3 ms·

Wait what? People search on Facebook for content? Maybe for content of what their friends are up to. I've never considered a social networking site to be a sear

Wait what? People search on Facebook for content? Maybe for content of what their friends are up to. I've never considered a social networking site to be a search engine, and considering Facebook's abysmal attempts at targeted marketing (their ads SUCK at relevance) no matter how many time I tell it that a certain ad is of no relevance. I just don't see how Facebook is "winning the web war". Maybe I have different friends than most, but pretty much everyone I know uses a search engine to find things. Even my mom, who isn't what I would call computer savy.

esrauch 15y ago
They are winning the web war since their messaging has basically completely displaced AIM, MSN and GChat in the US in the 16-26 year olds. Its also put a decent dent into email for asynch communication, and I only expect that to continue.
- cdcarter 15y ago
  I don't see facebook overtaking email in professional situations for a long time.
  - becomevocal 15y ago
    I Agree. If a business contact wants to get to me through facebook I cringe. Although I can see the current generation using it in a more professional sense.
  - esrauch 15y ago
    Honestly, I think it's pretty likely that Facebook will tend towards with people having "Professional" profiles offsetting LinkedIn and they will offset email. Obviously at this point it is largely just offsetting personal email, but I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss that as insignificant.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- TikiTDO 15y ago
  Judging how successful somethings is based on how popular their messaging service is seems a bit counter-intuitive. During my life I have seen IRC, then ICQ, then AIM, then MSN, then Facebook hold the top spot for IM client over period as low as 15 years. What more, at this moment all of my friends are reachable on gtalk simply due to the rising popularity of the Android platform, so who's to say how things will change going forward. When it comes to communication people simply use what's most convenient, and has the bigger percentage of their friends. Obviously this will shift and change as services gain and lose popularity, and I think the past couple of decades have illustrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that eventually everything loses popularity on the internet (save perhaps trolling). Facebook is already a gigantic corporation with thousands of employees, millions of line of code written to support their model, and an ever growing turnaround time for new features. Obviously that can be very useful for company with such a large size and scope, but it is not without problems. All it would take to drown Facebook would be for a new service to come along with some sort of game-changing idea; at that point the monolithic structure of Facebook will prevent them from adapting quickly enough and they will begin to lose their early adopter crowd, and with them more and more of their newcomers. Sure, they will keep much of the mainstream crowd they managed to attract over the years, much like myspace still holds a huge share of their original market segment, but that will be inertia more than anything. This is not some wild speculation either. We've seen this happen several times already in the short history of the internet, and we will see it happen again, and again, and again for as long as the internet exists. This is just the life cycle of a web based company. So in other words Facebook isn't really winning any war, because honestly, there really isn't any war. At best it is yet another period of reshuffling during which yet another service ends up on top.
- saalweachter 15y ago
  Oh no! What will Google do without all the money they make from GChat?
  - esrauch 15y ago
    I don't really understand your point; any amount of money that they make from search or gmail or docs is just because someone is on that page and sees ads. The exact same situation applies with GChat assuming you use it through the gmail interface rather than through an alternate client (which most people do).
joelackner 15y ago
people (non-hackers) are searching for content (and people) on facebook. pages alone host a considerable amount of fresh content from businesses, institutions and organizations. you do have to consider many of those searches as looking for stuff already in their social graph (friends, pages, etc). i know i use their search to navigate all the time.
thatusertwo 15y ago
That is certainly a valid point. Mostly what happens with people on facebook is that they stay on facebook. They play games, they chat, they look at pictures they stay on facebook. When you goto a movie the ads don't have websites, they have facebook pages. Facebook has created a new type of internet, a more closed siloed internet (Dave Winer reference). People used to use the internet, now they use sites. The new layer is data locked into private site that farm content.

esrauch 15y ago

They are winning the web war since their messaging has basically completely displaced AIM, MSN and GChat in the US in the 16-26 year olds. Its also put a decent dent into email for asynch communication, and I only expect that to continue.

cdcarter 15y ago
I don't see facebook overtaking email in professional situations for a long time.
- becomevocal 15y ago
  I Agree. If a business contact wants to get to me through facebook I cringe. Although I can see the current generation using it in a more professional sense.
- esrauch 15y ago
  Honestly, I think it's pretty likely that Facebook will tend towards with people having "Professional" profiles offsetting LinkedIn and they will offset email. Obviously at this point it is largely just offsetting personal email, but I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss that as insignificant.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
TikiTDO 15y ago
Judging how successful somethings is based on how popular their messaging service is seems a bit counter-intuitive. During my life I have seen IRC, then ICQ, then AIM, then MSN, then Facebook hold the top spot for IM client over period as low as 15 years. What more, at this moment all of my friends are reachable on gtalk simply due to the rising popularity of the Android platform, so who's to say how things will change going forward. When it comes to communication people simply use what's most convenient, and has the bigger percentage of their friends. Obviously this will shift and change as services gain and lose popularity, and I think the past couple of decades have illustrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that eventually everything loses popularity on the internet (save perhaps trolling). Facebook is already a gigantic corporation with thousands of employees, millions of line of code written to support their model, and an ever growing turnaround time for new features. Obviously that can be very useful for company with such a large size and scope, but it is not without problems. All it would take to drown Facebook would be for a new service to come along with some sort of game-changing idea; at that point the monolithic structure of Facebook will prevent them from adapting quickly enough and they will begin to lose their early adopter crowd, and with them more and more of their newcomers. Sure, they will keep much of the mainstream crowd they managed to attract over the years, much like myspace still holds a huge share of their original market segment, but that will be inertia more than anything. This is not some wild speculation either. We've seen this happen several times already in the short history of the internet, and we will see it happen again, and again, and again for as long as the internet exists. This is just the life cycle of a web based company. So in other words Facebook isn't really winning any war, because honestly, there really isn't any war. At best it is yet another period of reshuffling during which yet another service ends up on top.
saalweachter 15y ago
Oh no! What will Google do without all the money they make from GChat?
- esrauch 15y ago
  I don't really understand your point; any amount of money that they make from search or gmail or docs is just because someone is on that page and sees ads. The exact same situation applies with GChat assuming you use it through the gmail interface rather than through an alternate client (which most people do).

joelackner 15y ago

people (non-hackers) are searching for content (and people) on facebook. pages alone host a considerable amount of fresh content from businesses, institutions and organizations. you do have to consider many of those searches as looking for stuff already in their social graph (friends, pages, etc). i know i use their search to navigate all the time.

thatusertwo 15y ago

That is certainly a valid point. Mostly what happens with people on facebook is that they stay on facebook. They play games, they chat, they look at pictures they stay on facebook. When you goto a movie the ads don't have websites, they have facebook pages. Facebook has created a new type of internet, a more closed siloed internet (Dave Winer reference). People used to use the internet, now they use sites. The new layer is data locked into private site that farm content.