3 ms·

Facebook the product is dying a slow death, Facebook the company has loads of money and with that is able to buy its way out of whatever hole it has been diggin

Facebook the product is dying a slow death, Facebook the company has loads of money and with that is able to buy its way out of whatever hole it has been digging for itself. For now they can rely on their ownership of Instagram and (to a lesser extent) Whatsapp to keep them at the forefront of the data mining industry. It remains to be seen how the Instagram and Whatsapp crowd will react to Facebook's increasing pressure to 'monetise' them. Whatsapp has plenty of competitors which puts limits on how far Facebook can go in their attempts to squeeze its users, Instagram is probably more stable in this respect but also more susceptible to being overtaken by 'the new cool' which might be just around the corner. Were they to lose traction in these two markets at the same time they might be in trouble but for now this seems unlikely. Facebook-the-product will probably hang around way past its best before date just like AOL did, a grey haunt of mediocrity visited only by those who lost track with current trends and as such comparable to the dusty echoing corridors of dying malls where half the windows are boarded up.

throwaway98121 8y ago
I’ve been reading these kinds of comments for several years now. Don’t get me wrong- I despise Facebook and these other exhibitionist platforms in general. I think there’s some truth and less teenagers using Facebook, but this notion that it’s a dying platform is wishful thinking at worst or speculation at best.
- panarky 8y ago
  Network effects drove FB growth. My friends were posting interesting stuff on FB, so I needed to join FB. Then my friends started posting stuff twice an hour from their phone, so I needed to check FB twice an hour from my phone. Reverse network effects undo that growth. First slowly, then seemingly all at once. My most influential and interesting friends rarely post on FB anymore. Most of my ordinary friends are still there, but they only post once a week or once a month. So I've deleted the FB app from my phone and now I check it a couple times a week from my laptop instead of a couple times an hour from my phone. It's like Gresham's Law for social networks. Bad actors drive out good actors. A falling signal-to-noise ratio is a vicious cycle that drives out signal and attracts more noise. FB overreached in driving engagement, and it's backfired spectacularly. The FB brand is damaged and young people are embarrassed to use it. Reverse network effects will remorselessly undo what network effects originally built.
  - throwaway98121 8y ago
    Fair points, but these are all anecdotes. They don’t speak to macro trends. I certainly wouldn’t use these to state that FB is dying. The FB platforms demographics may be shifting, and the company itself has several offerings in its product line. The doom and gloom is purely speculative though. On paper, FB is a very solid company despite the recent stock sell offs.

throwaway98121 8y ago

I’ve been reading these kinds of comments for several years now. Don’t get me wrong- I despise Facebook and these other exhibitionist platforms in general. I think there’s some truth and less teenagers using Facebook, but this notion that it’s a dying platform is wishful thinking at worst or speculation at best.

panarky 8y ago
Network effects drove FB growth. My friends were posting interesting stuff on FB, so I needed to join FB. Then my friends started posting stuff twice an hour from their phone, so I needed to check FB twice an hour from my phone. Reverse network effects undo that growth. First slowly, then seemingly all at once. My most influential and interesting friends rarely post on FB anymore. Most of my ordinary friends are still there, but they only post once a week or once a month. So I've deleted the FB app from my phone and now I check it a couple times a week from my laptop instead of a couple times an hour from my phone. It's like Gresham's Law for social networks. Bad actors drive out good actors. A falling signal-to-noise ratio is a vicious cycle that drives out signal and attracts more noise. FB overreached in driving engagement, and it's backfired spectacularly. The FB brand is damaged and young people are embarrassed to use it. Reverse network effects will remorselessly undo what network effects originally built.
- throwaway98121 8y ago
  Fair points, but these are all anecdotes. They don’t speak to macro trends. I certainly wouldn’t use these to state that FB is dying. The FB platforms demographics may be shifting, and the company itself has several offerings in its product line. The doom and gloom is purely speculative though. On paper, FB is a very solid company despite the recent stock sell offs.