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And in 5 years time, it's very possible that Facebook, like AOL, will be dominated by old people, the stubborn, and the relatively computer illiterate, as other
by michaelchisari 16y ago
And in 5 years time, it's very possible that Facebook, like AOL, will be dominated by old people, the stubborn, and the relatively computer illiterate, as others have moved on to greener pastures.
Facebook's dominance is not set in stone. People may not be able to live without Facebook, but there's no reason they can't transition, such as how people quickly transitioned away from MySpace.
You start by having two accounts. The more interesting, cutting edge, friends are on the new network. Your high school friends, family, and tertiary relationships are on the old network. You check them both equally at first, but slowly you find yourself on the new network more often. Then, at some point, you stop updating the old one, save for the occasional "I don't use this anymore, I'm on X now." updates. Others follow suit, until at some point, the trickle becomes a flood. Next thing you know, the old network is a ghost town. Nobody cares about it anymore, and people only reference it as a relic from a distant past.
There is nothing Facebook has done to prevent this. And this will keep happening until social networking is eventually decentralized.
- j79 16y agoThat's interesting, actually. I think Facebook Connect might be the start of preventing that from happening. Say, for instance, they chose to become more platform-oriented, providing the data/services of facebook to developers. Suddenly, developers could build on top of an fb-platform allowing users to update from one central location. They could provide specific services (wall or no wall) and extend services (which would be specific to that site...) "Have a facebook connect account? Sign in today to expand your profile page on the-latest-greatest.xyz!" All your friends are still "friends" and communication is still possible, regardless of where on the web your social networking "home" resides.
- bioh42_2 16y agoI agree... sort of. As someone who did not join live journal, friendster, orkut, myspace, etc, I too think Facebook is likely a fad. However, these days even I am tempted to get a Facebook and/or twitter sock puppet account, if only because more and more of social interaction is moving to them. More and more of the "Hey we'll bet at X around Y" chatter is exclusively on Facebook. And I am old enough to remember when only anti-social geeks made appointments on-line instead of IRL! I don't recall myspace or anything ever reaching the scope and popularity Facebook has. And I am starting to wonder if Facebook is in fact NOT a fad?
- joe_the_user 16y agoThe problem/challenge with that scenario is that you quite likely will want to sort by multiple, intersecting categories at some point. You've sorted to friends and relatives. Now, suppose you want to send a message about Sci-Fiction. You'd like automatically send to friends who are Sci-Fi fans and relatives who are Sci-Fi fans. What's the interface which can do this? What's the interface that can make this easy? I'm working on something akin to Google-instant for this purpose.