6 ms·
There seems to be a call here for a better-quality top comment. I may not succeed in providing one, but I will try. [Pauses to finish reading article.] "John C
by tokenadult 13y ago
There seems to be a call here for a better-quality top comment. I may not succeed in providing one, but I will try. [Pauses to finish reading article.]
"John Cannarella and Joshua Spechler, from the US university's mechanical and aerospace engineering department, have based their prediction on the number of times Facebook is typed into Google as a search term."
That's a convenient methodology, but of course it's a methodology that cannot be applied to anything before the availability of Google search data, so it doesn't even provide a model for explaining why Google supplanted AltaVista. (Hint: even at its healthiest, I don't think most users of AltaVista found AltaVista by doing a Google search first.)
"They tested various equations against the lifespan of Myspace, before applying them to Facebook."
Myspace, of course, is the classic example of a social networking site that once looked unstoppable, until it pretty much died. But data-fitting to just one data set is probably not enough model testing for making a prediction about a different social networking site.
"But Facebook's chief financial officer David Ebersman admitted on an earnings call with analysts that during the previous three months: 'We did see a decrease in daily users, specifically among younger teens.'"
Now we're talking about some meaningful data that actually pertains directly to Facebook. If Facebook corporate officers are concerned about a trend, maybe that trend is really meaningful to Facebook's business prospects.
"Investors do not appear to be heading for the exit just yet. Facebook's share price reached record highs this month, valuing founder Mark Zuckerberg's company at $142bn."
Well, that's the nub of the issue for anyone who buys shares of Facebook stock. If it still looks like holding Facebook stock allows a profitable exit, maybe there is nothing to worry about here (at least for investors).
The article engages in further speculation about Facebook making a lot of money in the future. That could happen. My prediction about Facebook stands: "Facebook will go the way of AOL, still being a factor in the industry years from now, but also serving as an example of a company that could never monetize up to the level of the hype surrounding it. I used to see friends on AOL. I never felt an obligation to help AOL monetize just because of that. Networks are a dime a dozen. Right now, Facebook is a very convenient network, and I like it. I do not predict that Facebook will make a lot of money because of users like me."
I could be proven wrong, but that's what I think the future of Facebook holds. I admit my methodology is just about entirely drawing an analogy with AOL, which I used a lot back in the day.
- eloff 13y agoI think the methodology is deeply flawed because of the growing number of mobile users who are mostly using native Facebook apps and they definitely won't be Googling for that. I would prefer to think it means people have realized they can type facebook.com into the address bar and just go straight there. But that's probably just wishful thinking.
- emiliobumachar 13y agofb.com also works and is shorter.
- mbillie1 13y agoModern browsers have made it much easier to get to the page you want, I think. If you're in the address bar, probably for most people "f" or at most "fa" will pre-fill facebook.com, then you're talking 3 button-strokes... I'm curious how many one-letter chrome-autofill-suggestions I regularly rely on, but for me, muscle memory dictates t-f-enter to get to facebook (t opens a tab when using vimium, but you can substitute command-t if you like). Then again I am a developer and I use vim, so I think about things like how many keystrokes it took me to execute a command... :/
- agumonkey 13y agoIt's even simpler, most of what I've seen they suspend their machine with the visible tab on facebook, resume and check what's new.
- grahamel 13y agoI agree. What that fact shows is that people are no longer searching for Facebook (either to get the site or find out what it is) but now people either know what Facebook is, or have been to the site enough for it to prepopulate when typing fa.. A better stat (which Facebook provide in one way or other) to base on is the number of active users, time on the platform and devices used to interact.
- shas3 13y agoOne difference between AOL and Facebook is that Facebook has hired some of the most talented CS folks of this generation, e.g. Yann LeCun. If their management has the vision to foresee the social network's slide to irrelevance, they can leverage the talent to adapt. This is how it works for companies that have adapted well and lived through and grown amid some of the greatest technological upheavels ever: IBM is over a hundred years old, Microsoft is close 40+, HP is 50+, Xerox, Sony, Intel, Honeywell, AMD, Dow, DuPont, Johnson & Johnson, P&G, 3M, etc. etc. Hire top talent and make strategic acquisitions ---> Innovate ---> Get lucky with strategy at the executive level ---> Sail or sink. You could also go the way of Kodak, which always hired top talent, and still lose out, but at the end of the day, predicting success or failure of such a huge entity (in terms of $ and no. of users) isn't as easy as it is made out to be in this paper. I think everyone tends to take a simplistic approach. While AOL came out of the IT boom, so did Amazon, eBay, PayPal, Akamai, and a bunch of other companies which continue to do well. With the kind of investment that Facebook is capable of attracting, they can either become the next IBM or the next AOL.