'm not criticizing IBM for that. It's a useful product and can add a lot of value for large enterprises.

faramarz 16y ago

What a crock of shit. Pardon my french. If you're going to close your account, the world doesn't need to hear about it. Those of you jumping on the bandwagon to close your accounts probably can't come up with a real reason why you joined the service in the first place. So stop your whining. 2 bloggers ranting about their demise doesn't count for the rest of the population. Facebook is here to stay. you know why? because it's the only app that you, your mother and your grandmother (mine anyway) are on and navigating with ease.

jacquesm 16y ago
They seem to be somewhat desperate though, judging by the sign-off screen: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_happens_when_you_deactivate_your_facebook_acc.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_happens_when_you_d...
- faramarz 16y ago
  Thats not desperate, that's a great retention technique! Every startup can learn from this. If you don't have a practice to retain your users, you don't care about the success of your business.
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    Holy hell, that screams dating site unsubscribe system. I didn't realize Facebook was that low about account deactivations.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    That's not a retention technique (even though it may work as such), that's a last ditch attempt. A retention strategy makes sure that people never reach that page.
  - pyre 16y ago
    That's a retention technique in the same way that, "Don't break up with me! I Love You!" is a relationship reparation technique.

mburney 16y ago

I check my facebook account quite often but don't actually use it for anything. Only about 5% of my friends frequently update their status. It is strange how the habit has remained with me despite the content being no longer relevant to my life. Reminds me of what Nietzsche said about religion. God is dead (even though churches are not). Does anyone have statistics on the ratio of "facebook site hits"-to-"actual usage"?

c00p3r 16y ago

Hey, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart. =) Where is myspace,com today?

badave 16y ago

Well, something can only grow exponentially for so long.... It's growth might be dying. It might be reaching its teenage years. Unfortunately it's only a matter of time before its a big company that can't keep its startup mentality.

michaelkeenan 16y ago

I'd like to bet against the notion that Facebook is dying. I suggest this metric: on May 7, 2015, Facebook will still be one of the top five websites in the USA, measured by Alexa traffic ranking (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/Facebook.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/Facebook.com), and it will still be the most popular social networking website in the USA, again measured by Alexa traffic rankings. USD$200, winnings go to the winner's favorite charity? Feel free to suggest different terms, metrics, betting amounts, or to make it a personal bet, not a charitable bet.

dtby 16y ago
Book it.
fnid2 16y ago
I'll take the top 5 metric charity bet. I bet that by May 7, 2015, Facebook will not be in the top 5 sites as ranked by Alexa. I think it's an easy metric free of dispute. In 5 years, we may argue, "What is a social network?" But I highly doubt facebook will be in the top 5. I choose my high school as the recipient of your money when I win. :) I'll be back here in 5 years to see who the winner is. Adding an item to my calendar now. Will respond to this post with the identity of the recipient institution.
- sasmith 16y ago
  What if Alexa is no longer around?
  - fnid2 16y ago
    Yeah, I thought about that, or what if HN isn't around. There is http://www.longbets.org http://www.longbets.org This is the perfect bet for there. If alexa isn't around, we can substitute the most popular website ranking website.
    - qeorge 16y ago
      LongBets.org is awesome! Thanks for sharing it. This wager is tailor made for it.

albertsun 16y ago

The only part of Facebook that is useful to me now is as a directory. I think the time is ripe for a start-up to challenge them in that field.

techiferous 16y ago
Yep, that's the only way I've been using it during the past year. As an address book.

alxp 16y ago

"Your engineers are running the aslum." This is always the cliché, but I'm sure it's much more likely that some product manager in charge of "community pages" has their own idea of how things should work and insists that the devs make it work and the devs are just doing what they can to please the different bosses.

char 16y ago

I'm generally pretty understanding about typos and occasional grammatical errors in articles, but this entire post is pretty ridiculous. I'll take that back if this person is a non-native English speaker, but if not, I really find it difficult to take anything he says seriously.

TheBurningOr 16y ago
Thomas Baekdal is danish.

Aetius 16y ago

Facebook launched in 04 and grew quickly. Then as now, people were saying it was dead, that Twitter would overtake it, that they would run out of money, that they would be the next Friendster, MySpace, AOL. It hasn't happened. They're closing in on 500 million (yes half a billion people use it!), and still there are nonbelievers. My not so witty prediction is Facebook will IPO and probably fetch a 200 billion valuation in 2 years and yet still the naysayers will persist, like flies in China. Some things never change.

UnknownSource 16y ago
I totally agree. Let's face it, we all hate facebook, but there are no good alternatives yet. Orkut and networks like friendstar are hopeless still, and whilst I'd love to remove myself from facebook, the reality is that most invitations people receive to do things are by facebook these days. I can hardly wait for better alternatives though.
- _delirium 16y ago
  I guess I use it differently, because for my uses, Facebook and Twitter are almost equal contenders currently. Nobody in my social group ever uses Facebook invites, so the main thing is the status updates and replies. Facebook has somewhat of an advantage over Twitter on that still due to: 1. more generous length limits; and 2. a series of replies to a status going into a thread instead of the main flat status-update namespace; and 3. "likes" are a useful way of acknowledging a status without actually replying. Twitter's main advantage is that it feels less spammy and has nice 3rd-party clients; I'm always playing whack-a-mole with hiding Zynga games and Quizzes from my FB feed.
  - UnknownSource 16y ago
    Not a fan of Twitter at all honestly.. But thats just me..

junklight 16y ago

You go and tell that to all the people I know in real life that use facebook - the mothers in the school playground for example. Facebook is so big most of its users don't care about any of that stuff. For them it has one simple function - its a good way to interact with friends and family. These are people who probably couldn't program the VCR to record a program in advance, who shrugged their shoulders when our (uk) government left all their children's records on a train, whose technical knowledge is minimal. Facebook is doing just fine - just techies who worry about the details who are going off it. For the mainstream it works just fine. (and as an aside - one of the weirdest things ever is hearing people who would have thought that me and my mates playing D&D when we were younger was geeky and strange - talking about things like farmville in just the same way)

motters 16y ago

I agree with much of the criticism of Facebook in this article, and that it's certainly not going to be the last word in social networking.

j_baker 16y ago

Why does everyone seem to hate facebook here? I'm trying to think of the last positive story I've seen about them.

RyanMcGreal 16y ago
Geeks hate Facebook in large part because we tend to pay more attention to things like privacy and control over personal data than the typical user.

plesn 16y ago

Ok, so now I need a social network obeying the following constraints: - I control my data. My data are where I decide they should be, on my server or web-hosted somewhere. So it is decentralised and everyone has it's node. - It's based on a standard API, not a product. It defines identities (openid url?), associated publishing of data (defined by its url), relation between data (like a comment on a photo. So some JSON here), and mainly access rights on this data by other identities. - friends I accept are based on some sort of authorized_keys mecanism, with more detailed access rights. - I can define some data-stores elswhere, like my photos being on Flickr... Of course I loose some control, but I can revert this. - there is a canonical open source implementation I can install at home. - I can easily move my account or some of my data seamlessly, have my url point to it. It should be easier than moving a blog if you own your domain! So it's just the web, openid, and some standards, or am I missing something. Is someone making this ? edit: I precised some ideas.

gamache 16y ago
You are basically talking about the World Wide Web itself.
- plesn 16y ago
  All parts exist on the web (OpenID, OAuth, JSON, RSS, microformats, etc...), but not in a usable form as easy to use as Facebook.

jsz0 16y ago

It got so complex that people had no other choice than to look at simpler solutions The big difference is these extended features, inconsistencies, and functionality overlaps don't really effect the core usability of Facebook for the masses. Most people look for the text box, write something, and click Share or they use the 4 icons under the same text box for video, photos, events, links. That's it. Very simple.

JoeAltmaier 16y ago
Simple, it is not. I've used it for months, still don't have any idea what the tabs are for, not sure who can see what I post, not sure where my "wall" is. Not because I'm an idiot, but I have an arrogant disregard for confusing interfaces and refuse to spend even a few minutes decoding their arcane controls.

tdoggette 16y ago

Okay, so I meet someone and decide that we ought to keep in touch. We swap phone numbers, and I say, "add me on Facebook when you get home." They say, "nah, I don't use Facebook anymore. Do you have a _______ account?" Someone should really fill in that blank.

tptacek 16y ago

This is a definition of "dying" that appears to reduce to "becoming less and less likeable to the author of the article".