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I'd hesitate to generalize AOL's fall into Facebook's future. AOL's core proposition was being better than the Internet (more curated, coherent, and faster). W

by ethbr0 5y ago

I'd hesitate to generalize AOL's fall into Facebook's future. AOL's core proposition was being better than the Internet (more curated, coherent, and faster). When the web and internet exploded in size and scale, AOL's value evaporated. The dumb mergers and other mistakes were window dressing on this landscape transformation. And for years (decades? still?) afterwards, people used AOL Instant Messager (AIM), because it was the most network/platform component of AOL. So how would that happen to Facebook, and what would it look like? Users would need an order of magnitude superior alternative, and most critically, users would need to move en mass. Facebook has rightly identified onboarding younger cohorts as key to their survival, but I don't see any realistic way Facebook dies a natural death in under 40 years.

JohnBooty 5y ago
Users would need an order of magnitude superior alternative, and most critically, users would need to move en mass. Yeah. Network effect. Arguably nothing on Earth has ever had such a powerful network effect as Facebook. I dislike FB for all of the usual reasons, plus a few of my own. But I still have an FB account. I don't check it very often, and I've got notifications turned off. But ditching my FB account entirely means I'd lose access to dozens of people I wouldn't have a great way of contacting otherwise. History tells us that something eventually will replace it. But, it's hard to imagine.
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  > But ditching my FB account entirely means I'd lose access to dozens of people I wouldn't have a great way of contacting otherwise. That used to be a fear of mine, but after deleting my account I’ve found it to be a core feature. It forces me to be intentional with my relationships; if I want to stay in touch with someone I have to make the effort. Otherwise, the relationship is likely more parasocial than actively rewarding, and I’m consciously ok focusing my energies on the people I currently want in my life to the exclusion of those relationships that have slipped into parasocial territory.
  - baby 5y ago
    I just can't imagine doing this. Facebook is the only way to keep in touch with many people around me.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    That sounds like a healthy place to be -- congrats on achieving that. I've largely achieved that as well, I think. Slightly different road traveled, perhaps. I have a larger than average extended family: a dozen aunts/uncles and a corresponding number of cousins. It's impossible to have a close relationship with all of them, but I do enjoy keeping up with how they're doing and knowing when big life events (and deaths) happen. So, my day-to-day life has absolutely nothing to do with FB. I've got notifications off and I typically feel no desire to check it. Instead I'm focused on my much smaller number of intentional, meaningful relationships. But, from time to time I do enjoy scrolling through FB and seeing how so-and-so is doing. Do you have an extended family you keep in touch with? Do you keep up with them through other means, or have you just sort of let them fade from your life?
    - wayoutthere 5y ago
      I have a similar sized extended family, but I’ve honestly let them fade from my life. I’m old enough that the weddings and babies era is long behind us and we’re scattered all over the country. All I care to get I get from my mom, which is nice because it gives us something to talk about. I have surrounded myself with chosen family and am always meeting new people. I give generously of myself to the people in my life because it brings me joy to do so. It’s a conscious trade off that means I lose touch with some people, and I’m ok with that. Most relationships should have an expiration date anyway; far too many people just go through the motions out of a sense of obligation.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Agree. Everyone who is on Facebook has email, and a mobile phone. If sending (or answering) an email or a text message or making a phone call is too much work, what kind of friendship are you really worried about maintaining?
- ignoramous 5y ago
  > Yeah. Network effect. Arguably nothing on Earth has ever had such a powerful network effect as Facebook. Facebook's network effect was overwhelmed twice, once by instagram and again by whatsapp... shame both those ended up squarely in Facebook's court. Remains to be seen how much dent can TikTok / Twitch / YouTube / Snap / Azar / Telegram can make on to that once-in-a-generation trifecta.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    > once-in-a-generation That's why Facebook is investing in VR. Not because they're optimistic about it, or because they want to own the space, but because it's the closest horizon that has the potential to fundamentally change interaction. If it does, they have a foot in the door and can flood resources into it. If it doesn't, small price to pay for hedging an existential threat.
  - oarabbus_ 5y ago
    >Facebook's network effect was overwhelmed twice, once by instagram and again by whatsapp This doesn't seem accurate, do you have evidence to back up this claim? Instagram had 30 million users and no revenue upon acquisition. Facebook had over a billion, and billions in revenues.
    - worthless-trash 5y ago
      I believe this is based on the writers perception, not reality. I can argue that my friends now use all use email, eclipsing facebook, whatsapp and instagram, better buy those stocks in SMTP. ;)
      - ignoramous 5y ago
        Perception, yes: https://stratechery.com/2020/social-networking-2-0/ https://stratechery.com/2020/social-networking-2-0/
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      Growth, and especially growth in younger demographics, is probably the metric Facebook was looking at.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  > Arguably nothing on Earth has ever had such a powerful network effect as Facebook. Email, probably.
  - soylentcola 5y ago
    But you can switch email hosts or roll your own. With some more modern problems (getting marked as spam if you're not recognized) aside, you weren't forced to keep using your @aol.com or @yahoo.com or @hotmail.com accounts in order to communicate with people on those services via email. With Facebook, it doesn't matter how much you dislike the company or how good some competitor is. You still can't talk with people on Facebook (and often, even view content) without being logged into an active Facebook account.
    - webmaven 5y ago
      Arguably, Gmail is currently the email provider with the strongest network effect due to all the ways it ties in to Android and the rest of the Google ecosystem. Worth noting that Gmail also 'solved' spam, which was the strongest reason to change email addresses/providers.
      - JohnBooty 5y ago
        Those are powerful reasons to stick to Gmail. One is a legitimately good and useful feature; the other is a rather shady attempt at artificial lock-in, IMO. But neither of those things are network effect. "Network effect" refers specifically to "the phenomenon by which the value or utility a user derives from a good or service depends on the number of users of compatible products."
        webmaven 5y ago
        > But neither of those things are network effect > "Network effect" refers specifically to "the phenomenon by which the value or utility a user derives from a good or service depends on the number of users of compatible products." Sorry, I skipped a couple of logical steps. Gmail/Google accounts are a namespace where the identifiers are persistent long-term, thus the ordinary network effect that email has is undiminished, unlike previous email providers where you had to change the account every so often largely to cope with spam. [0][1] Also, Gmail participates in the associated network effect of every Google service that has one, and there are quite a few, though Google has a bad habit of killing them off. [0] The idea being that you're trying to reduce the email network's utility for spammers to reach you more than you're reducing it for yourself to be reached by non-spammers, which is like chemo killing the cancer faster than it kills you. [1] Spam per-se wasn't the only reason, of course. In the Before Times I had to change my address due to a few older relatives repeatedly setting in motion endless Reply-All storms / email chain letters, and of course I also changed ISPs occasionally.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  >But ditching my FB account entirely means I'd lose access to dozens of people I wouldn't have a great way of contacting otherwise. I don't use FB but I would imagine if I did and I wanted to get off it and there were dozens of people I wanted to keep in touch with but would lose touch with I would send these dozens of people a message a week before, saying "I am going to get off facebook, can you send me your email / phone number, my number is X, as I would like to maintain contact." Or does FB not allow you to do that?
  - afavour 5y ago
    Facebook socialising is a lot less direct than an email. I see Instagram photos and the like from friends and enjoy it but if they all emailed those photos to me every day I’d feel overwhelmed by the experience. In any case, they wouldn’t do that anyway, because they’re already posting to Instagram because that’s where all their other friends are.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    Yeah, I'd do that as well. I've seen others do it. But people might not see your "hey, leaving FB post." They might not check FB often. Or it just kind of gets buried. etc. Phone numbers and emails change, though. "Contact rot" happens. So, I don't know. I guess I like to have multiple ways to contact people. This is all predicated on the fact that FB is absolutely not a distraction to me. I look at it maybe once or twice a month. I have all notifications turned off. So, it is not a drain on my (fragile) attention span. Maybe most importantly, a lot of the folks I keep up with on FB aren't necessarily people I talk to directly. We would not really be keeping up by email/phone/letter/whatever. Some people see that as evidence that, hey, those are obviously people you don't need in your life. Perhaps that's true for some. For me, I enjoy having acquaintances as well as friends.
- chadlavi 5y ago
  You don't actually care about those people if the only way you have of contacting them is Facebook. Just pull the trigger and dump it.
  - eropple 5y ago
    This is a profoundly presumptuous and shitty claim. Some people use Facebook to communicate. To not use Messenger is to not communicate with them. And some of us like people. Sorry?
- elzbardico 5y ago
  The problem is, that only an engaged user is valuable for a facebook advertiser. What will be the point in putting ads on facebook when most users use it like you do today?
syntheticnature 5y ago
It's off-to-the-side of your main point, but AOL Instant Messenger shut down in December 2017. Per https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/12/14/67582/aol-instant-messenger-made-social-media-what-it-is-today/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/12/14/67582/aol-instan... it was down to 500,000 active users a month the summer before it was shut down.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  In a trip down memory lane, https://www.aol.com/ https://www.aol.com/ is just... a pop news site now? Per Wayback, they shifted away from portal around 2010/11.
beowulfey 5y ago
We are in unknown territory with Facebook, but I have no doubt it will fall eventually. The laws of thermodynamics hold true for institutions as much as everything else—one day Facebook will lose to entropy and it will become a fraction of the size it is now.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Microsoft?
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    Microsoft had to make fundamental changes to stop its slide into irrelevance, and the old corporate culture is still trying to reassert itself. There's a battle of cultures happening and it might turn out New Microsoft was a last gasp.
  - Zak 5y ago
    Microsoft is an interesting case in that it has lost its influence while growing its market cap. Microsoft is several times as big as it was when PG called it dead 14 years ago[0], but founders today aren't afraid to compete against it or refuse its acquisition offers. Microsoft makes plenty of money, but does not have a great deal of control over what anybody else does. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
zaphar 5y ago
I actually think in a way one of Facebooks core proposition is being the internet for most people which is not that far off from AOL. The similarity here is that no one knows what is going to render FB obsolete right now. Just like no one knew what was going to do the same for AOL. AOL lost in part I believe because they were not really able to transition from Dialup "internet" Provider to Content Aggregator when broadband became a thing. The value add just wasn't there.
- eric_cc 5y ago
  The downfall of Facebook will be web3 social and/or the decentralized metaverse.
- jude- 5y ago
  It may come to pass that Facebook is a generational phenomenon, like rock-'n'-roll. It'll be the thing for "old people" soon enough.
  - werber 5y ago
    Instagram will be the thing for “old people” soon enough
    - freebuju 5y ago
      Not if they manage to pull off Instagram for Kids
      - voakbasda 5y ago
        I can’t understand how Instagram for Kids can succeed. Any parent that knows half of the bad stuff Facebook allegedly does (and how other “for Kids” efforts have utterly failed to protect the children) would never let their kids on such a platform. I would sooner buy a product labeled Crack Cocaine for Kids; it would be safer for them.
        5y ago
gwd 5y ago
> Users would need an order of magnitude superior alternative Is there currently any alternative? All the alternatives I'm aware of ATM are Twitter clones; i.e., meant to be public microblogs, rather than restricted audience microblogs. Recommend me a good alternative and I'll see if I can get some of my network to join it. (And don't say "Mastodon" unless they've added a FB-like mode where you can restrict your posts to a specific set of people.)
- Pamar 5y ago
  Have you considered MeWe? It is actually impossible to use it as a publicly accessible microblog.
skybrian 5y ago
One possibility is that a Facebook account becomes something that most people have but they seldom use, like a LinkedIn account. The news feed could get less interesting, resulting in fewer visits.
- chuniversity 5y ago
  I think this is already the case and is why FB doesn’t want to get rid of the offending content, for many users this is the only thing still keeping them engaged. Turn that off and it’s just a stream of advertising, memes, and dinner pics.
YossarianFrPrez 5y ago
Re: the entrenched social network... It shouldn't be too hard to create an alternative service / browser extension that will allow people to export their social network? Because then the alternative service could be set to automatically approve any future connection requests from the people previously identified. I'd sign up for such a social-graph-based service that just did individual messaging, group discussions, and events (invitations + pictures). Identity is an issue with social graph export... But on the other hand, doesn't the existence of LinkedIn show that people are willing to re-create their social graph on multiple services?
HWR_14 5y ago
> The dumb mergers and other mistakes were window dressing on this landscape transformation. Were all AOL's mergers dumb? IIRC, they used their sky-high stock price to buy Time Warner (among other things), and once AOL was no longer the cash cow they turned out to own a lot of valuable things.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  As with all mergers, it depends on to whom / for what. For AOL shareholders, by 2002, between the merger and the dotcom bubble bursting, 2002$200 B (so about 2021$5.5 T?) had been wiped from AOL's market cap. So that was, presumably, not good.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    What a weird way of looking at it. First, how did you turn 2002's $200B into 2021's $5.5T? But my point was if it wasn't for the merger, the AOL stockholders would have lost far more in the dotcom bubble bursting. Pointing out they lost a lot in the combined events isn't really a counterargument.
bamboozled 5y ago
What I think is this, for Facebook to be profitable, it is just a bad thing for your health and quality of life, it's plain and simple. The only way it can sustain it's growth and profitability would be to find more ways to hijack your mind and your feelings and keep you more "engaged" and addicted, and keep repeating that behavior to more and more people on earth. To become more toxic. Unless they decide to completely remodel their business, and lose money (never going to happen), it's only going to remain a force for bad in the world. Nothing can change that really because we all know that after spending an hour on Facebook, we feel worse. I don't feel like this after using Google search for an hour (although I know there are negatives too that too). What's happened is, it's unmasked now, everyone can see that it is bad, studies have shown it's negative effects, now we're just working out what we do with it, how do we get away from it. Do we kill it, ignore it, put warnings on the login page that it' addictive, how do we cure ourselves from Facebook?

by ethbr0 5y ago

JohnBooty 5y ago

Users would need an order of magnitude superior alternative, and most critically, users would need to move en mass. Yeah. Network effect. Arguably nothing on Earth has ever had such a powerful network effect as Facebook. I dislike FB for all of the usual reasons, plus a few of my own. But I still have an FB account. I don't check it very often, and I've got notifications turned off. But ditching my FB account entirely means I'd lose access to dozens of people I wouldn't have a great way of contacting otherwise. History tells us that something eventually will replace it. But, it's hard to imagine.

wayoutthere 5y ago
> But ditching my FB account entirely means I'd lose access to dozens of people I wouldn't have a great way of contacting otherwise. That used to be a fear of mine, but after deleting my account I’ve found it to be a core feature. It forces me to be intentional with my relationships; if I want to stay in touch with someone I have to make the effort. Otherwise, the relationship is likely more parasocial than actively rewarding, and I’m consciously ok focusing my energies on the people I currently want in my life to the exclusion of those relationships that have slipped into parasocial territory.
- baby 5y ago
  I just can't imagine doing this. Facebook is the only way to keep in touch with many people around me.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  That sounds like a healthy place to be -- congrats on achieving that. I've largely achieved that as well, I think. Slightly different road traveled, perhaps. I have a larger than average extended family: a dozen aunts/uncles and a corresponding number of cousins. It's impossible to have a close relationship with all of them, but I do enjoy keeping up with how they're doing and knowing when big life events (and deaths) happen. So, my day-to-day life has absolutely nothing to do with FB. I've got notifications off and I typically feel no desire to check it. Instead I'm focused on my much smaller number of intentional, meaningful relationships. But, from time to time I do enjoy scrolling through FB and seeing how so-and-so is doing. Do you have an extended family you keep in touch with? Do you keep up with them through other means, or have you just sort of let them fade from your life?
  - wayoutthere 5y ago
    I have a similar sized extended family, but I’ve honestly let them fade from my life. I’m old enough that the weddings and babies era is long behind us and we’re scattered all over the country. All I care to get I get from my mom, which is nice because it gives us something to talk about. I have surrounded myself with chosen family and am always meeting new people. I give generously of myself to the people in my life because it brings me joy to do so. It’s a conscious trade off that means I lose touch with some people, and I’m ok with that. Most relationships should have an expiration date anyway; far too many people just go through the motions out of a sense of obligation.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Agree. Everyone who is on Facebook has email, and a mobile phone. If sending (or answering) an email or a text message or making a phone call is too much work, what kind of friendship are you really worried about maintaining?
ignoramous 5y ago
> Yeah. Network effect. Arguably nothing on Earth has ever had such a powerful network effect as Facebook. Facebook's network effect was overwhelmed twice, once by instagram and again by whatsapp... shame both those ended up squarely in Facebook's court. Remains to be seen how much dent can TikTok / Twitch / YouTube / Snap / Azar / Telegram can make on to that once-in-a-generation trifecta.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  > once-in-a-generation That's why Facebook is investing in VR. Not because they're optimistic about it, or because they want to own the space, but because it's the closest horizon that has the potential to fundamentally change interaction. If it does, they have a foot in the door and can flood resources into it. If it doesn't, small price to pay for hedging an existential threat.
- oarabbus_ 5y ago
  >Facebook's network effect was overwhelmed twice, once by instagram and again by whatsapp This doesn't seem accurate, do you have evidence to back up this claim? Instagram had 30 million users and no revenue upon acquisition. Facebook had over a billion, and billions in revenues.
  - worthless-trash 5y ago
    I believe this is based on the writers perception, not reality. I can argue that my friends now use all use email, eclipsing facebook, whatsapp and instagram, better buy those stocks in SMTP. ;)
    - ignoramous 5y ago
      Perception, yes: https://stratechery.com/2020/social-networking-2-0/ https://stratechery.com/2020/social-networking-2-0/
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Growth, and especially growth in younger demographics, is probably the metric Facebook was looking at.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
> Arguably nothing on Earth has ever had such a powerful network effect as Facebook. Email, probably.
- soylentcola 5y ago
  But you can switch email hosts or roll your own. With some more modern problems (getting marked as spam if you're not recognized) aside, you weren't forced to keep using your @aol.com or @yahoo.com or @hotmail.com accounts in order to communicate with people on those services via email. With Facebook, it doesn't matter how much you dislike the company or how good some competitor is. You still can't talk with people on Facebook (and often, even view content) without being logged into an active Facebook account.
  - webmaven 5y ago
    Arguably, Gmail is currently the email provider with the strongest network effect due to all the ways it ties in to Android and the rest of the Google ecosystem. Worth noting that Gmail also 'solved' spam, which was the strongest reason to change email addresses/providers.
    - JohnBooty 5y ago
      Those are powerful reasons to stick to Gmail. One is a legitimately good and useful feature; the other is a rather shady attempt at artificial lock-in, IMO. But neither of those things are network effect. "Network effect" refers specifically to "the phenomenon by which the value or utility a user derives from a good or service depends on the number of users of compatible products."
      - webmaven 5y ago
        > But neither of those things are network effect > "Network effect" refers specifically to "the phenomenon by which the value or utility a user derives from a good or service depends on the number of users of compatible products." Sorry, I skipped a couple of logical steps. Gmail/Google accounts are a namespace where the identifiers are persistent long-term, thus the ordinary network effect that email has is undiminished, unlike previous email providers where you had to change the account every so often largely to cope with spam. [0][1] Also, Gmail participates in the associated network effect of every Google service that has one, and there are quite a few, though Google has a bad habit of killing them off. [0] The idea being that you're trying to reduce the email network's utility for spammers to reach you more than you're reducing it for yourself to be reached by non-spammers, which is like chemo killing the cancer faster than it kills you. [1] Spam per-se wasn't the only reason, of course. In the Before Times I had to change my address due to a few older relatives repeatedly setting in motion endless Reply-All storms / email chain letters, and of course I also changed ISPs occasionally.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>But ditching my FB account entirely means I'd lose access to dozens of people I wouldn't have a great way of contacting otherwise. I don't use FB but I would imagine if I did and I wanted to get off it and there were dozens of people I wanted to keep in touch with but would lose touch with I would send these dozens of people a message a week before, saying "I am going to get off facebook, can you send me your email / phone number, my number is X, as I would like to maintain contact." Or does FB not allow you to do that?
- afavour 5y ago
  Facebook socialising is a lot less direct than an email. I see Instagram photos and the like from friends and enjoy it but if they all emailed those photos to me every day I’d feel overwhelmed by the experience. In any case, they wouldn’t do that anyway, because they’re already posting to Instagram because that’s where all their other friends are.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  Yeah, I'd do that as well. I've seen others do it. But people might not see your "hey, leaving FB post." They might not check FB often. Or it just kind of gets buried. etc. Phone numbers and emails change, though. "Contact rot" happens. So, I don't know. I guess I like to have multiple ways to contact people. This is all predicated on the fact that FB is absolutely not a distraction to me. I look at it maybe once or twice a month. I have all notifications turned off. So, it is not a drain on my (fragile) attention span. Maybe most importantly, a lot of the folks I keep up with on FB aren't necessarily people I talk to directly. We would not really be keeping up by email/phone/letter/whatever. Some people see that as evidence that, hey, those are obviously people you don't need in your life. Perhaps that's true for some. For me, I enjoy having acquaintances as well as friends.
chadlavi 5y ago
You don't actually care about those people if the only way you have of contacting them is Facebook. Just pull the trigger and dump it.
- eropple 5y ago
  This is a profoundly presumptuous and shitty claim. Some people use Facebook to communicate. To not use Messenger is to not communicate with them. And some of us like people. Sorry?
elzbardico 5y ago
The problem is, that only an engaged user is valuable for a facebook advertiser. What will be the point in putting ads on facebook when most users use it like you do today?

syntheticnature 5y ago

It's off-to-the-side of your main point, but AOL Instant Messenger shut down in December 2017. Per https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/12/14/67582/aol-instant-messenger-made-social-media-what-it-is-today/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/12/14/67582/aol-instan... it was down to 500,000 active users a month the summer before it was shut down.

ethbr0 5y ago
In a trip down memory lane, https://www.aol.com/ https://www.aol.com/ is just... a pop news site now? Per Wayback, they shifted away from portal around 2010/11.

beowulfey 5y ago

We are in unknown territory with Facebook, but I have no doubt it will fall eventually. The laws of thermodynamics hold true for institutions as much as everything else—one day Facebook will lose to entropy and it will become a fraction of the size it is now.

ethbr0 5y ago
Microsoft?
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  Microsoft had to make fundamental changes to stop its slide into irrelevance, and the old corporate culture is still trying to reassert itself. There's a battle of cultures happening and it might turn out New Microsoft was a last gasp.
- Zak 5y ago
  Microsoft is an interesting case in that it has lost its influence while growing its market cap. Microsoft is several times as big as it was when PG called it dead 14 years ago[0], but founders today aren't afraid to compete against it or refuse its acquisition offers. Microsoft makes plenty of money, but does not have a great deal of control over what anybody else does. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html

zaphar 5y ago

I actually think in a way one of Facebooks core proposition is being the internet for most people which is not that far off from AOL. The similarity here is that no one knows what is going to render FB obsolete right now. Just like no one knew what was going to do the same for AOL. AOL lost in part I believe because they were not really able to transition from Dialup "internet" Provider to Content Aggregator when broadband became a thing. The value add just wasn't there.

eric_cc 5y ago
The downfall of Facebook will be web3 social and/or the decentralized metaverse.
jude- 5y ago
It may come to pass that Facebook is a generational phenomenon, like rock-'n'-roll. It'll be the thing for "old people" soon enough.
- werber 5y ago
  Instagram will be the thing for “old people” soon enough
  - freebuju 5y ago
    Not if they manage to pull off Instagram for Kids
    - voakbasda 5y ago
      I can’t understand how Instagram for Kids can succeed. Any parent that knows half of the bad stuff Facebook allegedly does (and how other “for Kids” efforts have utterly failed to protect the children) would never let their kids on such a platform. I would sooner buy a product labeled Crack Cocaine for Kids; it would be safer for them.
      - 5y ago

gwd 5y ago

> Users would need an order of magnitude superior alternative Is there currently any alternative? All the alternatives I'm aware of ATM are Twitter clones; i.e., meant to be public microblogs, rather than restricted audience microblogs. Recommend me a good alternative and I'll see if I can get some of my network to join it. (And don't say "Mastodon" unless they've added a FB-like mode where you can restrict your posts to a specific set of people.)

Pamar 5y ago
Have you considered MeWe? It is actually impossible to use it as a publicly accessible microblog.

skybrian 5y ago

One possibility is that a Facebook account becomes something that most people have but they seldom use, like a LinkedIn account. The news feed could get less interesting, resulting in fewer visits.

chuniversity 5y ago
I think this is already the case and is why FB doesn’t want to get rid of the offending content, for many users this is the only thing still keeping them engaged. Turn that off and it’s just a stream of advertising, memes, and dinner pics.

YossarianFrPrez 5y ago

Re: the entrenched social network... It shouldn't be too hard to create an alternative service / browser extension that will allow people to export their social network? Because then the alternative service could be set to automatically approve any future connection requests from the people previously identified. I'd sign up for such a social-graph-based service that just did individual messaging, group discussions, and events (invitations + pictures). Identity is an issue with social graph export... But on the other hand, doesn't the existence of LinkedIn show that people are willing to re-create their social graph on multiple services?

HWR_14 5y ago

> The dumb mergers and other mistakes were window dressing on this landscape transformation. Were all AOL's mergers dumb? IIRC, they used their sky-high stock price to buy Time Warner (among other things), and once AOL was no longer the cash cow they turned out to own a lot of valuable things.

ethbr0 5y ago
As with all mergers, it depends on to whom / for what. For AOL shareholders, by 2002, between the merger and the dotcom bubble bursting, 2002$200 B (so about 2021$5.5 T?) had been wiped from AOL's market cap. So that was, presumably, not good.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  What a weird way of looking at it. First, how did you turn 2002's $200B into 2021's $5.5T? But my point was if it wasn't for the merger, the AOL stockholders would have lost far more in the dotcom bubble bursting. Pointing out they lost a lot in the combined events isn't really a counterargument.

bamboozled 5y ago

What I think is this, for Facebook to be profitable, it is just a bad thing for your health and quality of life, it's plain and simple. The only way it can sustain it's growth and profitability would be to find more ways to hijack your mind and your feelings and keep you more "engaged" and addicted, and keep repeating that behavior to more and more people on earth. To become more toxic. Unless they decide to completely remodel their business, and lose money (never going to happen), it's only going to remain a force for bad in the world. Nothing can change that really because we all know that after spending an hour on Facebook, we feel worse. I don't feel like this after using Google search for an hour (although I know there are negatives too that too). What's happened is, it's unmasked now, everyone can see that it is bad, studies have shown it's negative effects, now we're just working out what we do with it, how do we get away from it. Do we kill it, ignore it, put warnings on the login page that it' addictive, how do we cure ourselves from Facebook?