I doubt that Facebook will be temporary in the way that Friendster and MySpace have proven to be but I think that they will peak and decline (in the US) in the

I doubt that Facebook will be temporary in the way that Friendster and MySpace have proven to be but I think that they will peak and decline (in the US) in the not-too-distant future. I think they have 2 strengths. Photos and the Social Graph. Their dominance in photos seems to be nearly accidental but it will serve to prevent a MySpace/Friendster type decline. Tho there are ways to extract your photos, it's never going to be something most users are comfortable with. People won't want to walk away from their years of memories and will keep their Facebook accounts somewhat active as a repository for their photos. The social graph is their biggest asset but I don't feel like they are capitalizing on it enough. I don't really play games so I only use Facebook to occassionally read my News Feed and, every month, I'm less and less interested in what I read there. They haven't created anything I NEED. Their Facebook Connect/Single Sign On system is their attempt to make us dependent on the social graph but I don't think it's succeeded. Twitter, OpenID, Google, etc all have similar products and most websites have implemented more than one of them. If I were Facebook, I'd buy or build a proper email product, an online productivity suite (Zoho, etc), and encourage 3rd parties to develop and promote apps that operate WITHIN Facebook and utilize the social graph to be interoperable/collaborative. (Right now, Facebook apps are mainly games and marketing efforts). Facebook as a place to "hangout" is going to decline but they might be able to offset their losses their with increases in other areas (work, education, etc).