5 ms·

Meta's death (if it happened), will be a slow and a long one. Like Oracle or IBM (although IBM is not completely dead). Given the JS ecosystem cycle, React will

Meta's death (if it happened), will be a slow and a long one. Like Oracle or IBM (although IBM is not completely dead). Given the JS ecosystem cycle, React will be replaced by something better much sooner.

pessimizer 5y ago
There's nothing about Facebook that anyone needs, that no one else provides. It could go as quickly as AOL.
- dasil003 5y ago
  Interesting reference point because I've heard AOL has continued to be a cash cow for decades: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266568/annual-revenue-of-aol/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266568/annual-revenue-of... Advertising revenue is obviously more fragile, but I don't think Facebook cresting the high water mark says all that much about the tail trajectory.
  - Mezzie 5y ago
    Can confirm; AOL is (sadly) still used. They're our fourth-largest mailbox provider by subscriber numbers.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Connectivity to your social circles is something Facebook provides that nobody else provides. There are other ways of connecting social circles, but due to network effects, they're all worse. There's no site on the planet other than Facebook that lets me interact with my entire family all at once in a way that I know will reach them.
  - sleepybrett 5y ago
    I'm not a facebook user but I did set up a google+ account while it was around and i did like that circles paradigm they had. For whatever else was wrong with that thing to make it crash and burn so hard and so quickly (other than google's corporate adhd and constantly being in 3rd or 4th place).. I did like that concept of circles as ways to target your content.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  Facebook has survived long enough that people are likely to stay just because they're so accustomed to using it. The marketplace is great and some people have tons of family photos on the site. AOL tried to be all things to internet users and wanted to be a walled garden at a time when cheaper alternatives were coming out that gave users more freedom. Facebook is resigned to the fact that it isn't a walled garden, but it does things to try to retain and gain new customers anyway.
- baq 5y ago
  There are others. My kid’s class parent’s group is a Facebook group. In other places it’s a WhatsApp group. The only reason is everybody has a Facebook account. I have one too, I just don’t log in anymore, so I have no idea what the other parents are talking about behind the scenes. This is the tyranny of a walled garden social network. I’d welcome Meta crash and burn tomorrow.
- chaosharmonic 5y ago
  It's really just that network effect is a feature, especially on a communication platform. Personally, somewhere on my project backlog is a plan to set up a personal Matrix server for this exact reason, as most of the public ones I've found stop just short of actually supporting bridging for any Meta platforms yet. (And even if they did, E2E bridging is still WIP at the spec level anyway if memory serves, which would mean still having to roll my own for the time being... Because naturally, if I'm concerned enough about my dependence on other people's cloud services, or their harvesting of my data, to consider going to lengths like these, then I'm obviously not just going to just wantonly funnel a collection of DMs spanning about half my lifetime through a third party's servers.)
tablespoon 5y ago
> Meta's death (if it happened), will be a slow and a long one. Exactly, there's no way Meta will suddenly disappear and go poof, barring some kind of extreme government action or bizarre corpora-cidal action by its controlling shareholder Mark Zuckerberg.
- bsenftner 5y ago
  Or, the worse possible: becoming unfashionable.
  - ushakov 5y ago
    it already is, TikTok took over
  - willturman 5y ago
    Facebook is already unfashionable.
  - bcrosby95 5y ago
    Facebook hasn't been fashionable for over 10 years. Yet here we are.
    - dopidopHN 5y ago
      But react still kind of is.
    - bsenftner 5y ago
      Well, I'd say you're correct, but my point is they are not "unfashionable", as in "ewww! you use Facebook!?" in a shrill tone. All it will take is the GOP to politicize being on FB, and it's over. Divide and destroy.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Or, the worse possible: becoming unfashionable. Nothing popular becomes unfashionable that quickly.
- 5y ago
com2kid 5y ago
> Given the JS ecosystem cycle, React will be replaced by something better much sooner. The JS ecosystem cycle has slowed way down. React is 9 years old now. Vue is 8 years old. Svelte, the new kid on the block, is 5 years old. If React is halfway dead, and I doubt that given how much $$ is being invested in new React apps today, then that is still another 9 years of React. I do agree that Meta will be around for longer than 9 years though! :) The other thing people don't realize is that React Native is huge. It has been ported all over the place, the basic idea of "universal UI primitives that you write native backings for" is a pretty good one, and JSX is a really nice templating language. I'm not a fan of quite a few things about React, but its design is solid enough that it isn't going anywhere.
sleepybrett 5y ago
Fuck the JS ecosystem. I'm waiting for a library supported by wasm.

pessimizer 5y ago

There's nothing about Facebook that anyone needs, that no one else provides. It could go as quickly as AOL.

dasil003 5y ago
Interesting reference point because I've heard AOL has continued to be a cash cow for decades: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266568/annual-revenue-of-aol/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266568/annual-revenue-of... Advertising revenue is obviously more fragile, but I don't think Facebook cresting the high water mark says all that much about the tail trajectory.
- Mezzie 5y ago
  Can confirm; AOL is (sadly) still used. They're our fourth-largest mailbox provider by subscriber numbers.
TameAntelope 5y ago
Connectivity to your social circles is something Facebook provides that nobody else provides. There are other ways of connecting social circles, but due to network effects, they're all worse. There's no site on the planet other than Facebook that lets me interact with my entire family all at once in a way that I know will reach them.
- sleepybrett 5y ago
  I'm not a facebook user but I did set up a google+ account while it was around and i did like that circles paradigm they had. For whatever else was wrong with that thing to make it crash and burn so hard and so quickly (other than google's corporate adhd and constantly being in 3rd or 4th place).. I did like that concept of circles as ways to target your content.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
Facebook has survived long enough that people are likely to stay just because they're so accustomed to using it. The marketplace is great and some people have tons of family photos on the site. AOL tried to be all things to internet users and wanted to be a walled garden at a time when cheaper alternatives were coming out that gave users more freedom. Facebook is resigned to the fact that it isn't a walled garden, but it does things to try to retain and gain new customers anyway.
baq 5y ago
There are others. My kid’s class parent’s group is a Facebook group. In other places it’s a WhatsApp group. The only reason is everybody has a Facebook account. I have one too, I just don’t log in anymore, so I have no idea what the other parents are talking about behind the scenes. This is the tyranny of a walled garden social network. I’d welcome Meta crash and burn tomorrow.
chaosharmonic 5y ago
It's really just that network effect is a feature, especially on a communication platform. Personally, somewhere on my project backlog is a plan to set up a personal Matrix server for this exact reason, as most of the public ones I've found stop just short of actually supporting bridging for any Meta platforms yet. (And even if they did, E2E bridging is still WIP at the spec level anyway if memory serves, which would mean still having to roll my own for the time being... Because naturally, if I'm concerned enough about my dependence on other people's cloud services, or their harvesting of my data, to consider going to lengths like these, then I'm obviously not just going to just wantonly funnel a collection of DMs spanning about half my lifetime through a third party's servers.)

tablespoon 5y ago

> Meta's death (if it happened), will be a slow and a long one. Exactly, there's no way Meta will suddenly disappear and go poof, barring some kind of extreme government action or bizarre corpora-cidal action by its controlling shareholder Mark Zuckerberg.

bsenftner 5y ago
Or, the worse possible: becoming unfashionable.
- ushakov 5y ago
  it already is, TikTok took over
- willturman 5y ago
  Facebook is already unfashionable.
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  Facebook hasn't been fashionable for over 10 years. Yet here we are.
  - dopidopHN 5y ago
    But react still kind of is.
  - bsenftner 5y ago
    Well, I'd say you're correct, but my point is they are not "unfashionable", as in "ewww! you use Facebook!?" in a shrill tone. All it will take is the GOP to politicize being on FB, and it's over. Divide and destroy.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Or, the worse possible: becoming unfashionable. Nothing popular becomes unfashionable that quickly.
5y ago

com2kid 5y ago

> Given the JS ecosystem cycle, React will be replaced by something better much sooner. The JS ecosystem cycle has slowed way down. React is 9 years old now. Vue is 8 years old. Svelte, the new kid on the block, is 5 years old. If React is halfway dead, and I doubt that given how much $$ is being invested in new React apps today, then that is still another 9 years of React. I do agree that Meta will be around for longer than 9 years though! :) The other thing people don't realize is that React Native is huge. It has been ported all over the place, the basic idea of "universal UI primitives that you write native backings for" is a pretty good one, and JSX is a really nice templating language. I'm not a fan of quite a few things about React, but its design is solid enough that it isn't going anywhere.

sleepybrett 5y ago

Fuck the JS ecosystem. I'm waiting for a library supported by wasm.