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Everyone is all concerned about how teenagers are fleeing Facebook, but they all fail to realize why teenagers will head back to Facebook. It was originally des

Everyone is all concerned about how teenagers are fleeing Facebook, but they all fail to realize why teenagers will head back to Facebook. It was originally designed as the online version of College, a way to interact with new and old friends. When all these kids leave their high schools and head off to college where are they going to keep in touch with their old friends, Facebook. When they meet someone new in College where will they add this new friend, Facebook. Facebook is the initial meeting point for new friends and then once you become better friends it is then that you follow and add them on other social media sites. If Facebook sees a huge decline in College age students in the next few years then I will be worried about their future, but until then it doesn't matter what the teenagers do because when they begin to grow up, they will join the rest of society and use their Facebook. Teenagers are not the demographic to follow when understanding Facebook's fate. Also, they are all leaving Facebook to use intagram, a Facebook owned company, or use snapshat which will die off in popularity in the coming years.

foobarian 13y ago
I never cared for the various made up features on FB such as likes, pokes, wall posts etc. but yes, like you said, the keeping in touch really is its killer app. It's basically a self-updating rolodex with discovery.
jinushaun 13y ago
Right, because teens were never the original market anyway. A lot of us original Facebookers hated it when FB opened up to high schoolers.
- interstitial 13y ago
  The "us" in your comment shows the genius behind Zuckerberg's exclusivity as a growth model and it's seeming irony.
Hansi 13y ago
I agree Facebook would have no benefit for me when I was a teenager since all the people I wanted to interact with and cared about were close by and easy to get a hold of in school or via phone. When Facebook went mainstream I was already in university and had started losing contact with people from grade school, high school etc. But facebook allowed me to reconnect with those people and some of my best friends today are actually people that I knew but didn't spend alot of time with in grade school because they were in different classes but through FB realized they had very similar personalities to me and we became great friends. Facebook is also the preferred means of organizing events, groups and using messaging instead of e-mails in almost all of my friend circles. May view may be skewed though since I'm from Iceland where Facebook has something close to 50% of the whole country has a Facebook account and 90% in the 25-35 age group. But I live in London though where the use of Facebook is a mixed bag, most of the foreigners here I know use it but my English friends seem less interested in it and prefer e-mail over FB messages.
- coldcode 13y ago
  Exactly correct. The further your friends are from you the more you want to interact with them in some way. If everyone you know is at school who needs FB. I keep in touch with friends from two generations many of whom are spread all over the world and even those locally I don't see often enough. However I wish FB would be replaced by something simpler that was just for keeping in touch with friends and little else. But since everyone is on FB it's hard to change until everyone has (1) a better choice (2) a reason to leave.
abraxasz 13y ago
Excellent point. Every two or three week or so, I'm wondering why I'm still on FB. Answer? Because there are those people I met when I was traveling a lot, and even though we don't talk much or at all, it's good to know that there is this one central place where I can get in touch with any of them.
raverbashing 13y ago
Yes Facebook is more of a "friends catalog", you don't care about the newsfeed so much but it allows you to interact in some ways. But the real action happens elsewhere.
bentcorner 13y ago
> When all these kids leave their high schools and head off to college where are they going to keep in touch with their old friends, Facebook. If teenagers decide to congregate on a different social network, why would they stop using that and go back to facebook just because they go to college? If you and your closest friends find a better place online to meet that doesn't suffer from facebook's "everybody's there and can see what you're doing" problem, why wouldn't you continue meeting there after high school?
- larrys 13y ago
  "If teenagers decide to congregate on a different social network, why would they stop using that and go back to facebook just because they go to college?" Not only that but parent comment (which does make some valid points) doesn't take into account what could be called the reverse network effect. If stories of facebook's lack of popularity continue to surface (as well as the reasons for it) things would begin to accelerate (stock drops, advertisers no longer see it in a positive light) users who wouldn't leave begin to leave or discover alternatives, someone is spurred on to develop a product which attracts more of their users etc. In other words usage drops, morale at facebook drops it's no longer the place to be. Facebook hasn't been around that long and after a while it is entirely possible that even users today will tire of it and move elsewhere. And losing the network effect will make it less valuable to anyone who sticks around.
  - sdoering 13y ago
    That was exactly what happend to the German clones from the so called "VZ" group. The where designed after facebook, but before its internationalisation. Once FB gained traction here, it was a lost fight for the VZs. The other local social networks suffered as well. But here the next big thing for the kids/youth is Instagram. So the stay with FB. But listening to them when I commute, it really is, "Have you seen thet thing on Instagram..." when one year back it was "... seen oon FB..."
    - X4 13y ago
      yep, that's a realistic observation. seen that too
X4 13y ago
you forgot skype and many other new contenders, what you say sounds highly biased and short sighted. I totally agree with @raverbashing he is so right that Facebook is nothing more than a friends catalog.
philwelch 13y ago
Well, that's one possibility, but high schoolers were hooked on Facebook too, at least before it opened up to the general public. The generation that uses Facebook now has used it since high school or college, but the next generation didn't start using in high school and they might not start in college, either. Maybe Facebook is less of a "stage of life" thing and more of a generational thing.

foobarian 13y ago

I never cared for the various made up features on FB such as likes, pokes, wall posts etc. but yes, like you said, the keeping in touch really is its killer app. It's basically a self-updating rolodex with discovery.

jinushaun 13y ago

Right, because teens were never the original market anyway. A lot of us original Facebookers hated it when FB opened up to high schoolers.

interstitial 13y ago
The "us" in your comment shows the genius behind Zuckerberg's exclusivity as a growth model and it's seeming irony.

Hansi 13y ago

I agree Facebook would have no benefit for me when I was a teenager since all the people I wanted to interact with and cared about were close by and easy to get a hold of in school or via phone. When Facebook went mainstream I was already in university and had started losing contact with people from grade school, high school etc. But facebook allowed me to reconnect with those people and some of my best friends today are actually people that I knew but didn't spend alot of time with in grade school because they were in different classes but through FB realized they had very similar personalities to me and we became great friends. Facebook is also the preferred means of organizing events, groups and using messaging instead of e-mails in almost all of my friend circles. May view may be skewed though since I'm from Iceland where Facebook has something close to 50% of the whole country has a Facebook account and 90% in the 25-35 age group. But I live in London though where the use of Facebook is a mixed bag, most of the foreigners here I know use it but my English friends seem less interested in it and prefer e-mail over FB messages.

coldcode 13y ago
Exactly correct. The further your friends are from you the more you want to interact with them in some way. If everyone you know is at school who needs FB. I keep in touch with friends from two generations many of whom are spread all over the world and even those locally I don't see often enough. However I wish FB would be replaced by something simpler that was just for keeping in touch with friends and little else. But since everyone is on FB it's hard to change until everyone has (1) a better choice (2) a reason to leave.

abraxasz 13y ago

Excellent point. Every two or three week or so, I'm wondering why I'm still on FB. Answer? Because there are those people I met when I was traveling a lot, and even though we don't talk much or at all, it's good to know that there is this one central place where I can get in touch with any of them.

raverbashing 13y ago

Yes Facebook is more of a "friends catalog", you don't care about the newsfeed so much but it allows you to interact in some ways. But the real action happens elsewhere.

bentcorner 13y ago

> When all these kids leave their high schools and head off to college where are they going to keep in touch with their old friends, Facebook. If teenagers decide to congregate on a different social network, why would they stop using that and go back to facebook just because they go to college? If you and your closest friends find a better place online to meet that doesn't suffer from facebook's "everybody's there and can see what you're doing" problem, why wouldn't you continue meeting there after high school?

larrys 13y ago
"If teenagers decide to congregate on a different social network, why would they stop using that and go back to facebook just because they go to college?" Not only that but parent comment (which does make some valid points) doesn't take into account what could be called the reverse network effect. If stories of facebook's lack of popularity continue to surface (as well as the reasons for it) things would begin to accelerate (stock drops, advertisers no longer see it in a positive light) users who wouldn't leave begin to leave or discover alternatives, someone is spurred on to develop a product which attracts more of their users etc. In other words usage drops, morale at facebook drops it's no longer the place to be. Facebook hasn't been around that long and after a while it is entirely possible that even users today will tire of it and move elsewhere. And losing the network effect will make it less valuable to anyone who sticks around.
- sdoering 13y ago
  That was exactly what happend to the German clones from the so called "VZ" group. The where designed after facebook, but before its internationalisation. Once FB gained traction here, it was a lost fight for the VZs. The other local social networks suffered as well. But here the next big thing for the kids/youth is Instagram. So the stay with FB. But listening to them when I commute, it really is, "Have you seen thet thing on Instagram..." when one year back it was "... seen oon FB..."
  - X4 13y ago
    yep, that's a realistic observation. seen that too

X4 13y ago

you forgot skype and many other new contenders, what you say sounds highly biased and short sighted. I totally agree with @raverbashing he is so right that Facebook is nothing more than a friends catalog.

philwelch 13y ago

Well, that's one possibility, but high schoolers were hooked on Facebook too, at least before it opened up to the general public. The generation that uses Facebook now has used it since high school or college, but the next generation didn't start using in high school and they might not start in college, either. Maybe Facebook is less of a "stage of life" thing and more of a generational thing.