4 ms·
Every new feature Facebook introduced has already been done by someone else. When it started, it was a simple clean website, and that ease of use attracted the
by nzmsv 16y ago
Every new feature Facebook introduced has already been done by someone else. When it started, it was a simple clean website, and that ease of use attracted the initial users. Then Facebook was opened for apps, and there was a flood of zombie/vampire apps, and widgets to customize your page with. Like most geeks, I got sick of those years earlier, having visited enough PHPnuke-based portals and linkspam-based games.
But for many people Facebook was an introduction to the things you could do online. It was a structured, gradual, hand-holding introduction, which is what I think made it work.
- brianmwang 16y agoThe final sentence in your characterization of Facebook is uncannily similar to what AOL was in its glory days.
- tiles 16y agoAlso one should recognize that Facebook never let the site degrade to the point that bad features caused people to leave. Appspam was a huge problem, for maybe a month-- then they started incremental steps to limit it, until now when there is so little of it on my Newsfeed I forget there are apps. There is a threshold for people leaving and Facebook always skirts it, never enough to cause a mass exodus however.
- fookyong 16y agountil now when there is so little of it on my Newsfeed I forget there are apps Recently I thought of trying out a few facebook games, just to see how things have progressed. I literally could not figure out how to find the games. I have no "games" icon on the left toolbar as I deleted it a while back, and there is seemingly no way to navigate to a list of popular games from anywhere on the site. I thought that was strange.
- code_duck 16y agoQuite so. Facebook has made a bonanza on new internet users. My personal belief is that most of these people will figure out that Facebook is not the internet and spread out to other services, decreasing Facebook's importance, and they will not be replaced by other new users in the similar quantities. And yes, the past three years have shown derivative introduction after derivative introduction. Facebook is basically in it's MS-1998 stage: if you can't buy the competition, copy them thoroughly and use your superior market power to smother them. This will end up just like MS, in a dying, boring irrelevant company that has a popular product, but absolutely no clue about where to go next and a serious inability to catch on to true trends.
- rwmj 16y agoAgree. Mixi was definitely there before Facebook on a lot of things. I loved Mixi for being "MySpace done right" long before I'd heard of Facebook.