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Ask HN: What can kill Facebook?

57 points by twidlit 16y ago

Facebook is just growing & growing. It has also proven to be duplicating popular startups and effectively killing potential competitors while they're young. Facebook has also proven to be filled with excellent hackers and lots of capital + cash flow. What are possible things that will lessen the power of Facebook and eventually cause its downfall if ever?

failquicker 16y ago
Eventually, complacency and failure to innovate will probably kill off Facebook. I know it's hard to look at Facebook now and see the possibility that they will be much less relevant in 10 years. But that will probably happen. Prodigy, CompuServe, AmericaOnline, Friendster, Myspace and to a certain extent even Yahoo and Microsoft. At one point in time they were all pervasive, disruptive, and dominant. And now they've either gone or are having to pivot into a niche to maintain viability at a fraction of their former glory. The internet and technology will keep growing. Facebook will get marginalized at some point.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  You may certainly be right, but I wouldn't bet on it: for all the services you mentioned, I always would have been surprised if a person I'd just met were on any one in particular. Now when I hear that somebody's not on Facebook (even (especially?) non-techies), that's what's surprising.
- bl4k 16y ago
  I don't think 'Facebook will fail because other companies have failed' is the right answer.
  - gloob 16y ago
    Though "Facebook will fail because pretty much all companies fail eventually" is a reasonable one. No-one, looking at Apple in 1998, could have correctly predicted what they would be like a decade down the road. It's not unreasonable to suppose that guesses at what the big companies in the industry will look like a decade from now will often be wildly incorrect, no matter how obvious things seem.
  - failquicker 16y ago
    No, I stand by my statement. I don't believe that Facebook will continually dominate the hearts and minds of the online world in the way it does now, in perpetuity. My reason given for failure was "complacency and failure to inovate" which I believe is the downfall of most great companies. The companies that I listed were examples of this phenomenon. You can really take this theory all the way back to the Dutch east India trading company if you want to. Evolve or die. In all probability, someday facebook will stop evolving. Now I'm currently refering to facebook failing in the same way that "Microsoft and Yahoo" have failed. They still exist, are still (quite) profitable, but their relavency is fading. As to apple. I've always wondered if the magic there will continue after Steve Jobs dies.
    - Zev 16y ago
      As to apple. I've always wondered if the magic there will continue after Steve Jobs dies. Apple did just fine while Jobs was on medical leave for six months or so.
      - philwelch 16y ago
        Apple's secret to ongoing growth and success is introducing a major new product category every few years. Six months takes nothing out of that--the long term visionary work Steve Jobs does can be missed for six months without much impact. Six years and Apple would be in decline.
- ericb 16y ago
  It will be a new product (killer app) that at first doesn't seem related per se, but that network will then able to use its scale to back into being the next facebook.
wolfrom 16y ago
I think it's been mentioned before that standardization of social networking protocols might work, to the point that they become part of the Internet itself, like e-mail. I think it is only a matter of time (2-3 years) before the majority of Internet users will simply use distributed systems where their social data will be spread over several services (proprietary or open source), and the sharing of that data will follow a standard protocol (maybe a future blend of ActivityStea.ms, Salmon, and others). Facebook will survive, most likely, but I think its influence will slowly wane to the point where they will be just another "media company" like AOL and Yahoo.
- wccrawford 16y ago
  Has there been any standardization of those protocols yet? I know Diaspora was working on an entire site, but I don't recall them using any standards... Or even making them.
  - wolfrom 16y ago
    There are a few different standards, but I don't think it's achieved the level of a W3C style consortium. Google's been working on initiatives, and even Facebook is involved. Appleseed and Cliqset are two products which I believe already implement several protocols, while Diaspora is meant to do the same from what I've read.
  - cmelbye 16y ago
    They've been having discussions with various standards groups which I forget the names of at the moment.
  - what 16y ago
    There are some draft specs on the activitystrea.ms site. FB seems to implement them in Open Graph. http://activitystrea.ms/spec/1.0/ http://activitystrea.ms/spec/1.0/ http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/ http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/ http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Using_Activity_Streams http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Using_Activity...
- 16y ago
Tichy 16y ago
It doesn't seem too likely, but there could be an increase in privacy awareness in the common population. Or it could become fashionable to do stuff in the real world again. It might become like TV - mass entertainment, but not really exciting anymore. Honestly, whenever I log into Facebook, I feel at a loss as to what to do. I just tried playing a game, and it asks for all my information including friends list, before I even know what it is all about. Uh, I just want to play a game... That kind of thing might start it's demise. I suspect at the moment there is a lot of pushing and nagging to keep users active ("do you want to send a purple cow to your friends"?). Eventually people might just tire of being manipulated. Even if not, and it remains the biggest thing on the net, there might still be a significant number of people who want something else.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  I've never seen numbers on users vs. number of games played, but an anecdote: I and many of my friends are pretty heavy Facebook users but few of us play many, if any, games... just status updates, photos, and messages. But I also have a few friends that seem to play 50 games for every status update they post. I wonder if there are two groups of Facebook users, one that mostly chats and one that mostly plays. That's how I tend to think of it at least. So if I were trying to make a Facebook killer, I might attack one of those two groups... provide either a vastly better social/chat/discussion/link-sharing scheme or a vastly better scheme to play games. But I don't have any ideas on either -- they both work pretty well apparently (the completely technophobic all have Facebook pages at this point!), which makes me think it'll be really tough to compete with Facebook. And, besides, if you did compete that way, you'd still be at a disadvantage because of the network effect and that you appeal to only a subset of the existing Facebook crowd -- as I said, I don't play a lot of games, but I still want to be friends with people I remember from high school and that do.
  - Tichy 16y ago
    It's so strange to me that all the technophobic people seem to deal fine with Facebook, whereas I have a really hard time with it. Oh well...
charlesju 16y ago
Here is the downfall of FB. 1. FB will go public in the next 5 years. 2. 5 years after that it will become filled with old people. 3. There will be a reemergence of social networking startups trying to displace the then bloated solution with a more elegant alternative. 4. One of these will win and become the next FB. 5. Repeat.
- wyclif 16y ago
  RE: #2. Too late. Facebook is already filled with old people.
  - thomasreggi 16y ago
    thats what she said.
    - WilliamLP 16y ago
      If you're going to do a twss in a humourless forum, please at least make it a funny one!
      - Ardit20 16y ago
        What's a twss?
        thesethings 16y ago
        twss stands for: That's What She Said
        Ardit20 16y ago
        Did you just make it up? Or is that dujmiu
        Ardit20 16y ago
mtinkerhess 16y ago
Exclusivity used to be Facebook's greatest strength. You could post photos of yourself getting drunk in the dorms without worrying that your parents would find out. Now that Facebook has gone mainstream, a competitor could attack Facebook by offering privacy within well-defined real-world communities, authenticating membership by email address, IP address or moderator approval.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - cmelbye 16y ago
    Parents like that it's widespread because they can find old friends, but the site becomes less trendy when High School and College student's parents are using it. They need to pick either being widespread or being exclusive, but they can't be both.
    - endlessvoid94 16y ago
      "They can't be both" doesn't really mean anything. They are both. Their user base is still growing, and almost none of the people who vowed to "leave facebook" have actually done it. Some have, but very, very, very few.
      - what 16y ago
        They're not both. FB is not exclusive when everyone and their grandma can sign up.
      - cmelbye 16y ago
        As the other commenter said, they aren't both. They've chosen to be more widespread. This means that their user base is still growing, but from what I've heard it's mainly older people. I'm starting to hear from other High School students that they aren't interested in Facebook anymore, which was surprising but I can see why now.
- 16y ago
troymc 16y ago
The widespread use of ad-blockers could kill Facebook, as ads are their main source of revenue.
- hrabago 16y ago
  Apart from myself, I don't know anyone who uses ad-blockers. Almost everyone I know uses Facebook, including housewives who don't even have a computer in their homes. I don't doubt that a lot of people use ad-blockers, but I can't imagine there's a big enough overlap between ad-blockers and Facebook users to bring down Facebook.
  - troymc 16y ago
    Installing ad-blockers could be a nice sideline business for those computer stores that offer "Virus and spyware removal - only $30" --- they could extend it to "Virus, spyware, and ad removal - only $40"
bl4k 16y ago
Related from last week, my own Ask HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1580464 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1580464 One of the comments in that thread pointed to this presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2 http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-networ... Which points out that the current Facebook does not match the needs of real social networking (ie. multiple networks, different levels of trust, etc.). These things are hard to implement, but I feel that whoever does get it right (along with a killer feature to get users, such as what Photos was for Facebook) will be a winner. The other feedback that I have from average Facebook users is concern for privacy (ie. a prospective employer finding your party pics), inability to control access easily (ie. your grand parents seeing your photos from a party), an overflow of information and the feeling of a 'fad' wearing out.
- hrabago 16y ago
  > multiple networks, different levels of trust I keep waiting for either Facebook to solve this problem, or for someone else to solve it. Google comes closest with their social network concept. On the one hand, I hope they pull it off. On the other, I try to minimize giving Google much more information about me than they already collect, so I'm not sure how comfortable I'll be on their social network. I suppose I'm hoping their success pushes Facebook to implement a similar concept.
  - onwardly 16y ago
    I don't give a shit what Google knows about me. Its like the big poker websites. If they get caught cheating, then EVERYONE will jump ship and they will die. Google is (I think) too smart to truly violate my privacy, nevermind ads targeted to Prozac after that nasty breakup email.
    - pyman 16y ago
      One word: Buzz. It violated everyone's privacy.
      - 16y ago
cmelbye 16y ago
It seems as if High School students are getting bored with Facebook as a whole, and it's becoming less trendy as their parents and grandparents join. If someone could come up with a site that would be more engaging somehow while retaining the exclusivity of the early-ish stages of Facebook, I believe they could potentially do very well.
ig1 16y ago
Lack of revenue. It's killed more social networks than competition ever has.
HerraBRE 16y ago
Facebook will either be killed by something fundamentally better - or it will be regulated to death. Social networking is emerging as far too important a communication medium for one company to be allowed to dominate. It may take a few yeas for regulators to catch up, but if Facebook isn't unseated by something better and more open, it will get broken up by government or at the very least forced to inter-operate openly with its competitors. I'm betting something better will come around before the government steps in, but either way I'd say Facebook will be taken down a peg or three within the next few years.
- beagle3 16y ago
  You have the weird assumption that government works for the people. In fact, government will likely help Facebook extend their monopoly in return for easy access to all the data that facebook collects on you. If you use facebook often, especially from a mobile phone, then you are leaving a data trail for everything you are doing in your life, and everything your friends are doing. It is easy to apply that against you if needed, which is why a government will be happy to support facebook.
hrabago 16y ago
I still think (or hope) that something that better reflects a person's multiple networks can emerge and gain widespread use. For instance, I don't have all my coworkers on my Facebook friends list because I don't like to mix them in with my personal friends or family. That said, I don't use Facebook's wall all that much already because what I like to share with my family and what I like to share with friends are completely separate as well.
praptak 16y ago
Maybe, just maybe something like stackoverflow could be pulled on Facebook. I mean someone who already has gained lots of street cred building a working replacement. Not sure if even that could work. FB is not as universally hated as the site that stackoverflow killed.
dstein 16y ago
Facebook will "die" when it is no longer unique. They have defined the template for how all future websites need to operate. And I guarantee within a few years developers will find ways to standardize (or at least ubiquitize) every important feature of Facebook. Once every website has a universal login, contacts, and sharing features, then why would I use Facebook, when I can use X, Y, or Z which have lots of other features too? And then the cycle will start over again.
- plesn 16y ago
  Exactly. The two moments of the cycle are: killer feature and protocols. When a feature goes mainstream, it neads to be openly standartized (Take GUI toolkits, take instant messenging). Then another feature/innovation moves the "battle" elsewhere. Facebook somehow made MSN instantly much less relevant by combining jabber to their social networking site. Someone else will surely do the same, by combining social networking protocols (plug Dispora++?) to something else interesting by itself for its data. Maybe more interactive appliances and webstores? Imagine for example every appliance (phone, computer, camera…) having an adapted 'view' of your dashboard and relations, backed by a distributed datastore with proper backup and cryto.
davi 16y ago
The only thing that can kill facebook is failure to innovate and evolve with the tastes of its users. This would open the door to a competitor to become the new 'cool place to be'. It will probably take 5-10 years to find out if this is going to happen. The internal 'move fast, break stuff' development model seems explicitly designed to prevent this. Barring that (or some sustained operational mishap -- downtime, security breach, etc.), network effects make it unkillable.
- dstein 16y ago
  "It will probably take 5-10 years to find out if this is going to happen." I won't even take 2 years. I will be surprised if several competitors don't emerge by the time Facebook goes public.
  - lrm242 16y ago
    Why? Facebook is entrenched. Myspace was no where near the size of Facebook when Facebook came in and snatched the rug out from under them. FB has evolved to be the social networking platform, just as Google has evolved to be the primary search engine of the internet. Google gets competitors all the time, but none that really pose any major threat to their core search business. I'd say that FB has reached that level of critical mass for their own business. When it comes to social relationships, they have won. When it comes to everything else around that (places, questions, yadda yadda) the game is still very much in play. I wouldn't for a second assume that just because Facebook came out of no where that history is a given to repeat. When FB came out of nowhere there was no web property with anywhere near FB's critical mass and momentum.
    - qwzybug 16y ago
      Entrenched in what? What's the compelling reason not to just walk away from your Facebook account? The scrabble game you're right in the middle of? Photo metadata? Messages about important parties? Try just quitting Facebook cold-turkey. You'd be surprised how easy it is, and you just might like it.
ankeshk 16y ago
Just like a better search engine can't kill Google anymore, a better social networking site / solution won't kill Facebook. Open protocols won't kill it. A shiny new more exclusive social networking site won't kill it. It can only die if: i. Government intervenes with some crazy law. ii. An entrepreneur somewhere thinks of a better idea for people to spend time on - instead of on social networking and quiz taking and game playing online. (Hmm... Maybe something like Hunch - but a lot more user friendly and socially interactive (an updates stream).) iii. Facebook does something crazy and self destructive.
- bitskits 16y ago
  Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more. I'm sure that Friendster and Myspace shared your opinion of themselves at some point in recent history. Facebook, Google, and any other site that is popular today will find itself as the next MySpace if their innovation slows. It won't take a government to kill Facebook, a disrespect for innovation will do the trick. There are thousands of startups with FB's users in their sights; all it takes is one with a good enough idea.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    Friendster and Myspace were at least an order of magnitude below Facebook in terms of popularity. Myspace never extended very far beyond bands and sixteen year olds, and Friendster didn't even get as far as Myspace.
  - ankeshk 16y ago
    Thanks for disagreeing and extending the dialogue. Friendster and Myspace didn't have a chance to figure out a way of making money that earns billions a year. Facebook has. That is why - Facebook is now in a position to not wither away like Friendster and Myspace. But thats just my opinion.
    - joe_the_user 16y ago
      Claims for Facebook making billions seem exagerated to me. You can see that Google is more or less established not because they are making billions but because there's an "eco-system" of companies who make money along with Google and can be expected to keep pushing that money long term back to Google. The same might (or might not) be said about the iPhone. But you'd be hard pressed to find anything like a stable ecosystem grown-up around Facebook. The only thing that grows on Facebook seems to be social games and those depend on FB's own growth. The claim of social network sites has been that they can sell focused eyes. But I haven't seen evidence that they can sell social eyes that will do anything. It seems like even without a competitor, Facebook will become Yahoo in a few years - not dead but a site that can charge very a premium for ads or experience. But hey, I'm just guessing...
cmelbye 16y ago
I just made a survey to collect things that people like and dislike about Facebook: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1603643 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1603643 I'll share the results if I find anything good.
firebones 16y ago
Innovator's dilemma + architectural conservatism + internal turf-war politics. As Facebook grows and the third-party innovators in their ecosystem become larger and more formidable, antibodies to innovation will be developed (higher barrier for new ideas to be attracted to the platform from the outside, higher barriers for new ideas to emerge and take root from the inside). This won't kill Facebook it will just make it less relevant as a way of attracting innovator mindshare and new capital. As with Microsoft, this may take a decade or more to play out, and like Microsoft, by most measures (other than stock price) they'll still be considered a fairly successful business as this happens. Just one no longer growing insanely or having new Hollywood movies made about it. What takes the mindshare? I don't know. Perhaps the marriage of consumer electronics and a collection of narrowly focused and ubiquitous services seems more likely to come together and be integrated into people lives than does belief that a walled garden "portal" conquering the world will continue. Or possibly: social congregation around digital media. The return of the shared experience around the TV.
danvoell 16y ago
too many games like Farmville? (similar to music on myspace?)
sharjeel 16y ago
Facebook itself
lowglow 16y ago
a new generation of kids.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
davidalln 16y ago
Facebook succeeded because it's timing was perfect. It was released right about the time when internet officially went mainstream. Drops in high speed internet prices combined with a crop of Web 2.0 applications promising a more dynamic web caused people to digitize a lot of their lives. Facebook was able to ride this wave by marketing itself as an exclusive club. It was you and your friends home away from home. It beat out MySpace because of its focus on "networks", allowing entire schools of students to quickly have contact with each other. I think a Facebook killer is unlikely, unless there is another wave of increased internet activity (which I don't see happening any time soon). However, niche social websites are on the grow and are gaining with popularity. Perhaps if enough of these are created, it'll engulf Facebook in popularity. But then Facebook could simply revert back to its "school" niche that it used to focus on three years ago.
- dillydally 16y ago
  Er, more important than that (I think) are the failures of Friendster's management to manage growth and MySpace's sale to News Corp. The fact that Facebook beat MySpace in the US is astonishing, IMO.
iamgabeaudick 16y ago
Facebook is Facebook's greatest threat. Consider Myspace: it was largely because they let their product deteriorate that users switched to Facebook.
Eliezer 16y ago
THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH FACEBOOK APPROACHES BORN TO A STARTUP THAT HAS THRICE DEFIED THEM... oh, never mind
kaiwen1 16y ago
A lot of people doing what I just did last week. I closed my Facebook account because FB is just huge waste of time.
petenixey 16y ago
VPs
siglesias 16y ago
Take advantage of Facebook's negative brand image, and run attack campaigns discussing their history of privacy gaffes. Make sure that alternative service distinguishes itself in nearly every facet and doesn't merely copy Facebook's usability and functionality. No small task, but the correct approach.
wslh 16y ago
A site with a best relation with developers (that was one of the MSFT advantages in the past). Facebook often change APIs specs AND if you exceed their API calling limitation there is not space to buy more "credit" for small companies. I think the companies embracing the facebook ecosystem and helping them to grow are in risk of future policies changes.
hotmind 16y ago
What can kill Facebook? Burnout. And it will eventually happen.
- ronaldj 16y ago
  I believe it.
dgudkov 16y ago
A few statements related to subject: 1) 500mln have joined FB. Why others didn't? Isn't it because FB has nothing really valuable to offer them? 2) If FB continue trying to become all-internet-in-one-company then they will soon follow Yahoo. 3) Future belongs to specialized social networks utilizing unified social protocols and APIs (not developed yet). LinkedIn is one of early birds. More to come.
darrenkopp 16y ago
management. that is where the death of something successful is always born.
jorangreef 16y ago
Time.
- 9lessonslabs 16y ago
  Yes time..
marcamillion 16y ago
At this point...only Facebook can kill Facebook. For reference, see Yahoo. Google didn't kill Yahoo. Yahoo did.
twidlit 16y ago
Here are a few of my solid guesses. 1. A destination site that is closely tied to a mobile hardware device. (Apple, Google and MS have the closest chance with this). +1 if company has TV expansion to get the rest of the population. 2. Implosion. Internal conflict most probably from investors/shareholders vs. leaders. 3. Site-wide security breach that affected more than 30% of users and had serious and press-juicy consequences. The issue should persist for more than a week. 4. Zuckerberg's death or serious illness. (non-issue if a strong leader emerges) 5. Talent migration. This is inevitable as there will be fewer and fewer challenges left to excite sharp minds (3-5 years)
- twidlit 16y ago
  To expand on #1. MS has Xbox, Xbox Live, Windows but weak mobile + web products. Apple has itunes, ios, macosx but negligible web prowess and zero social web domain expertise. Google has strong web engineering output and Android, nothing else come to mind. If you can apply a social web layer to their products which would come out stronger? The answer to that might be the Facebook killer I think.
pg 16y ago
If you want to answer this question, it's probably a mistake to look at Facebook itself. The biggest danger to successful technology companies is that the world will change in a way that makes them irrelevant. The new thing, whatever it is, will initially seem unimportant. By the time the incumbent realizes how important it is, it will be too late. This sort of generic answer is not very exciting. It would be more exciting if you could say what the new thing would be. (To some people at least; to most it would seem a toy.) But that is quite hard to do.
- raphar 16y ago
  Being really hard to guess what would be a facebook "killer", do you have an idea of why none of the heavy weights were unable to at least compete with Facebook. Microsoft, Yahoo and Google tried for sure (each in its own way), but they are far away from facebook current popularity and success. Also, do you think it's all Facebook merit or there is also some "people" thing helping them, and not their rivals? [Perhaps some novelty factor, a (n unknown) social economic factor, whatever, I dunno].
  - pg 16y ago
    I'm not 100% sure, but I suspect that once Facebook had about 5-10 universities they were unstoppable. Once you have 5-10 universities, you're going to get all the rest. Once you have all the college students, all you have to do to get HS students is allow them in. And you can get everyone post-college by simply not kicking people off when they graduate. If only I had realized that at the time, though. I remember thinking that a social network for college students sounded about as exciting as yet another used textbook exchange, but without the revenue.
    - dasil003 16y ago
      That makes a nice narrative but I don't think that the strategy made them unstoppable. MySpace had a huge head start and what happened? They got steamrolled because Facebook had better privacy, better design, better performance, and more features. Facebook's secret sauce is its engineering organization. Sure a lot of good ideas went into it, but lots of companies have good ideas, very few have the technical ability (or the balls) to roll them out as quickly as Facebook has.
mrpsbrk 16y ago
Orkut in Brazil used to be just as impossible to displace as FB, and it's in the process of being displaced. So it can be done. Come to think of it, the same happened to ICQ over MSN, and in fact the very very old out there might see Usenet over BB in the same light. So, 1: it can happen. But also, 2: it will not happen over a feature list. A friend once said to me that MSN displaced ICQ because all the dumb hot girls didn't grok ICQ. As awful as the idea is, i think there is something to it. Something like street-cred. Which obviously comes from who and not what. I think the official term is "cluster effects". But then again, cluster effects only require that YOUR friends be there, not that everyone is. Which is to say: it's not about universality, but traction --- similar, not the same. Finally, 3: should it? Why must FB fall? It is a walled garden, and it is stifling of competition, for sure. But the thing about walled gardens is that while obviously flawed from the collective perspective, from the individual perspective they are, well, gardens. As in pleasant. I guess anything that "competes" with FB is as bad as, the "good side of the force" is not killing FB, but creating reasonable ways to mine it's data, like open protocols. Those will come, sooner or later, just like twitter and FB kinda interoperate, but they will not kill it, maybe at best make it less relevant.
hyperbovine 16y ago
Here's one I haven't seen mentioned: social network fatigue. People gradually realize that online friendships tend to be shallow, unfulfilling & transitory. They switch back to the old model where being somebody's friend actually takes some effort, and has tangible emotional and social benefits associated with it. FB becomes irrelevant. Cf. that Wilson Quarterly article that was on here a couple days ago. Hey... anything is possible :-)
skbohra 16y ago
Same discussion here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1465454 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1465454 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1471695 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1471695
james_ash 16y ago
Spam and viruses. Two days ago I awoke to find my status had been changed to "penis" overnight. I have no idea how this happened, since I don't share my account details with anyone or use it on a shared computer. It had an interesting effect on my friends, to say the least. Had it been changed to something worse, an attack like this could easily have led to damage to my social network of friends, which would definitely be grounds for me quitting Facebook.

glhaynes 16y ago

How would that look from an end-user standpoint? If I'm a person who doesn't know a thing about protocols or technology and uses Facebook a lot, what causes me to start to migrate over to the distributed services? Particularly because one of the great strengths of Facebook is exactly that it's not distributed: all the people you know, in one place. So it seems like to replace one of the core functionalities provided, there has to be some centralized component. And then it's hard for me to see what benefit decentralization is providing for either the user or the service. An alternative social architecture seems appealing in some ways but I just can't see the [realistic, might actually happen with a significant chunk of the Facebook crowd] vision of how we'd ever get there from here.

wolfrom 16y ago
I think of that component as a very good area for a startup, which is why I'm part of such a team. I don't think it's unrealistic for one person to use Twitter, Flickr and YouTube for their social networking, while another person uses Facebook and LinkedIn; both should eventually be able to share with each other through a service that specializes in bringing everyone together.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  Does your model include a central feed?
  - wolfrom 16y ago
    It does, depending on your definition. Aggregation of activity streams is a part of it.
    - glhaynes 16y ago
      Does the user have to set that up? Or does it just happen automatically? That to me seems one of the main advantages of centralization of this sort of thing: users just automatically get publicly posted photos, posts, invitations, etc. from anybody they've friended and vice-versa.
      - wolfrom 16y ago
        With OAuth and login cookies, it's even easier now than it was when FriendFeed began, but still requires one click to add a service, and a clicking on "Allow" at the end site. Once that's done, a good product should be able to centralize the contacts and social data/activities.
        glhaynes 16y ago
        So how do you handle the case of a non-techy user who logs in and wants to upload some pictures? They have to go to Flickr (or equivalent), create an ID there, come back, and link that new ID to the social network feed? Or do you end up providing that sort of service, too, in addition to the option of using an external service? If so, how is this better than a Facebook app that lets you feed your data from an external service into your feed?
        wolfrom 16y ago
        At this point, the service would connect the photo sharing of different services to the user based on their choice (I use Flickr, so I share Flickr, or I use Facebook so I'll share that with everyone). There is more functionality than in a standard Facebook App, but Facebook apps (and open social apps, and iPhone apps, etc) would be part of the solution. The service is based on sharing from the services a user already uses, but there's nothing stopping the service from helping users discover new services that are perfect for what they want to do.

jsharpe 16y ago
You can already do this rumoured behaviour with Facebook (it's called Friend Lists). If Facebook hasn't managed to get people to adopt this, it seems hard to believe that anyone else will.
- onwardly 16y ago
  Facebook doesn't make it easy though. With 1000+ friends, I'd rather not sit down for 12 hours and try to categorize them. Surely they can atleast guess for me (based on who I share friends with, when we became friends, whether we went to school or lived in the same city at the same time, etc.). If FB would give me a draft to review, then I'd try sorting through my friends. If they don't, then I simply won't share many things that I might like to share, just because it has to be broadcast to everyone.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    If you have over 1000 friends I'm not surprised Facebook is difficult for you to use. 1000 friends is a frighteningly large auditorium of people. Facebook is far more usable at or under about 100 friends.
    - lehrblogger 16y ago
      I'm very late to this thread, but I think this suggests perhaps the biggest problem that Facebook has: Because the act of 'defriending' someone has such strong negative social connotations, it will continue to be very uncommon, and as a result the number of friends any given user has is increasing monotonically. I've had Facebook for years, and by friend count has steadily increased and is now nearing 900. The users who only have 100 friends now will eventually be in the unmanageable and uncomfortable position of having 1000 friends, and by that point I won't be surprised if my count is approaching 1500. Facebook certainly seems to want everyone to have as many friends as possible (note the friend suggestion features), so it's only a matter of time before everyone is presenting themselves to such a large auditorium.
      - smiler 16y ago
        I was trying to clean out my friends list today on FB and it's clear that FB do not want you to do that (for obvious reasons). The only way I could seem to remove them was to click into each friend and click "Remove from my friends". It takes so long and was so tedious I just gave up!
- mrpsbrk 16y ago
  I used to think that any kind of data management in FB-like site would boil down to a friend list. I even had dozens of lists in orkut back when i gave lots of energy to that site, but it turns out lists are weirdly inappropriate to this kind of thing. I mean, i do have some lists in my FB, and i will dutifully file every single new contact. But it turns out not to be too useful! Now i think that maybe "lists" have bad orthogonality to what people want to do. They seem to make sense from a DB perspective, from inside the system, but they miss the point by so little that they actually cloud the issue. Weirdly enough. My current guess is that it boils down to identity management. I would like not to classify friends, but to manage "personas", like masks or roles that i play. For example "student" or "employee" or, you know, "night life". It is more like a sub-profile than like a list of friends, though. This would obviously involve a list of friends, maybe it could only involve a list of friends, but still... Definitely an area where more experiments would be needed.

twidlit 16y ago

But Facebook has proven to be very vigilant on potential competitors and has been effective in snuffing it out by not just cloning them but improving the (feature based) startup's concept. Or they acquire them or its next smaller competitor startup. My money is either in 1 of the 3 giants (GOOG, APP, MS) finally getting the social web right or Twitter. But the problem with Twitter is it has fumbled countless times already and is only growing due to the strength and type of its community. So i have no confidence they can catch up to Facebook. So Im guessing if its not the 3 giants, it will be an inter-operable social layer and a thousand private social networks.

pg 16y ago
Whatever it is won't seem like a competitor. It will seem as unrelated to Facebook's business as Google seemed to Microsoft's business in 1998.
- twidlit 16y ago
  IMHO it will be related in a way that it will still be around replicating social interactions offline online. The way i predict success in online businesses is how well they can replicate real-world actions and dynamic. The bigger and better the set of real human actions a startup can build a online counterpart for, the stronger it becomes. Facebook is building online equivalent of verbs or actions you can do with people. so the more verbs it can do the more unstoppable it becomes. What if someone can build the Facebook+ phone? i would also bet on that.
- gcb 16y ago
  This may be the standard answer for x-killer in any useful product talk. but facebook is a social time sink. we all seen many came and go. in brazil facebook is just now dethroning Orkut. wich had just before dethroned photolog, or something. They are all the same. it's just the latest momentum. Facebook just overcome them now by sending more lobster-trap-email-spam then any other managed to send before. So the answer: it will be any other social time sink clone (they're all the same as friendster or other anyway) that manages to send your friends SMS every 5seconds. There you go. build it and give me 4%.