4 ms·

I honestly believe Facebook is on the way out. Facebook was an elite product, it required an Ivy League address just to get through the door and established a

by msy 16y ago

I honestly believe Facebook is on the way out. Facebook was an elite product, it required an Ivy League address just to get through the door and established a set of middle-upper class brand credentials. Facebook is now the default, it's full of crappy games & dodgy ads. Every shitty website has a like button. It's has an irremovable reputation for a lacadasical approach to user privacy. Everyone and their grandmother are on there, FWD:FWDing Glen Beck nonsense and Farmville requests. Every market has stratification, we define ourselves by our brand associations. There is a hole where there should be the Mercedes, the Apple of social networks to Facebook's Dell. All that's needed now is something new to come along that woos the elite and Facebook's long term fate it sealed. There's a chance it'll be Disapora but there's a very good chance it won't. That's not to say it won't be around for years to come but it has, to used a hackneyed phrase, jumped the shark and the difference is that Facebook's value comes from it's userbase, not its services or technology. Once the top end start bailing the rot will set in fast, momentum shifts with dizzying speed on the web. I've been thinking about this for a while, I figure if I'm right, I'll be able to point to this in a year or two and smile. Not quite as profitable as shorting FB but hey, it's just speculation for fun.

jacquesm 16y ago
> I honestly believe Facebook is on the way out. I'd like to believe that but I can't find any figures to substantiate it, I think it's a bit premature to make that statement unless you're looking at a specific group of users. I see you've qualified your statement as speculative. My personal 'data' is limited to my friends and family, and there is some anecdotal evidence that a facebook account has a 'lifecycle' that is measurable in a relatively low number of years whereas a google one seems to be long enough that we haven't been able to detect its length.
- ErrantX 16y ago
  I've noticed that quite a lot of my friends are now using it pretty much exclusively for a) sharing photo's (because that's where everyone is to share them with) and b) as an interactive contacts database. Even game usage seems to have plummeted on my feed. I think you are right; Facebook has a lifecycle - so it's reach will probably flatten out (I'm guessing it will drop a bit first) and it will end up with a slow churn of new users taking the place of inactive ones.
Ardit20 16y ago
I agree. I would also suggest that Google search plays a much more fundamental role to the internet than Facebook. Facebook in my opinion is a trend, like yahoo chat was or usernet. Its a way for people to communicate and people move their groups and places where they hang around on the internet all the time, but everyone needs to do their weekly shopping, that is everyone needs to search and unlike real life supermarkets, on the net there is just google.
- c1sc0 16y ago
  Really? Searching for information is a more fundamental desire than interacting with friends?
  - Ardit20 16y ago
    I did not use the word desire, hence I do not see why you would? I think searching is more of a necessity, at times perhaps more than friends. My friends might for example not be able to tell me about 1200 BC, something which a history student might need to know, or to tell me how I can code something, which google might be able to tell me. Some friends might be able to. They might be able to tell me things which google can not. Facebook however is only a platform where one interact with friends. As I said hanging out places change all the time. Unless however something revolutionary comes forward to make search a different experience, I do not see the number of visits to Google falling for the foreseeable future, while I might be able to in regards to Facebook. Chatroulette for example could have been a great contender had it not been overtaken by penises. People might also decide to physically hang around more once they get bored of the novelty effect of facebook. Unless they want to spend hours in a library however, I do not see people suddenly deciding to stop using the internet for searching. In conclusion, google, or searching, is a necessity, Facebook is merely a substitute which can not, quite, become a necessity as it can not quite compensate for actual interaction with friends.
patrickk 16y ago
(I posted this comment in the article on "Facebook's killer app" article - http://blog.eyesandfeet.com/2010/08/facebooks-killer-app-is-here-no-its-not.html http://blog.eyesandfeet.com/2010/08/facebooks-killer-app-is-..., but I think it's more appropriate here, so this is a repost). Facebook's increasing focus on business customers will be at the detriment of regular users, who will be demoted to the rank of mere 'consumers'. It's a subtle - but important - distinction. Facebook's decision-making will increasingly be driven by thinking like "how can we monetize all this wealth of consumer data" or "how can we introduce tiered fanpage packages to business customers as a revenue stream" rather than focusing on what makes a great user experience. Currently, knowing that my friend has achieved another 'badge' in Mafia Wars adds zero value to my life. It only gets worse as Facebook focuses more and more on business brands. What do I care if my friend 'likes' Apple or Nike? How does that improve my relationship with that person? People I am really friends with in real life don't care what brands I like, or what isotonic sports drink I drink. They like me because of me. Much as businesses would like to think that people define their lives by the products they buy (this is like the opening scenes in 'Fight Club' where Edward Norton's character tries to pick out stuff from an Ikea catalogue that defines himself) that's not a basis for a relationship. And Facebook used to be all about relationships. Now I look at my Live Stream...and it's got all this random flotsam floating downstream. I care about none of it. The reason I love HN, incidentally, is because it's the polar opposite of MySpace and what Facebook is gradually becoming. Real people, that I share a lot in common with, expressing their real opinions, no auto-generated crap, and zero bling. You see comments like "What could cause FB to die?" here on HN. They're so big at this stage, with the power of network effects and lock-in, that external competition is no threat to them realistically. The only way they will die is if they continue exactly the way they are now, making people's experience ever-more spam choked, till people realize "hey this experience is actually quite shit, even if I do have 500 online friends" and start looking for alternatives. We're not quite there yet though.
nanairo 16y ago
I would like to believe you. I really would. But it's hard to see how your parallel applies. Being the Mercedes or the Apple of Social Network would be great... but it would be a failure as a social network. The example you give of brand association could make sense for luxury items. Those items' value increases the less people have it (to an extent). But a social network's value needs a large group of users. For your scenario to make sense we would need a form of open FB: then some people will go for the popular option and other will go for the elitist option, but they would all still be able to link to each other. Diaspora seems to be attempting something too big, so I doubt it will succeed. We could break down Facebook to its basic constituents, and make those open. Some already exist: a messaging system (email) and IM system (Jabber). We would still need an open notification system (a la Twitter). Webpages are already open and a personal webpage could act as your profile just as well. The last ingredient would be a way to define your circle of friends. Something like FOAF, but with stronger proponents/backing. Once that's all done, anyone could come up with their own Facebook: these would be a simple wrapper around what all these technologies.
- msy 16y ago
  It depends on what your view of a social network is. My personal opinion is that people do not have a social network, they have a series of occasionally overlapping social networks. That all current systems are incapable of reflecting this is what causes so much friction and conflict. A social network's value doesn't come from lots of users, it comes from the right users. Fragmentation of the market away from monoliths towards many niches, with individuals have separate and distinct profiles on each would make them far more representative of the real world. It is possible a base-level platform will emerge to make it possible for this to happen but I don't think it will - the value for companies is in linking it all together, the value of such smaller networks for the users it that they do not link together.
  - nanairo 16y ago
    Sure, but the same way people have two email addresses, one for home and one work work, they could have two of these bundles. Say: I am a University student. They could give me instead of an email address, a userid to access my University page. This would be a webmail client, an IM client, a place to put my photos/CV/essays, _and_ they could be link to each other and to other similar services via FOAF or others. Then I move to work, and I get another bundle. And so on. The killer feature for me on FB is: it's all integrated so once I got someone on FB I get their email/IM/photos/etc... Plus it helps finding people by searching among the connections in your social network.
djmdjm 16y ago
"nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded"
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  Yogi, is that you?
nhebb 16y ago
I think Facebook is still on the upward path, supplanting MySpace [1]. Remember MySpace? No one talks about them anymore. My teenage son and daughter dropped MySpace an now do the FB thing. My wife does FB. Everyone on my street does FB. Me and my 7 year old son are the only holdouts. I won't be surprised if in a few years, there's a new hot social networking site and Facebook gets supplanted. It all seems so fadish to me. [1] http://siteanalytics.compete.com/facebook.com+myspace.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/facebook.com+myspace.com/

by msy 16y ago

jacquesm 16y ago

> I honestly believe Facebook is on the way out. I'd like to believe that but I can't find any figures to substantiate it, I think it's a bit premature to make that statement unless you're looking at a specific group of users. I see you've qualified your statement as speculative. My personal 'data' is limited to my friends and family, and there is some anecdotal evidence that a facebook account has a 'lifecycle' that is measurable in a relatively low number of years whereas a google one seems to be long enough that we haven't been able to detect its length.

ErrantX 16y ago
I've noticed that quite a lot of my friends are now using it pretty much exclusively for a) sharing photo's (because that's where everyone is to share them with) and b) as an interactive contacts database. Even game usage seems to have plummeted on my feed. I think you are right; Facebook has a lifecycle - so it's reach will probably flatten out (I'm guessing it will drop a bit first) and it will end up with a slow churn of new users taking the place of inactive ones.

Ardit20 16y ago

I agree. I would also suggest that Google search plays a much more fundamental role to the internet than Facebook. Facebook in my opinion is a trend, like yahoo chat was or usernet. Its a way for people to communicate and people move their groups and places where they hang around on the internet all the time, but everyone needs to do their weekly shopping, that is everyone needs to search and unlike real life supermarkets, on the net there is just google.

c1sc0 16y ago
Really? Searching for information is a more fundamental desire than interacting with friends?
- Ardit20 16y ago
  I did not use the word desire, hence I do not see why you would? I think searching is more of a necessity, at times perhaps more than friends. My friends might for example not be able to tell me about 1200 BC, something which a history student might need to know, or to tell me how I can code something, which google might be able to tell me. Some friends might be able to. They might be able to tell me things which google can not. Facebook however is only a platform where one interact with friends. As I said hanging out places change all the time. Unless however something revolutionary comes forward to make search a different experience, I do not see the number of visits to Google falling for the foreseeable future, while I might be able to in regards to Facebook. Chatroulette for example could have been a great contender had it not been overtaken by penises. People might also decide to physically hang around more once they get bored of the novelty effect of facebook. Unless they want to spend hours in a library however, I do not see people suddenly deciding to stop using the internet for searching. In conclusion, google, or searching, is a necessity, Facebook is merely a substitute which can not, quite, become a necessity as it can not quite compensate for actual interaction with friends.

patrickk 16y ago

(I posted this comment in the article on "Facebook's killer app" article - http://blog.eyesandfeet.com/2010/08/facebooks-killer-app-is-here-no-its-not.html http://blog.eyesandfeet.com/2010/08/facebooks-killer-app-is-..., but I think it's more appropriate here, so this is a repost). Facebook's increasing focus on business customers will be at the detriment of regular users, who will be demoted to the rank of mere 'consumers'. It's a subtle - but important - distinction. Facebook's decision-making will increasingly be driven by thinking like "how can we monetize all this wealth of consumer data" or "how can we introduce tiered fanpage packages to business customers as a revenue stream" rather than focusing on what makes a great user experience. Currently, knowing that my friend has achieved another 'badge' in Mafia Wars adds zero value to my life. It only gets worse as Facebook focuses more and more on business brands. What do I care if my friend 'likes' Apple or Nike? How does that improve my relationship with that person? People I am really friends with in real life don't care what brands I like, or what isotonic sports drink I drink. They like me because of me. Much as businesses would like to think that people define their lives by the products they buy (this is like the opening scenes in 'Fight Club' where Edward Norton's character tries to pick out stuff from an Ikea catalogue that defines himself) that's not a basis for a relationship. And Facebook used to be all about relationships. Now I look at my Live Stream...and it's got all this random flotsam floating downstream. I care about none of it. The reason I love HN, incidentally, is because it's the polar opposite of MySpace and what Facebook is gradually becoming. Real people, that I share a lot in common with, expressing their real opinions, no auto-generated crap, and zero bling. You see comments like "What could cause FB to die?" here on HN. They're so big at this stage, with the power of network effects and lock-in, that external competition is no threat to them realistically. The only way they will die is if they continue exactly the way they are now, making people's experience ever-more spam choked, till people realize "hey this experience is actually quite shit, even if I do have 500 online friends" and start looking for alternatives. We're not quite there yet though.

nanairo 16y ago

I would like to believe you. I really would. But it's hard to see how your parallel applies. Being the Mercedes or the Apple of Social Network would be great... but it would be a failure as a social network. The example you give of brand association could make sense for luxury items. Those items' value increases the less people have it (to an extent). But a social network's value needs a large group of users. For your scenario to make sense we would need a form of open FB: then some people will go for the popular option and other will go for the elitist option, but they would all still be able to link to each other. Diaspora seems to be attempting something too big, so I doubt it will succeed. We could break down Facebook to its basic constituents, and make those open. Some already exist: a messaging system (email) and IM system (Jabber). We would still need an open notification system (a la Twitter). Webpages are already open and a personal webpage could act as your profile just as well. The last ingredient would be a way to define your circle of friends. Something like FOAF, but with stronger proponents/backing. Once that's all done, anyone could come up with their own Facebook: these would be a simple wrapper around what all these technologies.

msy 16y ago
It depends on what your view of a social network is. My personal opinion is that people do not have a social network, they have a series of occasionally overlapping social networks. That all current systems are incapable of reflecting this is what causes so much friction and conflict. A social network's value doesn't come from lots of users, it comes from the right users. Fragmentation of the market away from monoliths towards many niches, with individuals have separate and distinct profiles on each would make them far more representative of the real world. It is possible a base-level platform will emerge to make it possible for this to happen but I don't think it will - the value for companies is in linking it all together, the value of such smaller networks for the users it that they do not link together.
- nanairo 16y ago
  Sure, but the same way people have two email addresses, one for home and one work work, they could have two of these bundles. Say: I am a University student. They could give me instead of an email address, a userid to access my University page. This would be a webmail client, an IM client, a place to put my photos/CV/essays, _and_ they could be link to each other and to other similar services via FOAF or others. Then I move to work, and I get another bundle. And so on. The killer feature for me on FB is: it's all integrated so once I got someone on FB I get their email/IM/photos/etc... Plus it helps finding people by searching among the connections in your social network.

djmdjm 16y ago

"nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded"

chopsueyar 16y ago
Yogi, is that you?

nhebb 16y ago

I think Facebook is still on the upward path, supplanting MySpace [1]. Remember MySpace? No one talks about them anymore. My teenage son and daughter dropped MySpace an now do the FB thing. My wife does FB. Everyone on my street does FB. Me and my 7 year old son are the only holdouts. I won't be surprised if in a few years, there's a new hot social networking site and Facebook gets supplanted. It all seems so fadish to me. [1] http://siteanalytics.compete.com/facebook.com+myspace.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/facebook.com+myspace.com/