Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Time will tell. Facebook is in my circle of friends already past it's peak. The frequency of visits and interaction with the site is dropping and more and more profiles are left to gather dust.

Google is a very mature company with iron control over their monetization, they're in for the long haul. The OP specifically wrote working for google search, which is their core product and that's something that matters when selecting an employer.

Facebook gives me a 'cowboy' feeling and I wouldn't be surprised if in the long term they'll just be another footnote.

I used to think pretty highly of google but their last couple of years have been less then stellar, so I can't see either as a decision without downsides, but overall at least for me google clearly wins out.

Facebook's origins and CEO will forever leave a mark on that company.

View on HN

The frequency of visits and interaction with the site is dropping and more and more profiles are left to gather dust.

Although their growth has slowed, Facebook's still growing traffic at a decent rate, having passed Yahoo for the #2 most visited site last month.

Also, according to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (ex-Googler who oversaw the creation of AdWords) more than half their users log into Facebook at least once a day. Seems like Facebook's firing on all cylinders to me.

Facebook is still 'new' to plenty of internet users, but it seems that facebook presence has a lifespan associated with it, my own experience was something like: "Neat, let's use this", "reconnect with a bunch of old friends", "nothing exciting happening and now that I've reconnected why bother keeping it up to date".

As for that quote above, I meant for that to be in the context of my circle of friends, not the general public. And probably there are an above average number of 'early adopters' in that small group.

Are there any public figures on facebooks 'churn' ?

Facebook, for better or worse, has become fundamental to the social lives of Generation Y. There's certainly churn among older users, but I think it's almost an accident that Facebook has become so popular with an older crowd. The core users aren't going anywhere.

Facebook is on track to become the #1 most visited web site. I don't think it will hit that milestone only to fail.

That's as good an explanation of the pattern as any that I've seen.

The group I'm looking at are all mostly in their 40's or older, my 'sample' doesn't extend far outside that.

As a member of Generation Y, Facebook used to be fundamental to my social life, but over time it the amount I engage with it and the amount other people in my social circle engage with it has rapidly dwindled.

But you and many of your friends still check it every day, right?

Really? I'm gen Y and it's a few times a week for most of my circle of friends. My younger cousins (gen Z?) around 13-15 are about the same.

This is one survey I found, thoug I'd be very interested in seeing a more statisticall valid survey. http://nmc.itdevworks.com/index.php/2009/08/facebook-usage-h...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com