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Have teens ever been an important demographic for Facebook though? It started only for college students - it wasn't until three or four years later they opened

Have teens ever been an important demographic for Facebook though? It started only for college students - it wasn't until three or four years later they opened it up to everyone. [And more broadly - do we use popularity among teens to measure success for anything that isn't specifically targeted primarily at teens (e.g. a company like Abercrombie & Fitch)?] Teenagers in high school usually see their friends every day (more so than college - where you're less likely to have all or many of the same classes as your friends), there probably isn't as much desire to use a social network to keep up with what your friends/acquaintances are doing since you're experiencing it with them. After college you're more likely going weeks or months between seeing even your closest friends or family so Facebook is probably a bit more useful/exciting when your older.

kijin 12y ago
But teenagers today are college students of tomorrow, and if you believe OP, the college students of tommorow may associate Facebook with years of negative impressions that they acquired throughout high school. That's a huge barrier for Facebook to overcome, especially when a 'cooler' competitor can expand its feature set to meet the students' long-distance relationship needs without any of the stigma that they associate with Facebook.
- evgen 12y ago
  Alternatively, rather than imprinting into a particular social network (Facebook bad, Twitter obscure, Instagram relevant) it could be that these teens will simply migrate to a different toolset when their needs change rather than expecting a tool to be used to photoblog their party lifestyle of college years to also work as a tool to keep up with post-college life. Facebook changed over time to basically follow a particular demographic (those whose age mirrored the founder) but most of the others are built for specific purposes and have a lot more inertia behind them. Maybe being first is what let Facebook change and re-define itself, but so far none of the others seem to have changed much from the day they were launched in terms of how people actually use them (and FB itself has had numerous failures in attempts to spin off mini-pivots as individual apps.)

kijin 12y ago

But teenagers today are college students of tomorrow, and if you believe OP, the college students of tommorow may associate Facebook with years of negative impressions that they acquired throughout high school. That's a huge barrier for Facebook to overcome, especially when a 'cooler' competitor can expand its feature set to meet the students' long-distance relationship needs without any of the stigma that they associate with Facebook.

evgen 12y ago
Alternatively, rather than imprinting into a particular social network (Facebook bad, Twitter obscure, Instagram relevant) it could be that these teens will simply migrate to a different toolset when their needs change rather than expecting a tool to be used to photoblog their party lifestyle of college years to also work as a tool to keep up with post-college life. Facebook changed over time to basically follow a particular demographic (those whose age mirrored the founder) but most of the others are built for specific purposes and have a lot more inertia behind them. Maybe being first is what let Facebook change and re-define itself, but so far none of the others seem to have changed much from the day they were launched in terms of how people actually use them (and FB itself has had numerous failures in attempts to spin off mini-pivots as individual apps.)