I wonder how long it will take until young people view FB membership as the epitome of stuffiness and boredom -- one of those things “our parents found cool when they were young and didn't know any better”.
Recently, I've asked my high school aged sister and colleged aged brother about how many of their friends and peers use FB nowadays.
Brother -- He and his friends uses it sometimes. But most of their social activities are shared on Instagram or Snapchat and occasionally twitter.
Sister -- Barely at all. FB is seen as uncool and old school by her and her friends. She and most of her friends share their social activities on instagram and snapchat.
Ironically, my mom (in her 50's) uses FB fairly regularly, both for sharing updates and checking up on her friends/acquaintance.
This is why acquisitions happen and why buying Instagram when FB did may go down as one of the best buys. Missing Snapchat may be one of the biggest misses.
It's great for teens and early adults, with tight knit social circles and the undivided attention to look at fast-disappearing posts, but that's not much of the population. Lots of people don't even understand how it works, while Facebook and Instagram are pretty intuitive.
My bet is the current audience will age out of Snapchat, gradually seeing it as something for kids, and the next group of kids will use something else entirely.
Of course, I could be wrong--I wouldn't have predicted Snapchat would get as big as it has, so more power to them if they can keep it going.
The first time was when I first heard of it, "that'll never take off what a dumb fad app."
The second time was when they turned down the $40MM offer from facebook.
The third time was when they turned down the $3B offer from facebook.
They're now valued at $16B. I don't bash snapchat anymore.
Turns out snapchat isn't just for messaging anymore, a lot of people watch the channels on it as if it was any other form of TV, and advertisers absolutely love it.
I'm sure it will be disrupted at some point, but I've stopped trying to "call it."
Most of our cultural output (books, films etc) works like that already.
BUT even if they did, this is why investing in acquisitions makes sense. Theoretically everyone could stop using Facebook itself but it wouldn't matter as long as FB owned the platforms where everyone had migrated.
BUT I still check it out every couple of days. Sometimes out of habit, sometimes because I want to see what others in my family are up to.
It's not much about friends any longer. It's just the default "living room" for my extended family
Post something and give everyone else the tiny joy you get when you see someone else's update.
I don't get why they insist on curating what I see. I wouldn't have done what I did if they just left the news feed at reverse chronological order with most recent on top.