Facebook is the World of Warcraft of social networks. - Previous competitors were big, but only about 10% of what they've become. - They struck a nerve somewh

Facebook is the World of Warcraft of social networks. - Previous competitors were big, but only about 10% of what they've become. - They struck a nerve somewhere and didn't fill just a niche, they fulfilled what everyone wanted at the same time. - Made changes to satisfy the masses. - Made changes to satisfy the bottom line. - They will (or already have) reach a saturation point where they are losing people at the same clip as they are gaining them. - They will very, very slowly degrade, being eaten by many competitors but probably not just one. - Reach a lower equilibrium, nowhere near their peak, where they can continue for a very long and profitable future. The last one is how WoW is doing right now. I don't know if Facebook has a 'very profitable' future for how big they are, although I do think they will be a portion of their current selves and sustain that for a very long time. As a side note, I think the reason people are so pessimistic about Facebook's future (and has been discussed on HN before) is that if it was completely abandoned tomorrow, all of it's content is irrelevant. It's not really a blogging platform, it's not really an image archive, all that is there is connections - and even those might not be all that significant. EDIT: formatting.