4 ms·

Recently I have been seeing an increase in the number of such posts titled 'Decline of facebook', 'collapse of facebook' or some other theory trying to explain

Recently I have been seeing an increase in the number of such posts titled 'Decline of facebook', 'collapse of facebook' or some other theory trying to explain why facebook won't stand the test of time. The point here is, why are we bothered? There are people who like it, and there are people who don't. The user base of facebook has reached a point where any categorization becomes too big a demographic hence no matter which feature one would talk about, there are takers and there are haters. It is all about which side is heavier here. Facebook and twitter, in the initial phases of their global boom (after facebook moved out of it's college/university paradigm) was used as a global social networking tools by geeks, bloggers and web designers. People who have a very different look on how the internet should be. And even though these people 'make' most of the obervable internet (read: web), it is important to know that facebook also caters a whole lot to the social networking junkies who love the loads of like buttons, and a rush of social media. While some of may think it is lame, it is rarely a question of lame or cool, but what keeps the site running. Either ways, these articles seem to offer quite a narrow demographic when they try to provide any insight or an opinion. And that is because, 'Facebook users' today is a demographic so large that it approximates quite good to the law of averages. Above and beyond, my only point is that, only time will tell.

joebadmo 16y ago
I pretty much agree with you, and I don't think FB is going anywhere anytime soon. But that's part of why I'm bothered (and I think the source of all the wishful-thinking decline of FB stories). Well, that combined with: I don't like FB. I don't like the UI, I don't like the weak/ambiguous/unclear privacy policies, I don't like the narrowness of vision, the constraining of expression, the shallowness of engagement, the walling off of a portion of the internet, and I don't like the corporation. I don't like FB, so I don't use it. But I do understand that it provides some utility to a lot of people. I want FB to "die" so I can have that utility without all the baggage or constraints.
anasol 16y ago
You are right, the user-base is far too large to be properly accounted for; and that is the root of the reason why there are so many articles about FB's decline is that some of us wish for it. Think about it: who writes these articles? The same basis of geeks, bloggers and web designers that consider that FB has become overpopular and loaded with a plethora of useless features (game apps, "like" buttons for pointless activities, etc.), and that some users tend to update their statuses too much and too often. Which is the main reason why smaller, and arguably better communities like this one can thrive. It is all a matter of who gets to call the shots regarding what the Internet should be like.

joebadmo 16y ago

I pretty much agree with you, and I don't think FB is going anywhere anytime soon. But that's part of why I'm bothered (and I think the source of all the wishful-thinking decline of FB stories). Well, that combined with: I don't like FB. I don't like the UI, I don't like the weak/ambiguous/unclear privacy policies, I don't like the narrowness of vision, the constraining of expression, the shallowness of engagement, the walling off of a portion of the internet, and I don't like the corporation. I don't like FB, so I don't use it. But I do understand that it provides some utility to a lot of people. I want FB to "die" so I can have that utility without all the baggage or constraints.

anasol 16y ago

You are right, the user-base is far too large to be properly accounted for; and that is the root of the reason why there are so many articles about FB's decline is that some of us wish for it. Think about it: who writes these articles? The same basis of geeks, bloggers and web designers that consider that FB has become overpopular and loaded with a plethora of useless features (game apps, "like" buttons for pointless activities, etc.), and that some users tend to update their statuses too much and too often. Which is the main reason why smaller, and arguably better communities like this one can thrive. It is all a matter of who gets to call the shots regarding what the Internet should be like.