Towards the end, the article inadvertently hints at how Facebook may actually collapse: a death of a thousand papercuts from more focused sites that include soc

Towards the end, the article inadvertently hints at how Facebook may actually collapse: a death of a thousand papercuts from more focused sites that include social features. However, this may come about in two different forms. One way is akin to the "wheel of reincarnation" effect where social features centralize, then fragment, and then centralize again. One can easily see this in the lifecycles of most online discussion venues - a focused start, and then a gradual change and dilution of the site's character that hits a tipping point at some critical moment. Facebook has already gone far, far away from the "college facebook replacement" angle it started with, but it hasn't yet hit the landmine that might cause its own self-destruction. The other way is the emergence of a dominant open system that is pound-for-pound similar in purpose and usability, and simple enough to run that it becomes a commodity. This can take eons of "internet time" to happen. Desktop Linux remains a work-in-progress(but one getting closer and closer to its competition), and Jabber, as a pure instant messaging platform, is still just one of many systems. So if a standard emerges for social networks(and we haven't really settled on one) it will still probably take decades.