Seriously, why do people waste time writing these types of stories? My guess is that it's because it's so much easier than actually trying to build something of value. The real problem is there is no penalty for being wrong. Everyone simply forgets. Write a thousand stories and if just one of them is right then you get to claim your genius.
Where are those guys who predicated that Apple Stores were such a stupid idea? We need to start keeping score.
Why. Why must you do this. Why must you dismiss articles on hackneyed grounds and kill the chance for an interesting discussion about the nature and direction of social technologies.
I thought this article was very interesting, it brought to light several factual points, and several not-heard-before insights -- e.g., I thought this in particular was very true and interesting:
This is why social networks, like Google+ (where I
worked for one year), are struggling even more than
Facebook to get a foothold in the future of social
networking. They are betting on last year’s fashion
I'm surprised it wasn't Google that made an offer on Snapchat, since it's normally quite forward-looking. But then again, social has never been Google's forte has it.
> Seriously, why do people waste time writing these types of stories?
> Why. Why must you do this. Why must you dismiss articles on hackneyed grounds and kill the chance for an interesting discussion about the nature and direction of social technologies.
For the same reason. People like being perceived by others as contrarian or controversial, and people like perceiving themselves to be most clever/insightful/prescient than the next guy.
1. "Confirmed" in quotes because Valleywag cites an unnamed source, and I typically find Valleywag, and Gawker Media on a whole, dubious and not entirely worthy of trust. However, this may have been more solidly confirmed elsewhere as well.
It hasn't been anybody's forte except for facebook by that standard. On the contrary g+ is far better than facebook by any measurement you choose to use, it isn't missing anything. A supportive user base mostly absent only in the minds of people vehemently dying for it to be absent. These people who repeat the idea that using google for social networking is the worst thing they've ever heard or thought about. The technology is still sound, meanwhile.
The author mentions that teens see Facebook as a utensil and not as something "cool" anymore.
Okay, fine, but how does that predict the end of facebook? If facebook becomes a utensil, a utensil that a good chunk of grownups still continue to use no less, why would that mean the end of facebook?
The author further talks about the 70s and 80s and things that were cool. Great, but if he stated that teens see facebook as a utensil, what does "cool" have to do with anything? If we stay with the 70s and 80s statement, do you know what other utensils we had in the 70s and 80s? Cars. Cars are utensils as a mode of transportation but also they are an outlet for some people to show the world who they are. What I mean is, we still drive cars even though we had them in the 70s and 80s. They just look different as technology and consumer demands have changed over time.
So, there is no reason why facebook would go down just because teens currently don't see it as "cool" anymore. As long as it is useful to manage your private contacts, and as long as it adapts to people's changing demands it can go on.
In short, were facebook on its way out, there would have to be one new "cool" thing to replace it. It is not enough to just have something similar but without users like g+. And if such a thing emerges, facebook still isn't doomed right away. They would just now have a reason why they maybe should listen to their users a little more. Regarding thins like privacy settings etc. As long as they don't have a competitor, they can pretty much do whatever they like as people don't really have an alternative. Should we start seeing teens leaving in droves for new hip platform X, I think facebook would recognize this and we would start seeing some more user friendly changes.
i think another reason both facebook and g+ are in decline is that they're insisting on the whole "our way or the highway" approach - g+'s real names crap, and facebook's relentless publicisation of every move you make, are unpopular with tons of people, and even if those people reluctantly stay on because that's where all their friends are (in facebook's case, at least - g+ threw away any chance at stickiness by being high-handed before people were hooked), their engagement with the platform is diminished.
The same thing can be said for comments like yours.
He actually does a pretty great job in this article in my opinion: Strong narrative, uses facts + common knowledge and personal insight to build a strong point.
He is informing people on a particular topic they might not be so well acquainted with. Whether or not he's right about Facebook, we'll have to see but he makes a good case.
> Seriously, why do people waste time writing these types of stories?
Because no one remembers the misses, only hits.
> Where are those guys who predicated that Apple Stores were such a stupid idea? We need to start keeping score.
People are starting to keep score! Websites like http://www.pundittracker.com/ are starting to come out of the woodwork, and as more people help collect data (person X claimed Y would happen by Z date) we can start generating hit rates.
Seriously, why do people waste time writing these types of stories?
Because they believe them. Life is a journey of discovery (I know waaaay too pithy) and the more stuff you see, the more bigger pictures pop out of it. Its like backing away from a fractal. You see what is important, what was probably luck, and what was different. When pieces come together in your head it is pretty exciting, like figuring out a difficult proof, or creating a clever algorithm. You want to share some of that with those around you.
Our Author had one view of Facebook, and now has another. Their view evolved based on what they observed, and they feel much more confident in their current view, and so they share it.
> Teens likely see Facebook the same way the Facebook generation sees LinkedIn – like a utilitarian place to manage connections.
I've heard it a billion times that teens aren't using Facebook. But who cares? I just don't see any evidence that this heralds the end of Facebook.
It's not necessarily any more meaningful than "people ages 65-70 don't use Facebook". It's a small percentage of the population. And there's no indication that teens are using something else that will replace Facebook when they're in their 20's and 30's -- you can't organize parties on Instagram or Snapchat. Every indication is that teens get onto Facebook once they stop being teens, correct me if I'm wrong.
Can we stop talking about this ineffable "cool" factor, until there's any kind of evidence that it is actually necessary for Facebook's continued success? I mean, I don't remember Facebook ever being cool. It's always been pretty drab, a pretty bland boring blue, with an interface much like an OS. But it just works better than the alternatives, and keeps working better. Why people are suddenly constantly talking about this "lack of cool" is beyond me.
> And there's no indication that teens are using something else that will replace Facebook when they're in their 20's and 30's -- you can't organize parties on Instagram or Snapchat.
Today's teens do not use Facebook as much as teens did in the past. That's a fact. Will they use it more once they're in their 30s? That's pure speculation on your part, which is completely unsubstantiated, and we'll have to wait one or two decades to find out. I tend not to put a lot of weight in unsubstantiated technology predictions spanning decades.
In any case, if Facebook is transitioning from a site that is used by lots of people for long periods of time (which it was), to a calendar/contacts app that people check into occasionally and briefly (which it has become for me, and apparently others as well), that's a glaring problem for their business model. Even if they remain the absolute best party organizing site on the web for years to come, that's probably not good enough to support their current revenue model.
> Every indication is that teens get onto Facebook once they stop being teens, correct me if I'm wrong.
You're just making up a random fact to support your case, and leaving the burden on the reader to substantiate your claims, correct me if I'm wrong.
> I mean, I don't remember Facebook ever being cool ... Why people are suddenly constantly talking about this "lack of cool" is beyond me.
Facebook was cool. When it began launching in colleges around the country, "cool" kids (particularly fraternity and sorority members) were early adopters. Shortly thereafter, everybody on campus was using it and Myspace became a joke.
> It's always been pretty drab, a pretty bland boring blue, with an interface much like an OS.
If you're looking to the interface to figure out if it was, you're looking in the wrong place. But for the record, Facebook's interface was much, much cooler than the eyesore that was Myspace.
> You're just making up a random fact to support your case, and leaving the burden on the reader to substantiate your claims, correct me if I'm wrong.
And the only fact supporting your case is a sentence from Facebook's Q3 report. Total active teen usage was stable while younger teens are dropping off. If you want to claim that Facebook was downplaying the extent of the problem then that's a very bold assertion. Hiding critical information such as that for investors is what get's executives in trouble. It's also why they bothered to share a piece of information that sent the share price tumbling 20% after an 18% jump.
The use case of Facebook is not messaging. It never has been. The use case of Facebook is their social graph. It's your online identity. It's being the lowest barrier of entry to use the internet.
> It's not necessarily any more meaningful than "people ages 65-70 don't use Facebook".
From an advertising perspective, there's a massive gulf between "teens don't use Facebook" and "senior citizens don't use Facebook".
To put it flippantly: one group is headed into a coveted demographic, the other group buys denture paste.
That's not to say that Facebook wouldn't do fine even if the only people that used it were "uncool and old" like the rest of us, but to an advertiser it's a bit of a worrying sign.
I don't think that "advertisers" are as homogenous as you portray them here; generally, they have specific products that they are marketing to specific demographics, which sometimes includes denture paste.
True, but teens and young adults are much harder to reach through "traditional" advertising and much more valuable because advertisers can influence purchasing habits that will last a lifetime. As a group, they are worth a lot more to an advertising supported business than the 65-70 crowd.
Indeed, but it's no secret that most mainstream advertising skews towards a much younger demographic.
It's very possible to have success marketing denture paste and products to older people. But if Facebook does hemorrhage teens, advertisers will take notice. And right now Facebook is advertising. That's going to have an impact.
I don't care about teenagers, but I do find it very interesting that the "founding members" of Facebook, people who were college students in 2004-2005 who excitedly joined and engaged with Facebook in its early years, are just not very engaged with FB anymore (I'm one of them), unless they maybe just had a baby.
It's almost disturbing that these days a company can be founded, become an overnight success, grow immensely, have a huge IPO, then get disrupted and on the decline in a span of only nine years.
That pretty much defines a "fad"-based company, doesn't it? I suspect it's very common in the fashion world for companies to pop up, ride a fashion trend, and disappear when it's over, with the founders moving on to start a new company to ride the next trend. Occasionally one of these companies becomes unexpectedly huge, and then they linger much longer than usual. (See: Be-dazzler.)
Maybe that's Facebook's fate. In the end, they'll be a site full of accounts for dead people who, oddly, are still Liking various products and inviting each other to play Farmville.
I joined facebook in 2005 and I think I'm just as engaged as ever.
I use it for sharing pictures with my friends and family. Hiking, skiing, camping, vacations, whatever. My family loves seeing that crap. My friends do too. The group album feature released a few months ago is AWESOME for that stuff.
Organizing events without facebook is tough. Facebook handles RSVPs. Has polls for things at the event (where should it be, what should we eat, etc.). Lets you post pictures. Lets you discuss everything.
Groups are fantastic also. I have a group where people post if they're going skiing this weekend. I used a group to coordinate 10 people training and participating in a Tough Mudder event. I have another group to coordinate a small semi-startup I'm a part of.
I highly recommend deactivating for a month, just to experience the difference. It's phenomenal. If you choose to reconnect, you'll look at everything differently. It's just amazing, you have to try it.
That would be your anecdote. I wouldn't make the assumption that Facebook is being disrupted (by what? Snapchat?)
Been on Facebook since 2005 (after I left college) and I'd say that it's busier than it has ever been. A huge chunk of my social sphere uses it for photo and link sharing; it has completely replaced mailing lists and instant messaging of years past.
Maybe not disrupted but certainly unbundled. Facebook still serves as a central umbrella or hub for keeping track of all the people you know and meet (basically a contacts list) and an easy way to message acquaintances whose email you do not know. Other than that, it's much less engaging. News Feeds are wastelands with nothing but memes and vines and the only people who seem to share are the annoying ones nobody wants to hear from anymore.
I've wondered, when articles write "teens aren't using Facebook" -- are they referring to young college students (17-19) or are they referring to middle/high schoolers?
Facebook was originally college-only, and high schoolers tend to emulate college students more than the other way around (in fact, I doubt any college student follows high school trends), therefore my guess is what Facebook is actually losing is young college students..? If they're losing high school students.. who cares.
> you can't organize parties on Instagram or Snapchat
You can.
Beyond that, the interesting part is the sentence you yourself quoted. It's utilitarian, it's contact management, it's messaging, but it's not a primary source of content and engagement within the demo, and that's by it's own virtue interesting.
>>It's not necessarily any more meaningful than "people ages 65-70 don't use Facebook". It's a small percentage of the population.
Except for the fact that teens are expected to live (and spend money) for many decades, whereas 65-70 year olds are nearing the ends of their lives. So yes, a 16% decline in teen users is of huge importance.
Facebook was so ridiculously hot a few years ago that it couldn't possibly have met all of its expectations for changing how we all communicate, replacing all other messaging mediums, dominating how we shop and buy, the portal for all things entertainment, etc.
> Teens likely see Facebook the same way the Facebook generation sees LinkedIn – like a utilitarian place to manage connections.
This sounds a lot like the Plateau of Productivity to me.
However, a forecast is just a forecast, not happened yet. The 'trend' graph spikes with the IPO which had no relevance for 99% of Facebook users. Take that spike out, ignore the 'forecast' and Facebook is doing the 'myspace curve' and in a similar time frame.
Anyway, where is the Facebook login for Hacker News?
>> Teens likely see Facebook the same way the Facebook generation sees LinkedIn – like a utilitarian place to manage connections.
This is why the "millennials are leaving Facebook" worry isn't actually real. Yes, middle schoolers and high schoolers aren't using Facebook. They are at a stage in their life where the idea of their parents being able to see into their life is scary. Their social circle is also disproportionately made up of people they can easily see every day. Facebook's utility for contact management, event planning, and keeping in touch doesn't really begin until people turn 18 and go out on their own. This doesn't even begin to touch the ease of using it to sign up for other products that are built on top of it.
I'am 18 and I agree with you. The way the discussion one day happened in status updates have now moved to usually hidden groups. The groups are usually built around some specific event, say prams, or alternatively around some common interest such as LAN gaming or binge drinking. It works as a new and more appealing way to create what you may consider mailing lists. Engaging in those groups is easier as you post something relevant to the topic and know that your or your friends aunt will not see what you said.
I think boomzilla was talking about electronic bulletin boards, i.e. BBSes and the web-based forum replacements that grew from them. (And it's an apt comparison -- forums remain an important social aspect of the web.)
Very interesting. A few years back, I was fascinated to see how much Facebook had become the native medium for the whippersnappers. Some of our interns thought of email like I thought of fax machines.
But even if Facebook is prone to stumble, I'd encourage entrepreneurs not to try to be the "next Facebook". As I wrote elsewhere [1]: "Honestly, there probably won't be a 'next Facebook', for the same reason there hasn't been a next Amazon, next Oracle, next Google, or next Apple. There hasn't even been a next Yahoo, because the secret to success for many startups wasn't being another Yahoo, it was being different. Something you should think hard on: Zuckerberg didn't set out to make the next Facebook, or the next anything. He was just making something fun for himself and his fellow Harvard students. It was only when he saw how powerful his creation was that his ambitions increased."
This seems especially relevant to me now that I'm seeing ads around San Francisco for two new social networks that are lamely trying to be the next Facebook.
Wasn't Facebook the "next Friendster?" I feel like it was actually a relative latecomer to the social networking party of the early '00s. Not to diss FB or their achievement, but it certainly felt like an evolution rather than a revolution upon launch. Only once they built up steam did it really begin to become an entirely new sort of beast.
Same with Google, no? I feel like they entered a crowded market of search engines and came out on top, but certainly weren't the first of their kind.
Wasn't Facebook the "next Friendster?" I feel like it was actually a relative latecomer to the social networking party of the early '00s.
A lot of industries also have early periods of extreme tumult, then greater stability as firms consolidated and success becomes more obvious and definable. Think about cars: it's become a commonplace that Detroit was the Silicon Valley of its day, but eventually a few car makers became dominant. When, say, GM first emerged, it might have seemed to observers that another rival would rise to take out GM—which didn't really happen until decades later.
Facebook may be the first of the "mature" social networks that isn't almost immediately superseded by something dramatically better. The fact that it now has so much lock-in inertia indicates that it may be with us for much longer than its day-to-day critics believe.
I'd argue that Facebook is actually the next AOL (a tool for managing your connections, communicating, and viewing curated content in a walled garden). Teenagers in the late 90s/early 00s lived on AOL in the same way that they later lived on Facebook. But you don't become the next anything by trying to be it, you try to become something different, and it's only in hindsight that they look the same.
It's also true that the company that looks indomitable today is seen as an anachronism tomorrow. At one point there were lawsuits against AOL to open up the instant messenger network because it was seen as an anti-competitive monopoly. Now nobody seems to care.
Well, Facebook could be seen as the next AOL, or Friendster, or MySpace.
And Google could be seen as the next Altavista, Lycos, Excite, etc.
Android itself could be seen as a copy of iOS (released a year after the iPhone redesigned to match it) , and it has eaten into its' market (and into the general untapped smartphone market).
So I wouldn't say he haven't seen that "next" stuff happening.
Doesn't have to be 100% the same to be next -- just to cater to the same market and needs.
>As your Facebook network becomes saturated, it can feel very public. It puts the focus on managing your image, rather than truly bonding with people. Young startups like Snapchat are providing shelter from the institution of Facebook by serving as a place where you can express yourself comfortably. A place where you don’t feel like your every move is being watched.
This is something I will likely never understand. Why do people have so much trouble with being themselves? This isn't a Facebook problem, this is a society problem. Facebook just exposed it.
Instead of talking about the end of the FB era and making new social networks, we should talk about making people more comfortable with being themselves. The first step is to stop spending so much time judging everyone.
>Why do people have so much trouble with being themselves?
Because people's lives have different sections that often have parts you don't want to overlap. You probably don't want your boss seeing a photo of you drunk at a party, and you probably don't want your conservative uncle to see that you are politically liberal.
In both those circumstances it's not that you'd necessarily hide those parts of your personality from the other parties involved; your boss probably gets drunk too and your uncle isn't going to stop speaking to you because your political views differ. It's more that it doesn't improve the relationship with that person.
Yes, it would be great if people didn't judge each other but unfortunately that's not how the psychology works.
So, unless you live a life in which you're comfortable revealing every opinion you hold and every action you've taken (in which case wow that's impressive) you have to maintain a certain image that you broadcast on a service like facebook.
> Because people's lives have different sections that often have parts you don't want to overlap. You probably don't want your boss seeing a photo of you drunk at a party, and you probably don't want your conservative uncle to see that you are politically liberal.
Quite the contrary. I don't want a boss who has a problem with my being drunk when I'm not at work and I would love nothing more than to have a good debate about politics with my uncle.
Yes, I am actually comfortable expressing my every opinion to just about anyone. I didn't used to be, but then I grew a pair and became more comfortable with myself. People reacted very very positively.
It's amazing how quickly one can build intimate friendships and even get people to open up themselves when you just take the first step. Hell, just the other day a cool lady I've known for all of two weeks said I'm the most open person she's ever met.
And a few weeks ago a girl told me she is able to talk to me about things she hasn't spoken about with anyone in something like ten years. It was a few hours after the first time we've ever met.
But the first step, as always, is accepting yourself for who you are. I have a feeling many people don't feel comfortable doing that.
For an example just think of the internet's new favorite celebrity Jennifer Lawrence. Her main quality is that she's human and that she isn't afraid of being honest and open about herself.
I think that perhaps your circumstances and privileges may differ from others.
Not everyone carries the same social skills to be able to emotionally handle being fired from work over a Facebook photo (which has happened in the US many times).
Many also lack the ability or desire to want to form intimate friendships with all but a small number of people.
Others may be actively stalked, harassed and/or physically or sexually assaulted for being too open with others online that seemed trustworthy early on, but later abused that trust.
Jennifer Lawrence seems like a lovely person, but she also is white, financially secure, and has a bodyguard.
Well, for one thing, when working for an American company, having real flaws kills your career. Alcohol abuse in the past. Getting arrested once for drug abuse. Having participated in manifestations. All of those will turn a ridiculous amount of Americans into your personal enemy at work, to extents that I never saw in Europe.
If you ever want to be working for a large American firm : firstly, you deny anything remotely like a character flaw, you almost violently pursue a "perfect" online image. Second you hide and deny things like your real political opinion (esp. the political one). The big public secret about politics in America is that there is no real difference in tolerance on average between republicans and democrats, and they're simply all very intolerant of even minor differences of opinion, and will do everything in their power to damage you or your reputation merely because of political differences. Thirdly, realize that people around you will also act like this. So pushing to hear someone's political opinion, finding out if they really like this charity they're contributing to that just happens to be the exact same one as their boss ... DO NOT GO THERE. Get an alias and make sure it can't be tied to your real name.
I actually made a mistake against this once, and got myself terminated after an infuriating 3 month period where my performance, which easily bested the rest of the team, was constantly criticized. Not by coworkers, strictly by management. A minor mistake was "revenue-impacting" according to my boss, 5 minutes after the sysadmin manager took me out to an expensive lunch on the company's dime for catching his mistake before it became a disaster. I had double the number of bugs closed of the next team member, and the whole team constantly asked me to look at their work. My boss, who never even showed up at the office, called me in at exactly the interval documented in the HR procedures to complain about my performance, never citing a single source. After 3 months I was "let go" for bad performance. I got 2 recommendation letters from a team leader and an operational manager without even asking. I am NOT making this mistake again. This all started after a political discussion.
Of course these rules will not make facebooking with your coworkers a particularly pleasant experience. You got to have priorities, and "being yourself" is lower than having a good job and career. Not that I am a great fan of social interaction online or offline. Especially the empty "look at my shiny" that happens on facebook/google+/youtube/... And the shouting matches, even less.
Its a peculiar graphical distribution such that anywhere within 300 miles of Chicago (including rural wisconsin, etc) or on the coasts, no one cares about stuff like that. But god help you in between the areas of freedom. Appalachia, Dakotas, the remaining English speaking parts of the south, that U shaped area of wanna be theocratic dictatorship is right out of one of Charlie Stross's novels, not even a parody, really.
> You got to have priorities, and "being yourself" is lower than having a good job and career.
Perhaps for you, for me, being myself is the highest priority. You can always find a new job or a new career, but once your back has been broken, you will forever be a spineless wimp whom nobody will respect.
Wow. Ok. The answer is that there is no you. It's not a society problem. My read on a comment like yours is that you are young and have not experienced a life partitioned into parts that you don't want to overlap. That, if anything, is the reality of the human experience. Forcing together what should be separate is what is wrong and unnatural. Sorry.
Oh I've done plenty of partitioning life into parts that I didn't want to overlap. But then I grew up and became me.
What I've found is that people are far more accepting of me, like me much better, and I generally build better and deeper relationships quicker. My life has also become much simpler since I no longer have to filter myself all the freaking time.
It's really nice. You should try it. But it does take oodles of confidence. If you aren't confident in yourself, then you will not be able to pull it off.
Next you're going to tell me how you're living a minimalist lifestyle and have shed most material goods that drag everyone else down, and you don't understand why other people don't. I don't believe you because I know too many actual, complex people. We live private, inner lives. We think we know how certain people see us. We think we know how our actions are perceived. We think we know who we are. But we are wrong.
Your response sounds like the beginning of a novel, followed by "and then one day everything changed"
I would think it also depends on who "you" are, where you live and the people around you. If your gay and live in the middle east or certain parts of Africa your going to have a bad time simply being yourself.
But as a self-absorbed millennial I often forget to remember that there are people who live in different circumstances than I do. Now I'm wondering how many gay people from certain parts of Africa use Facebook ...
Two minutes ago I was watching this documentary about Trevor, the american guy who got shot. His mother was being interviewed. She asked the video to hide/blur her face.
How pointless is that. At the age of internet...
That's why people have trouble being themselves. Facts of life.
> Why do people have so much trouble with being themselves?
1. Humans are judgemental creatures.
2. Humans like to feel loved.
Person X doesn't want his favourite aunt to stop liking him because she read his Facebook debate with a friend on the teaching of creationism in schools.
While much of the debate here on HN is around why authors continue to write pieces about "the end of X" or "the demise of Y", I couldn't help but ask the question: "Why do we continue to read them/link to them?
Possible answers:
1. Many of us (or our employers) rely on these audiences for revenue, so knowing where they are and what they're interested in enables us to have success
2. We're interested in what drives success/failure, despite logic indicating that -- in both scenarios -- random chance plays one of the largest parts
3. It's like good old-fashioned gossip, where everyone who doesn't actually have anything to say can still speak up
4. We hope to learn from history as it happens to us; if we can accurately predict why people are leaving Facebook and where they're going, we can be part of -- or the driver of -- the next wave.
"What was cool in the 70s wasn’t cool in the 80s."
Its very important he phrased it that way, because bell bottoms had another day in the sun. Happily young women wearing skin tight spandex/yoga pants from the 90s had another day in the 10s. Its difficult to find a womens fashion fad that doesn't repeat every 20-ish years.
The endless rotating wheel of fashion and fads doesn't rotate at a speed of 1 rotation per decade. Its more like 1 rotation per 2 decades aka generation.
I predict that 2030 will be an excellent year for 2010 style social networks.
This is very much like the first century of clothing probably was. After technological innovation in the field ceases, you'll be able to use old stuff.
You can use a 50 year old wired POTS phone no problem. The sound quality is superior to modern wired phones, and those are superior to any cell or voip tech.
A big counter point to the Facebook is a fad is Pepsi. Pepsi was considered a fad in the 60's when it was already 40 years old. It's still around. It buys coolness with a massive marketing budget. Pepsi is water + corn syrup + some flavor. And it's been around for many, many decades. Pepsi, and Cola, show that being old does not mean you can't still be cool.
>Pepsi was considered a fad in the 60's when it was already 40 years old. It's still around.
Tons of things have been considered fads through the decades, some rightly (hula-hoops) and some not (rock music). The question, when making an analogy, is how they relate to Facebook.
Unless you connect Pepsi and Facebook with something more besides (both have been considered a fad), we cannot draw any conclusions from Pepsi with regards to Facebook's situation except this:
Sometimes, people can consider something as a fad when it isn't.
If you want to make this analogy work, you have to show why Facebook will be more like Pepsi and less like the hula-hoop or piano neck-ties.
Maybe it'll be that the concept of social networks is here to stay forevermore, but Facebook is just a brand. Social networks are becoming a dime a dozen, so using Facebook is a brand choice.
There's a social cost to be seen doing the things that everyone else is doing (the equivalent, say, of wearing a mainstream band t-shirt), so having a presence on Facebook is just meeting the bar. To be "cool" you need to find the social networks nobody else knows about, and hang out with your friends there. Bonus points for alluding, on Facebook, to conversations you had on the not-Facebook social network.
It may be amusing to find in 10 years that using Facebook becomes a new fad again and is seen as "retro". Certainly a possibility if Facebook does not innovate itself to non-recognizability.
It's a different market with different customer mind sets. More importantly, "cool" is relative. Coke is family oriented, aka not cool. This allows pepsi to be "cool" by associating its brand with "hot" celebrities and trends. On the other hand, Facebook has nothing older to compare to. It's "cool" relative to myspace I suppose.
What about leaving the endless discussion about FB's destiny aside and just focus on creating a __new pattern of behavior or activity__ that appeals to a mass audience if you really want to build a large network on its own?
Examples of things that worked:
- Follow updates of celebrities
- Collect nice looking things on a website
- Make even the worst picture look good
- Be the best cat gif curator
Examples of things that didn't work:
- Facebook but for ten friends
- Facebook for Google Accounts
- Facebook with open data portability
Let Zuck worry about the hype cycle and start building.
Friendly wager offer: I'll bet anyone $100 that Facebook is still the largest social network based on monthly active users in 5 years. (Facebook itself, not any companies it acquires.)
We can either use public company stats, or a couple of respected publications' reported usage stats, or a combination of both to decide the winner.
Just as Microsoft Windows is still the largest desktop OS, but nobody seems to care. It is entirely possible to have continued dominance of industry (X) only to find that the value of dominating industry (X) isn't what it used to be...
The downfall of Facebook is what was the crux of its initial success: the comprehensive largeness of one's social network. On Facebook, most people accept all acquaintances and friends they have in real life (should they get a friend request)-- it would be rude not to-- and as a result, one's Friends List is usually a pretty good indication of one's entire social network. This allowed Facebook to gain its initial network effects, but this is also now paralyzing the activity of its individual users. I feel uncomfortable posting extensively online because there are many people in my friends list who I feel uncomfortable seeing my things (and I don't care enough to create Private lists).
As far as addressing the teen exodus, and related to the above impact, Facebook's NewsFeed is just not interesting anymore. Back when Facebook started, I was friends largely with 100-300 people whose lives I actually was interested in. I am not interested in the minutiae of my current 1000+ friends' lives, and their endless and meaningless statuses bore me to no end. Facebook wanted its NewsFeed to break out of the echo chamber effect, and therefore made the NewsFeed algorithm more random, putting the onus of creating relevant NewsFeeds on the individual user (through the creation of individual lists of friends). But USERS WANT THE ECHO CHAMBER EFFECT! I don't want to know what's happening in the "town square,"-- I want to know what's happening with my 20 closest friends. Because teens joined on when this new paradigm was already in place, there's nothing to draw them in. It's just not interesting-- and apps like Instagram and Snapchat are more engaging as a result because they're more personal.
Lastly, Facebook is way too cluttered. It has an atrocious UI, so many buttons all over the place. Mark Zuckerberg's utilitarian aesthetic lives to today, only it's way worse because Facebook has so much more (useless) functionality. Instagram and Snapchat are clean and elegant-- it's not jarring to open those apps like it is to navigate Facebook.
As a younger person that these types of articles are so fond of talking about (I'm 21), I don't agree that members of my generation are leaving and that we don't perceive Facebook as cool. I think what's changed with the new social media companies is the timeliness of when we do things.
Perfect example- I was out for a Secret Santa dinner with a bunch of my friends. While we were at the dinner, we took tons of pictures, some of which ended up as Snapchat stories or on Instagram. But later that night, every single one of those pictures went up on Facebook. Cover photos were updated aplently. Why? Because all of us are on Facebook and Facebook is still the best way to permanently store and share the experiences you've had with your friends (while also tagging them in the photos).
I found this article really interesting. I started using Facebook in high school, back when high schoolers were to use hs.facebook.com to access Facebook and networks were heavily emphasized. I left Facebook about one year ago today.
One particular observation that the article makes that I want to flesh out a bit is the following: Facebook has grown and grown in terms of the size of the application itself, and it is clear that they have pushed very heavily for the 'platform' model. It seems like this is getting replaced by a series of more specialized, more mobile-centric social applications, like Snapchat and Tumblr. Of course FB owns Instagram so they have that going for them, but this does seem to hint at a bit of a growing trend in social networking.
Social networking needs to be a specification. Imagine if email worked the same way social networks worked, it would be ridiculous. You could only communicate with other gmail users, or whatever users were on the platform you adopted. I understand from a business standpoint why social networks have evolved the way they have, but from a utility standpoint it is a lose/lose to have these walled gardens.
What would be much better, is to let users use whatever platform they wish and implement some common protocol for following, status updates and private messaging.
The key utility of social networking sites is that allows you to stay in touch and up to date with a larger circle of associates than you could otherwise. Facebook lowered the cost of maintaining those associations by making the process more efficient. They have been steadily raising the cost with every added feature since then.
I see the evolution of social networking evolving from connecting with everyone in the world, aka public networking to only connect with the ones you actually care about, aka private networking. When Facebook was cool, it was cool to know that you can post a status update and have the "whole world" see it. With the rise of messaging services (snapchat, whatsapp, line and so on), we are moving to the stage where you only share with a very small group of closely connected individuals. A more intimate network.
>>> But it’s rich, so it can buy cool. Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram was their first big move to strengthen their position with the youth of this country.
But with young people, if Facebook is uncool, then by proxy Instagram is uncool as well. This is how teenagers think these days. They can sink as much money into other social platforms, but you won't ever get rid of the Facebook stigma.
No, I bet quite a lot of teens are at least aware the sale happened. But they don't think about it every day. They don't care. Because Instagram is cool. In spite of facebook.
"Social" isn't a fad, but channels dedicated to being "social" might be. This is pure conjecture, but I think a major component of Twitter's success was that participating did not require you to use an official Twitter client. Ubiquity spurred growth. It's an example of "social media," not a "channel for social."
Another major component of Facebook's decline was their lack of a mobile strategy. Again, pure conjecture, but as mobile use in teens increases, the mobile experience matters more -- the Facebook app was unusable for a long time, and that probably had an effect on growth and reputation.
In my opinion, the biggest risk for Facebook is the paradigm shift in how we share photos. A big component of their growth in 2009 - 2011 was their dominance in the photo sharing space. They're the number one photo sharing site in the world. Now photo sharing and picture taking are a mobile experience (e.g., Snapchat, Instragram), being the number one photo sharing site isn't as big of a deal. The purchase of Instagram was smart.
I agree 100% with the author. I log into Facebook once a day, maybe. I don't have fb messenger on my phone. I use mailing lists (set one up for your friends, great, simple way to share photos etc w/ a select group of people)/WhatsApp/Snapchat/IRC (IRCCloud on my phone, because SSH eats up battery).
I used to be a much heavier Facebook user. Now I get hassled by family for saying uncouth things, and generally see it as a chore. Everything you do on Facebook is chronicled on your timeline, and has a certain amount of permanency, and while I'm sure you can delete a lot of it its clearly not the intention, so it does require more "curation", as compared to transient chat apps. The privacy controls are opaque and its hard to be sure exactly who you're sharing with, which makes it hard to be comfortable really sharing a lot on Facebook.
How few companies can you say that about? That you use their product every day? Your mattress. Your refrigerator. Your toothpaste. Your car. Not only have all of their manufacturers have been around for nearly a century, but they all have perfect substitutes: Crest and Colgate. By your own anecdote, Facebook is in a very enviable position.
They're not going to disappear, that's for sure, my point was my level of engagement on Facebook is not what it used to be, the way I use it has changed.
Mobile has radically changed the social adoption cycle more than we've realized. Facebook is clearly the product of desktop world, where much of the information that made it valuable, particularly the social graph, needed to be contributed to the product to be effective.
The move to quickly-adopted "apps" has accelerated in mobile because the plumbing is already in place:
1. Contact list / address book
Implicit network already exists, does not need to be built in the new product.
2. Location
GPS takes apps beyond check-ins - adding context and information to posts. Even enabling new sorts of dating networks.
3. Media
Photos and video, combined with location, contacts and persistent connections on one device make it easier than ever to include photos and video.
This combination (not to mention building on the Facebook platform) will continue to enable faster developing and more narrow focused "networks".
The author here makes a convincing argument that there is a "cool factor" in internet apps but then overstates his case dramatically when he sees the end of FB on the horizon. Simply because a tool loses it's cachet doesn't mean that the network effects go away.
Or put more directly: sure, hip 20-somethings don't give Facebook the love they once did. Who cares? FB doesn't have to play the "I'm the coolest kid in town" game any more. As the author says, they can buy cool. All they have to do now is remain the only tool to wish Grandma a happy birthday.
Or, as some FB'er put it years ago, they're the phonebook, dammit. Their goal is to be a utility. They want to be the radio station, not the rock band.
I can say I use Facebook Connect to log into web sites everyday, and sometimes I post to Facebook using other sites (if I pin something on Pinterest) but I actually check my facebook page one a month or so.
All social networks have remarkably short golden eras. That said, even though Facebook is declining, I still think all the articles about the "end of the Facebook era" and "death of Facebook" are sensational and exaggerated. They're still, what?... The second or the third highest traffic website internationally? Over a billion registered accounts (regardless of whether only half are legitimate and being used, it's a lot).
As the author noted though, Facebook can still thrive in the "cool factor" with their acquisitions.
Even if you don't care or agree about what revolves around Snowden and the NSA, I'm sure it got many people wondering about how facebook operated and how information works.
Even if nothing is done about the NSA, it will have the merit of making facebook less and less popular, and make people not trust websites who might be information hungry.
I wonder if people thwarting the way they post their info can really make those info gathering useless. That'd fun to watch.
I see it so much around me. Small Whatsapp groups, going back to sharing with just the ones we want to share it with. No content police. No long on-line history.
I believe another reason teenagers are leaving Facebook is the insistence of using your real identity. Teens don't want their mom finding them online. That's why they're flocking to services where they can be anonymous, like Tumblr, where you can also meet new people outside of your circle of friends.
> What teenager wants to hang out in the same place as their parents?
Parents have been on Facebook for a long time. Why are teenagers today leaving but not teenagers from 3 years ago?
Also, why is it assumed that teenagers who stopped using Facebook today aren't going to come back when they get older and have adult-things they want to share?
ahh, it's not that the teenagers are seeing adults share things and not liking what is being posted, it's that people are uncomfortable posting things because other people may see them.
Teenagers become soccer Moms and sports watching Dads wondering what happened to their high school friends. There is no better place than Facebook to casually stay in touch. It's part of our life now, like it or not, even though it's not new or fresh anymore.
"We filter too much, and with that, we lose real human connection."
The one (most outstanding) treat that turned me off from the very first moment I saw that site is that the most "facebook people" tend to filter too little!
Do Teens spend a lot of money online ? If they dont then Facebook need not worry about "teens" as such. What happens to todays teens once they are in their 20s ? That is more important question here.
I really enjoyed this post and found it oddly inspiring. Similar to the Steve Jobs quote about knowing you will die someday and how it helps make decisions. Thanks to the author.
Snapchat is a frivolous, silly app mainly used for sexting. I agree that there is something in combing asynchrony and ephemerality, but come on. Nothing run by the likes of Evan Spiegel is going to threaten Facebook. He's not in the same class as Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates. He's not even in the same class as me. He's a rich kid and a lottery winner and should have sold at $3 billion and let someone else run it.
Now, what's going to beat Facebook and LinkedIn and much else in the long run-- and by "long" I mean 2020-25 is something I call "quality social". Facebook provides "social" and there is no meaningful filter on quality. That's not a knock on Facebook; that's not its job. People can fill your feed with junk. Of your 400 "friends", 390 are really acquaintances. I have the most respect for what Meetup is doing ("use the Internet to get off the Internet") but the problem of providing a quality social experience over the Internet is an unsolved one. (Meetup just helps people plan offline experiences.) I think that it will start with multiplayer games. Board games are great at alleviating social awkwardness that forms when people are new to each other or haven't kept in touch for a while. It goes beyond games, though; really, the problem is how to allow people to have meaningful and social experiences in such a way that they can be online, offline, or mixed (i.e. a game where some people are physically in the same place and some are not, or a game that persists as their locations change). Maybe we should try this out, do an Ambition tournament some time in 2014. Anyway, there are a lot of unknown variables-- especially around mobile devices-- but Quality Social is where the future (of social/consumer web) is coming from.
Is this actually true? It hasn't really been my experience, but maybe my friends are prudes.
> I agree that there is something in combing asynchrony and ephemerality, but come on. Nothing run by the likes of Evan Spiegel is going to threaten Facebook. He's not in the same class as Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates. He's not even in the same class as me. He's a rich kid and a lottery winner and should have sold at $3 billion and let someone else run it.
The amount of butthurt in this comment is off the charts. You just took butthurt to 11.
Mark Zuckerberg was also a snotty, privileged rich kid once (he's not a kid anymore). In any case, who are you to put limits on what some 20-something kid is capable of? Because you have a lot of imaginary points on a comment board? Maybe his success is due to luck, or maybe it's because he didn't spend his time tearing down other people on a comment board.
Anyway, go ahead and build out Quality Social. Take the $3B offer, or maybe you should decline it because you're in another class.
The quality of a social interaction is almost entirely due to the people involved, not the medium that it happens over. If you want to provide a Quality Social experience, you do that by finding an original user group that knows how to socialize. Facebook did exactly that - they started with the most popular social club, in the most elite university, in the age group that does the most socializing. It worked out pretty well for them.
The open internet meant that anyone with TCP/IP could see all content.
Facebook put everything behind a wall that was both effective at blocking open access and ineffective at protecting privacy.
The centralization of the internet into a handful of sites -- Twitter, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Google -- is destructive to the original mission and concept of the internet.
Teen use on Facebook is declining? Well teens don't generally have much money anyway. How does this translate to the end of Facebook? How many teens use Linkedin?
"The end of the Apple era"
"The end of the Microsoft era"
"The end of the Netflix era"
"The end of the Yahoo era"
Seriously, why do people waste time writing these types of stories? My guess is that it's because it's so much easier than actually trying to build something of value. The real problem is there is no penalty for being wrong. Everyone simply forgets. Write a thousand stories and if just one of them is right then you get to claim your genius.
Where are those guys who predicated that Apple Stores were such a stupid idea? We need to start keeping score.
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2001-05-20/commentary-so...