6 ms·

Half of Americans think Facebook is a fad

60 points by davidtyleryork 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
nnnnni 14y ago
It is, just like MySpace and Friendster before it... In a few years, the next big thing will take over and the cycle will repeat itself.
- dakrisht 14y ago
  Couldn't agree more. I remember when AOL chat rooms were the end-all. IRC was the place to be. Compuserve, Lycos and Alta Vista were kings in their own right. Netscape was the only browser. Friendster was doing something no one had done before. It's simple technological progression - we seek the latest and the greatest. And that will certainly come with regard to social. Facebook will always be around, just like Yahoo! is - but the "next big thing" is right around the corner. Good luck to those seeking it.
  - tedunangst 14y ago
    Funny you mention AV, which Google killed around 2001. And then, after that...? There's always a next big thing, until there isn't. Sometimes the last man standing remains the last man standing, though predicting who it will be is rather tricky.
- atarian 14y ago
  I'm not so sure. I will most likely be wrong, but I really think Facebook has dug in too well to be easily displaced. It's integrated itself into so many different tenets (gaming, marketing for other brands, sharing) that I just can't see it being a fad. There was that uh-oh moment when Google+ was opened, but Facebook countered pretty quickly. As long as they keep doing that I think they'll be fine.
  - wickedchicken 14y ago
    > I really think Facebook has dug in too well to be easily displaced. lol
  - moylan 14y ago
    the telegraph service western union turned down a chance to buy the patent for telephones as they thought it was merely a toy. it's still a custom in ireland to send telegrams for weddings, other than that... facebook is merely a service that will exist till some better service comes along. disclaimer. never had a facebook account.
    - necubi 14y ago
      Sure, but that doesn't make telegraphs a "fad." Nothing lasts forever--particularly not when it comes to technology. But I don't think you've refuted the parent's statement that facebook won't "be easily displaced." It took a vastly superior technology to supplant telegraphs. If the same is true of Facebook, it could have good staying power. The inevitable comparison when this comes up is to Friendster or MySpace, but it's really a poor one. Neither had anywhere the reach of Facebook even at their height, nor a large percentage of the world's internet users. Earlier social networks had significant competitors. Isn't it remarkable that in the ~4 years that Facebook has been dominant, _nobody_ has successfully challenged it? Facebook will likely diminish in importance at some point, but it's not going to happen any time soon.
      - jack-r-abbit 14y ago
        Perhaps it is hard to come up with a comparison in this space (social media) because it hasn't had a tremendous run time with very many rises and falls. But perhaps looking at something like "browsers" can offer another comparison with more history. We've seen several shifts in the dominant players there. Some have gone away. Some have been slow and steady. Some have risen and fallen... but never died. I don't think Facebook is a "fad" but I do think that it has a shelf life. It annoys me. I do get to keep up with the lives of people I once knew... but it annoys me. And honestly I'm not sure what annoys me more, Facebook or the people that treat Facebook like the Golden Calf. I would rather be on G+ but their lack of a full feature API is a barrier.
- josephcooney 14y ago
  Exactly - people seem to want to hit 'reset' on their peer group/network from time to time. Moving to a different social network seems to support that.
- ivan_ah 14y ago
  There could be hidden interests which benefit from facebook's success. These interests, manifested in the 12M from Accel [ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=484171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=484171 ], have probably a lot to do why fb made it and myspace and friendster failed. It very weird to watch a American society buy stock in the very company that is trying to enslave them.
  - Drbble 14y ago
    The fact the MySpace was awful probably had more to do with it.
  - Gormo 14y ago
    Lots of VCs and investors pumped money into AOL and non-monetizable dotcoms, too. Having lots of capital might have enabled Facebook's short-term success, but you need a lot more than capital to sustain a compelling product and maintain a market over the long term.
- dm8 14y ago
  Facebook already bought the next big thing in social world last month.
moocow01 14y ago
Or otherwise said - Half of Americans make predictions based upon pattern matching. Based upon the history of the internet industry and especially social networks its a lot riskier to say something will be relevant in 5-10 years than not
- ahquresh 14y ago
  You are right, not many would be willing to bet that Facebook will be as relevant in 10 years as it is now but I believe this thought is just part of human nature. We are always anticipating change, something better than what we have now. Nobody is wrong to think that,not that I am saying that is what you were implying with your statement. Along with pattern matching, I think it also has alot to do with what others think. It surprises me on a day to day basis how many people base their opinions of such things on the opinions of others.
lpolovets 14y ago
I think 18+ is a poor demographic group for this kind of survey. Here's my unfounded guess about the actual results: * 18-39 -- few people think it's a fad. * 39-60 -- many people think it's a fad. * 61+ -- most people think it's a fad or don't get it. Lump all the groups together and you get 45% believing FB is a fad. I know I'm stereotyping horribly, but I can't see a lot of legitimacy in a survey that clumps everyone together into one big group when the subgroups probably have wildly varying opinions.
mike626 14y ago
I have always thought that Facebook's success was tied to their targeting of the next generation of consumers, that is college students, who had not yet made a brand or technology commitment. In this way, they gather together a core group of users who in turn draw marketshare away from others both within and outside of their generational cohort. In my family, it certainly worked that way with my sister pulling my mother, father, and eventually myself into using Facebook as the primary way to share family information.
beedogs 14y ago
The other half think getting in on the IPO is a great idea. This should be fun to watch.
tokenadult 14y ago
Contrary to a couple of the comments already posted, I'm seeing abandonment of Facebook happening most rapidly among the generation that is now of college age (my oldest son's generation) rather than the generation of Baby Boomers (my generation). I was late to start using Facebook, and now use it heavily (it has replaced email lists for interacting with my circle of friends) but I observe that my son and his friends, when they aren't seeing one another in person, are as likely to use other technologies (no, not email) these days as to use Facebook to converse with one another. Facebook has already lost most of its cachet with the group of users who first began using Facebook when Facebook was restricted to persons with university Internet accounts. As have all people in my generation, I saw the boom and bust of AOL, and it wouldn't surprise me at all for Facebook not merely to become uncool but also actively to lose money. It's been done before. I've been surprised, actually, at how well Facebook has scaled (I never thought its servers would be able to keep up with so many user actions in real time) and I've been pleasantly surprised too at how well I like to interact even with friends I regularly see in person on Facebook. But I could well believe that something shinier or newer could come along and draw away my friendship network as rapidly as it has been drawn away from other online services in the past.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  My teenage niece and her friends are constantly on Facebook. As well as constantly texting each other (We're talking literally 4-5000 texts a month here). College is a weird out-of-band gap in most people's social lives, and it's not really any meaningful indication of how they will live post-college.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    > As well as constantly texting each other (We're talking literally 4-5000 texts a month here). Using the number of text messages sent/received per month often vastly distorts the picture. When you've got an unlimited texting plan, many of the texts you send are just "yes", "no", "lol", or ":)".
    - waterlesscloud 14y ago
jes5199 14y ago
Anecdote: I have a friend who's a college professor - a student told him that Facebook is passe because 1) it's got too many ads 2) everyone's parents are on it. It's possible that this is just the lifecycle of social networks - they gradually get infiltrated by money and adults, and the young people move on, causing the network to stagnate and die. I guess it's still possible that there's a niche for a stable, long-term social network for people over 30, but I guess only time will tell.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  Here's something to consider- Kids who feel the need to be somewhere cooler will be both there and on Facebook. Why is that outcome not more likely than Facebook will stagnate and die?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - artursapek 14y ago
    Speaking as a kid (19 y/o), we like rejecting things that are uncool. Nobody my age uses Google Plus, for example. Facebook's coolness has been steadily declining and I've been seeing people I know ditch it one at a time since I quit about 4 months ago. Also, I think we don't like dividing our attention/loyalty. It's seriously fucked up, though. Now that I'm free of the Facebook mental disease, it's disgusting to watch my friends in college mindlessly scrolling through the News Feed and not reacting to anything. Down, back up, back down... Facebook will be easy to replace with something new soon, I think that will be a really opportunistic window in about a year or so.
    - sabathmt 14y ago
      You are absolutely correct sir. I am (21 y/o) going to be a senior in college. I notice (among my friends/fraternity) is that not many kids post statuses too often. the main sticking point is to see new photos your friends are tagged in (imho). Facebook's height was 2-3 years ago honestly
bicknergseng 14y ago
If by fad you mean it has made its creators richer than god and is useful enough that almost a billion people have signed up for it. I imagine half of Americans think far more foolish things.
- oblique63 14y ago
  > If by fad you mean it has made its creators richer than god are you implying that 'fads' can't be extremely profitable? maybe the term "fad" gives it a different connotation, but people get rich off of economic bubbles all the time, and I would assume those can be classified as 'fads' as well...
ericmoritz 14y ago
Everything is a fad.
dm8 14y ago
A friend of mine who is a tutor for middle schoolers once told me that her students would send her assignments via their parents email id. She asked her students why they are not using their own email id since its free. In response students told that they use Facebook messages for communication amongst all the students and email is for old people. I was shocked when I heard this from her. Kids are future and facebook is integral to their life. Much like web based stuff (Amazon, Google etc.) was to my generation (born in 80s). Edit: Grammar
- freehunter 14y ago
  Hell, I was born in the late 80s, and email is only useful to me at work. I generally don't check my email unless I need to find a tracking number or someone calls me and says they've emailed me something. Facebook is one part of it. Texting is another. Phone calls are big with some friends (mostly with family). Email combines massive amounts of information that's not immediately useful (payment verification, tracking numbers, bank statements, etc) with a response that's far from instant. Combine that with the "no one uses it, because no one uses it" effect, and email is one of the most inconsequential technologies in my life. But Facebook is not, at its core, integral to their/our lives. Instant broadcast information is. Like I say quite often, the iPhone didn't need Apple to make it, Apple just happened to be the one who did. Facebook could be supplanted tomorrow by anything, and the effect would be exactly the same.
  - ajasmin 14y ago
    What kind of instant notification are you subscribing to? Instant messaging? Don't you prefer things piling up in a queue(email) rather than being constantly distracted?
    - freehunter 14y ago
      At home I use AIM and Facebook chat, at work I use our corporate IM. When I need to get down to business, I turn it off. I don't like things piling up because that usually means I need to take time out to prioritize and work on things all at once. I'm generally not a busy person, so dealing with things as they come in works out fine. When I am busy, I make adjustments to the timing of distractions to let me think for a bit. Just because I'm made aware of something instantly doesn't mean it will take all my attention instantly, just that I can now process and prioritize that event within whatever else I have going on.
spodek 14y ago
People talk about it being addictive and it was, but then after you get back in touch with all the old friends from way back when you realize you can't keep in touch with them all. Then you learn leaving Facebook is easy and fun -- http://joshuaspodek.com/leaving-facebook-easy-and-fun http://joshuaspodek.com/leaving-facebook-easy-and-fun. After deactivating my account, the only reason I haven't logged in one last time to message everyone that I left (mainly because I find their privacy policies creepy and getting more so) is that I'm in China for a month, which blocks Facebook. Don't use the site for a few days and you find you don't miss it. At least that's my experience. Missing the invitations and updates from there didn't leave me alone in a room with nothing to do. I did other things, with people who invited me in person or directly.
onlawschool 14y ago
Interesting...CNN appears to have pulled the content...
- onlawschool 14y ago
  The plot thickens: Searching CNN for "facebook" returns no results... http://www.cnn.com/search/?query=facebook&sortBy=date http://www.cnn.com/search/?query=facebook&sortBy=date I tried several other keywords without encountering any problems.
  - farnsworth 14y ago
    Hm, I guess Ted Turner is buying into the IPO?
  - fiatpandas 14y ago
    This method of searching seems to be returning results: http://articles.cnn.com/keyword/facebook http://articles.cnn.com/keyword/facebook The CNN article was basically this mashable post: http://mashable.com/2012/05/15/facebook-fad/ http://mashable.com/2012/05/15/facebook-fad/
mbailey 14y ago
Just before I clicked on this, I clicked on another HN article that was on Facebook about Zuck was an organ donar (wat?). I couldn't read it because I fully deleted my account about a year ago. I had a flashback, and realized, facebook is the new AOL.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
pairing 14y ago
I've noticed a huge drop within in my friends' activity on Facebook. I have exactly 100 "friends". The vast majority of which are college acquaintances who graduated in 2010 The bulk of my news feed is the same 4-5 people. I was shocked to find that when I checked in yesterday 6 "friends" had deactivated their account within the last 2 weeks. I have vastly scaled back my own activity to only checking in once a week. I have less than 5 status/stories in the last year. When I look on my friends' walls/timelines, I see the same amount of activity. This same group of friends would generate that amount of activity in a week. With the better privacy controls, most friends including myself don't share tagged photos anymore. The only thing I still see Facebook being used for in my circle is chat with Google Chat just as popular. Will Facebook continue to grow for the next few years? Yes, it will grow outside the U.S. Will Facebook continue to grow in the U.S.? No, the "cool" factor is gone. I think it has already peaked. Will Facebook stock go up after IPO? Yep Is it the next AOL? I believe so.
gulbrandr 14y ago
We're sorry! This page is not available.
fpp 14y ago
The link is not accessible anymore and no cache at Google, but from the screenshot there I see that this is actually based on an article at mashable: http://mashable.com/2012/05/15/facebook-fad/ http://mashable.com/2012/05/15/facebook-fad/

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

It is, just like MySpace and Friendster before it... In a few years, the next big thing will take over and the cycle will repeat itself.

dakrisht 14y ago
Couldn't agree more. I remember when AOL chat rooms were the end-all. IRC was the place to be. Compuserve, Lycos and Alta Vista were kings in their own right. Netscape was the only browser. Friendster was doing something no one had done before. It's simple technological progression - we seek the latest and the greatest. And that will certainly come with regard to social. Facebook will always be around, just like Yahoo! is - but the "next big thing" is right around the corner. Good luck to those seeking it.
- tedunangst 14y ago
  Funny you mention AV, which Google killed around 2001. And then, after that...? There's always a next big thing, until there isn't. Sometimes the last man standing remains the last man standing, though predicting who it will be is rather tricky.
atarian 14y ago
I'm not so sure. I will most likely be wrong, but I really think Facebook has dug in too well to be easily displaced. It's integrated itself into so many different tenets (gaming, marketing for other brands, sharing) that I just can't see it being a fad. There was that uh-oh moment when Google+ was opened, but Facebook countered pretty quickly. As long as they keep doing that I think they'll be fine.
- wickedchicken 14y ago
  > I really think Facebook has dug in too well to be easily displaced. lol
- moylan 14y ago
  the telegraph service western union turned down a chance to buy the patent for telephones as they thought it was merely a toy. it's still a custom in ireland to send telegrams for weddings, other than that... facebook is merely a service that will exist till some better service comes along. disclaimer. never had a facebook account.
  - necubi 14y ago
    Sure, but that doesn't make telegraphs a "fad." Nothing lasts forever--particularly not when it comes to technology. But I don't think you've refuted the parent's statement that facebook won't "be easily displaced." It took a vastly superior technology to supplant telegraphs. If the same is true of Facebook, it could have good staying power. The inevitable comparison when this comes up is to Friendster or MySpace, but it's really a poor one. Neither had anywhere the reach of Facebook even at their height, nor a large percentage of the world's internet users. Earlier social networks had significant competitors. Isn't it remarkable that in the ~4 years that Facebook has been dominant, _nobody_ has successfully challenged it? Facebook will likely diminish in importance at some point, but it's not going to happen any time soon.
    - jack-r-abbit 14y ago
      Perhaps it is hard to come up with a comparison in this space (social media) because it hasn't had a tremendous run time with very many rises and falls. But perhaps looking at something like "browsers" can offer another comparison with more history. We've seen several shifts in the dominant players there. Some have gone away. Some have been slow and steady. Some have risen and fallen... but never died. I don't think Facebook is a "fad" but I do think that it has a shelf life. It annoys me. I do get to keep up with the lives of people I once knew... but it annoys me. And honestly I'm not sure what annoys me more, Facebook or the people that treat Facebook like the Golden Calf. I would rather be on G+ but their lack of a full feature API is a barrier.
josephcooney 14y ago
Exactly - people seem to want to hit 'reset' on their peer group/network from time to time. Moving to a different social network seems to support that.
ivan_ah 14y ago
There could be hidden interests which benefit from facebook's success. These interests, manifested in the 12M from Accel [ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=484171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=484171 ], have probably a lot to do why fb made it and myspace and friendster failed. It very weird to watch a American society buy stock in the very company that is trying to enslave them.
- Drbble 14y ago
  The fact the MySpace was awful probably had more to do with it.
- Gormo 14y ago
  Lots of VCs and investors pumped money into AOL and non-monetizable dotcoms, too. Having lots of capital might have enabled Facebook's short-term success, but you need a lot more than capital to sustain a compelling product and maintain a market over the long term.
dm8 14y ago
Facebook already bought the next big thing in social world last month.

moocow01 14y ago

Or otherwise said - Half of Americans make predictions based upon pattern matching. Based upon the history of the internet industry and especially social networks its a lot riskier to say something will be relevant in 5-10 years than not

ahquresh 14y ago
You are right, not many would be willing to bet that Facebook will be as relevant in 10 years as it is now but I believe this thought is just part of human nature. We are always anticipating change, something better than what we have now. Nobody is wrong to think that,not that I am saying that is what you were implying with your statement. Along with pattern matching, I think it also has alot to do with what others think. It surprises me on a day to day basis how many people base their opinions of such things on the opinions of others.

lpolovets 14y ago

I think 18+ is a poor demographic group for this kind of survey. Here's my unfounded guess about the actual results: * 18-39 -- few people think it's a fad. * 39-60 -- many people think it's a fad. * 61+ -- most people think it's a fad or don't get it. Lump all the groups together and you get 45% believing FB is a fad. I know I'm stereotyping horribly, but I can't see a lot of legitimacy in a survey that clumps everyone together into one big group when the subgroups probably have wildly varying opinions.

mike626 14y ago

I have always thought that Facebook's success was tied to their targeting of the next generation of consumers, that is college students, who had not yet made a brand or technology commitment. In this way, they gather together a core group of users who in turn draw marketshare away from others both within and outside of their generational cohort. In my family, it certainly worked that way with my sister pulling my mother, father, and eventually myself into using Facebook as the primary way to share family information.

beedogs 14y ago

The other half think getting in on the IPO is a great idea. This should be fun to watch.

tokenadult 14y ago

Contrary to a couple of the comments already posted, I'm seeing abandonment of Facebook happening most rapidly among the generation that is now of college age (my oldest son's generation) rather than the generation of Baby Boomers (my generation). I was late to start using Facebook, and now use it heavily (it has replaced email lists for interacting with my circle of friends) but I observe that my son and his friends, when they aren't seeing one another in person, are as likely to use other technologies (no, not email) these days as to use Facebook to converse with one another. Facebook has already lost most of its cachet with the group of users who first began using Facebook when Facebook was restricted to persons with university Internet accounts. As have all people in my generation, I saw the boom and bust of AOL, and it wouldn't surprise me at all for Facebook not merely to become uncool but also actively to lose money. It's been done before. I've been surprised, actually, at how well Facebook has scaled (I never thought its servers would be able to keep up with so many user actions in real time) and I've been pleasantly surprised too at how well I like to interact even with friends I regularly see in person on Facebook. But I could well believe that something shinier or newer could come along and draw away my friendship network as rapidly as it has been drawn away from other online services in the past.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
My teenage niece and her friends are constantly on Facebook. As well as constantly texting each other (We're talking literally 4-5000 texts a month here). College is a weird out-of-band gap in most people's social lives, and it's not really any meaningful indication of how they will live post-college.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > As well as constantly texting each other (We're talking literally 4-5000 texts a month here). Using the number of text messages sent/received per month often vastly distorts the picture. When you've got an unlimited texting plan, many of the texts you send are just "yes", "no", "lol", or ":)".
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago

jes5199 14y ago

Anecdote: I have a friend who's a college professor - a student told him that Facebook is passe because 1) it's got too many ads 2) everyone's parents are on it. It's possible that this is just the lifecycle of social networks - they gradually get infiltrated by money and adults, and the young people move on, causing the network to stagnate and die. I guess it's still possible that there's a niche for a stable, long-term social network for people over 30, but I guess only time will tell.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
Here's something to consider- Kids who feel the need to be somewhere cooler will be both there and on Facebook. Why is that outcome not more likely than Facebook will stagnate and die?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- artursapek 14y ago
  Speaking as a kid (19 y/o), we like rejecting things that are uncool. Nobody my age uses Google Plus, for example. Facebook's coolness has been steadily declining and I've been seeing people I know ditch it one at a time since I quit about 4 months ago. Also, I think we don't like dividing our attention/loyalty. It's seriously fucked up, though. Now that I'm free of the Facebook mental disease, it's disgusting to watch my friends in college mindlessly scrolling through the News Feed and not reacting to anything. Down, back up, back down... Facebook will be easy to replace with something new soon, I think that will be a really opportunistic window in about a year or so.
  - sabathmt 14y ago
    You are absolutely correct sir. I am (21 y/o) going to be a senior in college. I notice (among my friends/fraternity) is that not many kids post statuses too often. the main sticking point is to see new photos your friends are tagged in (imho). Facebook's height was 2-3 years ago honestly

bicknergseng 14y ago

If by fad you mean it has made its creators richer than god and is useful enough that almost a billion people have signed up for it. I imagine half of Americans think far more foolish things.

oblique63 14y ago
> If by fad you mean it has made its creators richer than god are you implying that 'fads' can't be extremely profitable? maybe the term "fad" gives it a different connotation, but people get rich off of economic bubbles all the time, and I would assume those can be classified as 'fads' as well...

ericmoritz 14y ago

Everything is a fad.

dm8 14y ago

A friend of mine who is a tutor for middle schoolers once told me that her students would send her assignments via their parents email id. She asked her students why they are not using their own email id since its free. In response students told that they use Facebook messages for communication amongst all the students and email is for old people. I was shocked when I heard this from her. Kids are future and facebook is integral to their life. Much like web based stuff (Amazon, Google etc.) was to my generation (born in 80s). Edit: Grammar

freehunter 14y ago
Hell, I was born in the late 80s, and email is only useful to me at work. I generally don't check my email unless I need to find a tracking number or someone calls me and says they've emailed me something. Facebook is one part of it. Texting is another. Phone calls are big with some friends (mostly with family). Email combines massive amounts of information that's not immediately useful (payment verification, tracking numbers, bank statements, etc) with a response that's far from instant. Combine that with the "no one uses it, because no one uses it" effect, and email is one of the most inconsequential technologies in my life. But Facebook is not, at its core, integral to their/our lives. Instant broadcast information is. Like I say quite often, the iPhone didn't need Apple to make it, Apple just happened to be the one who did. Facebook could be supplanted tomorrow by anything, and the effect would be exactly the same.
- ajasmin 14y ago
  What kind of instant notification are you subscribing to? Instant messaging? Don't you prefer things piling up in a queue(email) rather than being constantly distracted?
  - freehunter 14y ago
    At home I use AIM and Facebook chat, at work I use our corporate IM. When I need to get down to business, I turn it off. I don't like things piling up because that usually means I need to take time out to prioritize and work on things all at once. I'm generally not a busy person, so dealing with things as they come in works out fine. When I am busy, I make adjustments to the timing of distractions to let me think for a bit. Just because I'm made aware of something instantly doesn't mean it will take all my attention instantly, just that I can now process and prioritize that event within whatever else I have going on.

spodek 14y ago

People talk about it being addictive and it was, but then after you get back in touch with all the old friends from way back when you realize you can't keep in touch with them all. Then you learn leaving Facebook is easy and fun -- http://joshuaspodek.com/leaving-facebook-easy-and-fun http://joshuaspodek.com/leaving-facebook-easy-and-fun. After deactivating my account, the only reason I haven't logged in one last time to message everyone that I left (mainly because I find their privacy policies creepy and getting more so) is that I'm in China for a month, which blocks Facebook. Don't use the site for a few days and you find you don't miss it. At least that's my experience. Missing the invitations and updates from there didn't leave me alone in a room with nothing to do. I did other things, with people who invited me in person or directly.

onlawschool 14y ago

Interesting...CNN appears to have pulled the content...

onlawschool 14y ago
The plot thickens: Searching CNN for "facebook" returns no results... http://www.cnn.com/search/?query=facebook&sortBy=date http://www.cnn.com/search/?query=facebook&sortBy=date I tried several other keywords without encountering any problems.
- farnsworth 14y ago
  Hm, I guess Ted Turner is buying into the IPO?
- fiatpandas 14y ago
  This method of searching seems to be returning results: http://articles.cnn.com/keyword/facebook http://articles.cnn.com/keyword/facebook The CNN article was basically this mashable post: http://mashable.com/2012/05/15/facebook-fad/ http://mashable.com/2012/05/15/facebook-fad/

mbailey 14y ago

Just before I clicked on this, I clicked on another HN article that was on Facebook about Zuck was an organ donar (wat?). I couldn't read it because I fully deleted my account about a year ago. I had a flashback, and realized, facebook is the new AOL.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

pairing 14y ago

I've noticed a huge drop within in my friends' activity on Facebook. I have exactly 100 "friends". The vast majority of which are college acquaintances who graduated in 2010 The bulk of my news feed is the same 4-5 people. I was shocked to find that when I checked in yesterday 6 "friends" had deactivated their account within the last 2 weeks. I have vastly scaled back my own activity to only checking in once a week. I have less than 5 status/stories in the last year. When I look on my friends' walls/timelines, I see the same amount of activity. This same group of friends would generate that amount of activity in a week. With the better privacy controls, most friends including myself don't share tagged photos anymore. The only thing I still see Facebook being used for in my circle is chat with Google Chat just as popular. Will Facebook continue to grow for the next few years? Yes, it will grow outside the U.S. Will Facebook continue to grow in the U.S.? No, the "cool" factor is gone. I think it has already peaked. Will Facebook stock go up after IPO? Yep Is it the next AOL? I believe so.

gulbrandr 14y ago

We're sorry! This page is not available.

fpp 14y ago

The link is not accessible anymore and no cache at Google, but from the screenshot there I see that this is actually based on an article at mashable: http://mashable.com/2012/05/15/facebook-fad/ http://mashable.com/2012/05/15/facebook-fad/