5 ms·

He's wrong because for most people, their friends and their social life are more important than the rest of the stuff on the internet. You can't google your fri

He's wrong because for most people, their friends and their social life are more important than the rest of the stuff on the internet. You can't google your friend's birthday. You can look it up on Facebook. You can't google for photos of what happened at the bar last saturday. You can look it up on facebook. Oh, you didn't get that cute girl's number last night? She's a friend's friend right? Sweet, she accepted the friend request. You can't do that on google, and previously, if you forgot to get her number on the spot, you were out of luck in real life, too. You can't google for "what should I do friday night" but you can use facebook to find out what people you know might be doing. If you are already anti social and simply sit at home in your boxer shorts, then yes, Facebook makes no sense. But if you actually have friends and do stuff with them, it is a very useful tool. I'm almost certain that 90% of anyone that went to college in the USA in the past 5 years has 2 sites they visit every day: facebook and google. There is no other way at the moment to use the internet to do the things I mentioned above. On the other hand, the applications can be overwhelmingly irritating. The news feed is a blessing and a curse. I like to know when there are new photos of my friends to check out, but I don't care about what Zombie they just became. And regarding the app signup notifications in the feed: there are some things I'd rather not know about my friends, and one of them is how much time they are spending goofing off on Facebook... Note to startup hackers: if you're on facebook and more than 50% of your news feed is your CEO's random facebook activity, it might be time to look for a new job (or start your own thing.)

volida 19y ago
The serious question is if it can be replaced not if its currently popular. there are already so many social networks, so facebook is not dominant where as Google has penetrated globally due to its quality.
- geeky 19y ago
  I'd say that for most people on facebook, it's easier to replace google than to replace facebook. You can always use Yahoo or MSN for search, they might not be as good, but they're good enough. You can use Yahoo maps or Live Earth. And you can use Yahoo email, which is getting really good recently. But it's hard to leave facebook unless all your friends leave with you at the same time to a new social network.
  - volida 19y ago
    that's an interesting perspective, but I don't think is really valid. People will easily/hardly change their default social network but really easier than switching from Google which is a point of reference to those who are used to it. Even if you tried to switch from Google, how many are the alternatives? Like you said only two. And whenever I tried them they never make me stick to them. And this is easier to happen because more people can build a community than a search engine.
    - jonathan 19y ago
      I disagree. As months go by, it's going to be even harder for anyone to come up with a social network as big as FB. Why ? FB's critical mass! As it's been said, all that differentiates Facebook for an individual user is the presence of that users friend’s on Facebook — which forces them to use Facebook to connect with them. And this is precisely why FB is not a founding member of the OpenSocial foundation. Facebook is threatened by OpenSocial’s ultimate aim of connecting user profiles and enabling users to easily manage and port their data across any social network.
  - mattmaroon 19y ago
    Not to mention that in this country, it's still not even the most popular social network. And even if it becomes that, it did so only because it replaced MySpace. I don't see what is any more irreplaceable about Facebook than MySpace.
    - blader 19y ago
      Facebook is different from MySpace for exactly the use case of keeping up with your friends. Facebook is the only social network so far that rigorously enforces real names, identities and relationships through both social design and brute force. MySpace has degenerated in to a social game to rack up more points in the form of 'friends'. They are completely different, which is why Facebook is catching up to MySpace so quickly and MySpace is sinking.
      - 19y ago
- menloparkbum 19y ago
  I'd argue that Facebook has the best 'quality' when compared to the other social networks in the USA. The UI and feature set are much better than any of its competitors. Facebook is dominant in the USA; the only competitor is MySpace which seems to fill a different niche. Facebook = keep tabs on people you know, or sorta know. MySpace = meet random people you don't know, get spammed by porn bots, irritate your ex by posting salacious photos of yourself with a new fling, browse photos of potential mates in a criminally inappropriate age bracket from yourself, etc.
- halo 19y ago
  Whether Facebook can be replaced is an interesting question. I'm leaning towards "no". For any site to replace Facebook it would require either many, many users to make the transition to another site or to outright leave making the site less useful for its users, and I honestly don't see that happening. Facebook is honestly nicely designed, has plenty of users and I can't see any killer app or nicer equivalent of Facebook appearing to make moving worthwhile. The only thing that could replace Facebook is an unprecedented sharing of data between many significant players allowing interoperability between sites much like how E-Mail works. The existence of DataPortability may be a slow but sure approach towards this goal but there's too many factors to consider influencing whether this will ever actually happen. I certainly hope so in the long run - one site having the amount of influence that Facebook potentially can worries me. Disclaimer: I don't actually use Facebook, and probably never will.
  - brlewis 19y ago
    Unprecedented sharing of data is starting to happen, and friendfeed is setting itself up as the hub of that sharing.
  - axod 19y ago
    People are extremely fickle. A few years ago in the UK, everyone was on friendsreunited. Then they all moved to facebook/myspace. If there's a new thing with some cool feature, they'll all move to that. Facebook is just the current fad.
  - bosshog 19y ago
    It will continue to be very relevant for college campuses for a good while yet. How facebook will be replaced. http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2007/11/google-opensocial-and-situational.html http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2007/11/google-opensocial-and-... http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2007/11/social-network-transitions.html http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2007/11/social-network-transit...
edw519 19y ago
"most people" I would amend that to "some people". Just seems like "most people" to you. Even if 50 million Americans are on Facebook, then what are the other 250 million doing?
- dcurtis 19y ago
  150 million are slightly too old to understand it, internet illiterate, or poor. And the other 100 million are too young, or haven't graduated from MySpace yet.
  - wumi 19y ago
    "too old," "internet illiterate," "poor" "haven't graduated from MySpace yet" i don't think you much understand people nor do you understand the internet either.
    - dcurtis 19y ago
      Do you understand the demographics of the American people and of MySpace?
      - Goladus 19y ago
        Yeah, Facebook is the wine & cocktail crowd while MySpace is the beer & more beer crowd.
        wumi 19y ago
        laughable considering the strength of Facebook has been it's college-aged crowd who post hundreds of thousands of pictures from "beer & more beer" events
        Goladus 19y ago
        I meant it more as an analogy, in the sense that the MySpace crowd is generally happy with what they've got, and don't feel much incentive to switch to Facebook.
hooande 19y ago
I think Matt's point wasn't that facebook was worthless, just that it's nothing special. There are definitely services besides facebook that will let you do all of the things you mentioned (looking up a birthday, pictures from the bar, contacting a friend of a friend). In fact, you can do those things on pretty much every social networking site. Facebook just happens to be the popular one right now. When it first became popular, Google was a one of a kind. The other search engines have since caught up, but initially they didn't even compare. I think that's what makes a website really special, and that's kind of what I think facebook is lacking. There's nothing inherently special about fb other than the large number of people that use it.
Goladus 19y ago
The problem is that Facebook isn't good at anything other than being a social network, and it's not even amazingly good at that in the same way that Google was amazingly good at search or the original Macintosh was amazingly good at being a personal computer. There is no other way at the moment to use the internet to do the things I mentioned above. My friends prefer evite for organizing things. It uses email, there's a thin layer of privacy, and you have a space to include details and RSVPs and such. It's not great, but it's less complicated than Facebook and you don't have to be a member of the site for it to work. You can't google for "what should I do friday night" but you can use facebook to find out what people you know might be doing. I like yelp for help with the question "what should I do friday night." It's a social network where members actually create useful content for anyone to use.
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  Also you can Google for what bar/restaurant to go to. Or movie show times/reviews. Or how to get there.
  - sgibat 19y ago
    People want to know what their friends are doing. That information really has nothing to do with it. It's about coordinating events among social groups, and Facebook is especially powerful at doing that among people who aren't very familiar with each other but have talked long enough to click "Add to Friends."
    - Goladus 19y ago
      I don't find it to be especially powerful for that. This was what was in my Facebook feed just now, at 4:20pm on a Saturday: 6 "has joined the group..." or "has become a fan of..." messages 5 miscellaneous profile updates (added photos, became friends, etc) 4 facebook spam (a facebook ad for facebook ads, "Top Books in Boston, MA network" etc) 1 application message (somebody added a "bumper sticker") My theory is that, since it's the first beautiful Saturday we've had this year people are outside enjoying the weather without bothering to update facebook beforehand. There are probably people going out somewhere tonight, but haven't decided yet and aren't using facebook to figure things out because text messages are way more reliable when everyone is scattered around actually doing things.
axod 19y ago
"facebook friends" != real friends
- truebosko 19y ago
  I don't know when/why this became reality. On my facebook account, I only have people I know pretty well, many of them lifelong friends. It keeps my list short (Something like 40 I think) but it doesn't crowd it up. I guess that's not the norm
  - axod 19y ago
    I think the norm is to descend into a competition with others about who can get the most 'friends'. I expect the average facebook probably has a few hundred 'friends'. Which makes the whole thing a little bit pointless.

volida 19y ago

The serious question is if it can be replaced not if its currently popular. there are already so many social networks, so facebook is not dominant where as Google has penetrated globally due to its quality.

geeky 19y ago
I'd say that for most people on facebook, it's easier to replace google than to replace facebook. You can always use Yahoo or MSN for search, they might not be as good, but they're good enough. You can use Yahoo maps or Live Earth. And you can use Yahoo email, which is getting really good recently. But it's hard to leave facebook unless all your friends leave with you at the same time to a new social network.
- volida 19y ago
  that's an interesting perspective, but I don't think is really valid. People will easily/hardly change their default social network but really easier than switching from Google which is a point of reference to those who are used to it. Even if you tried to switch from Google, how many are the alternatives? Like you said only two. And whenever I tried them they never make me stick to them. And this is easier to happen because more people can build a community than a search engine.
  - jonathan 19y ago
    I disagree. As months go by, it's going to be even harder for anyone to come up with a social network as big as FB. Why ? FB's critical mass! As it's been said, all that differentiates Facebook for an individual user is the presence of that users friend’s on Facebook — which forces them to use Facebook to connect with them. And this is precisely why FB is not a founding member of the OpenSocial foundation. Facebook is threatened by OpenSocial’s ultimate aim of connecting user profiles and enabling users to easily manage and port their data across any social network.
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  Not to mention that in this country, it's still not even the most popular social network. And even if it becomes that, it did so only because it replaced MySpace. I don't see what is any more irreplaceable about Facebook than MySpace.
  - blader 19y ago
    Facebook is different from MySpace for exactly the use case of keeping up with your friends. Facebook is the only social network so far that rigorously enforces real names, identities and relationships through both social design and brute force. MySpace has degenerated in to a social game to rack up more points in the form of 'friends'. They are completely different, which is why Facebook is catching up to MySpace so quickly and MySpace is sinking.
    - 19y ago
menloparkbum 19y ago
I'd argue that Facebook has the best 'quality' when compared to the other social networks in the USA. The UI and feature set are much better than any of its competitors. Facebook is dominant in the USA; the only competitor is MySpace which seems to fill a different niche. Facebook = keep tabs on people you know, or sorta know. MySpace = meet random people you don't know, get spammed by porn bots, irritate your ex by posting salacious photos of yourself with a new fling, browse photos of potential mates in a criminally inappropriate age bracket from yourself, etc.
halo 19y ago
Whether Facebook can be replaced is an interesting question. I'm leaning towards "no". For any site to replace Facebook it would require either many, many users to make the transition to another site or to outright leave making the site less useful for its users, and I honestly don't see that happening. Facebook is honestly nicely designed, has plenty of users and I can't see any killer app or nicer equivalent of Facebook appearing to make moving worthwhile. The only thing that could replace Facebook is an unprecedented sharing of data between many significant players allowing interoperability between sites much like how E-Mail works. The existence of DataPortability may be a slow but sure approach towards this goal but there's too many factors to consider influencing whether this will ever actually happen. I certainly hope so in the long run - one site having the amount of influence that Facebook potentially can worries me. Disclaimer: I don't actually use Facebook, and probably never will.
- brlewis 19y ago
  Unprecedented sharing of data is starting to happen, and friendfeed is setting itself up as the hub of that sharing.
- axod 19y ago
  People are extremely fickle. A few years ago in the UK, everyone was on friendsreunited. Then they all moved to facebook/myspace. If there's a new thing with some cool feature, they'll all move to that. Facebook is just the current fad.
- bosshog 19y ago
  It will continue to be very relevant for college campuses for a good while yet. How facebook will be replaced. http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2007/11/google-opensocial-and-situational.html http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2007/11/google-opensocial-and-... http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2007/11/social-network-transitions.html http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2007/11/social-network-transit...

edw519 19y ago

"most people" I would amend that to "some people". Just seems like "most people" to you. Even if 50 million Americans are on Facebook, then what are the other 250 million doing?

dcurtis 19y ago
150 million are slightly too old to understand it, internet illiterate, or poor. And the other 100 million are too young, or haven't graduated from MySpace yet.
- wumi 19y ago
  "too old," "internet illiterate," "poor" "haven't graduated from MySpace yet" i don't think you much understand people nor do you understand the internet either.
  - dcurtis 19y ago
    Do you understand the demographics of the American people and of MySpace?
    - Goladus 19y ago
      Yeah, Facebook is the wine & cocktail crowd while MySpace is the beer & more beer crowd.
      - wumi 19y ago
        laughable considering the strength of Facebook has been it's college-aged crowd who post hundreds of thousands of pictures from "beer & more beer" events
        Goladus 19y ago
        I meant it more as an analogy, in the sense that the MySpace crowd is generally happy with what they've got, and don't feel much incentive to switch to Facebook.

hooande 19y ago

I think Matt's point wasn't that facebook was worthless, just that it's nothing special. There are definitely services besides facebook that will let you do all of the things you mentioned (looking up a birthday, pictures from the bar, contacting a friend of a friend). In fact, you can do those things on pretty much every social networking site. Facebook just happens to be the popular one right now. When it first became popular, Google was a one of a kind. The other search engines have since caught up, but initially they didn't even compare. I think that's what makes a website really special, and that's kind of what I think facebook is lacking. There's nothing inherently special about fb other than the large number of people that use it.

Goladus 19y ago

The problem is that Facebook isn't good at anything other than being a social network, and it's not even amazingly good at that in the same way that Google was amazingly good at search or the original Macintosh was amazingly good at being a personal computer. There is no other way at the moment to use the internet to do the things I mentioned above. My friends prefer evite for organizing things. It uses email, there's a thin layer of privacy, and you have a space to include details and RSVPs and such. It's not great, but it's less complicated than Facebook and you don't have to be a member of the site for it to work. You can't google for "what should I do friday night" but you can use facebook to find out what people you know might be doing. I like yelp for help with the question "what should I do friday night." It's a social network where members actually create useful content for anyone to use.

mattmaroon 19y ago
Also you can Google for what bar/restaurant to go to. Or movie show times/reviews. Or how to get there.
- sgibat 19y ago
  People want to know what their friends are doing. That information really has nothing to do with it. It's about coordinating events among social groups, and Facebook is especially powerful at doing that among people who aren't very familiar with each other but have talked long enough to click "Add to Friends."
  - Goladus 19y ago
    I don't find it to be especially powerful for that. This was what was in my Facebook feed just now, at 4:20pm on a Saturday: 6 "has joined the group..." or "has become a fan of..." messages 5 miscellaneous profile updates (added photos, became friends, etc) 4 facebook spam (a facebook ad for facebook ads, "Top Books in Boston, MA network" etc) 1 application message (somebody added a "bumper sticker") My theory is that, since it's the first beautiful Saturday we've had this year people are outside enjoying the weather without bothering to update facebook beforehand. There are probably people going out somewhere tonight, but haven't decided yet and aren't using facebook to figure things out because text messages are way more reliable when everyone is scattered around actually doing things.

axod 19y ago

"facebook friends" != real friends

truebosko 19y ago
I don't know when/why this became reality. On my facebook account, I only have people I know pretty well, many of them lifelong friends. It keeps my list short (Something like 40 I think) but it doesn't crowd it up. I guess that's not the norm
- axod 19y ago
  I think the norm is to descend into a competition with others about who can get the most 'friends'. I expect the average facebook probably has a few hundred 'friends'. Which makes the whole thing a little bit pointless.