Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers are pulling out

So unless there's a fundamental shift in its business model and allure, its trajectory will be doomed. It doesn't mean Facebook the company will fail, but it does mean that the Facebook product—what it is in its current form—has a finite shelf life.

Which is why all it will take is a compelling competitor to start the great migration. This is sort of the corollary to the network effect — as soon as there is a better alternative that people really move to, a vast amount of people will move spontaneously.

Imagine if Instagram started right now. Do you think they would accept any offer to be bought by Facebook?

I suspect the same people will be saying the same thing next week when another $50b have been shed, another scandal or two has come to light, and more users and advertisers flee the platform. I wonder at what point it’s going to sink in that between Trump’s election and a general backlash against tech, this is the tip of a very large iceberg?

But a double-digit drop in a week's span is a pretty strong message

I also believe that we've barely scratched the surface in terms of insight into their internal surveillance and identity-tokenizing machinery. I believe that if we get to see those details in full glory (e.g. as the result of an investigation) we will be HORRIFIED. This applies to Google as well (or more).

Network effects are not as strong as you might think. Multiple lines of evidence point to it being O(n log(n)) in general. See https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/metcalfes-law-i... for details.

The log(n) factor does work in Facebook's favor against newcomers. It is a barrier to entry. However it is a barrier to entry that can be overcome with a better user experience.

My desired experience is that I want to see what my friends have to say, and don't want to see random commercial spam. My Facebook feed includes crap from any time I liked a viral link, and DOES NOT include a significant fraction of what my friends had to say. It is very far from my desired experience.

I already see people trying out alternatives like Mastadon. Existing chat applications like Slack and Discord could be turned into social networks. And properties like Instagram and Whatsapp stand as demonstrations that social networks are more easily started than you might think. Facebook can only keep buying up its potential competitors for so long until it runs across one that dreams of something bigger than Facebook can offer.

Short term I believe that there is an overreaction to news. But long-term, I would not want to bet on Facebook. Not over the next 20 years.

In other words you're anticipating the share price to decline further. This sort of supports the OPs first assertion.

Watch, Facebook will be the new Yahoo! Enough successful products to keep them alive, but with its vision destroyed and it’s mandate revoked, it will be a shadow of its former self. Influencers have already started moving away.

That company has a market value somewhere greater than zero but certainly less than even Facebook’s current market cap. The question is not “will it drop?” but “how low will it go?”

Yeah people said the same thing about MySpace and look what happened

But it has to stay stronger than it's bad reputation. If the only thing you have is a network effect you are in a very bad place. Everyone I know used to be on MSN and then within a week everyone had WhatsApp and MSN was practically dead.

> this is also not even including their other assets (Instagram, Whatsapp, Oculus)

True Instagram is strong especially since they can show a shitton of ads there. But Instagram isn't Facebooks vision of what the world should be.

But don't hold on to those shares for too long.

The mesh/decentralized/p2p networking movement is really interesting, and given the ever increasing power of user devices, the balance for a shift to those models is compelling.

There are huge existing challenges, but I'm seeing really smart ideas in the space, and I think it's only a matter of years before we start to see mainstream p2p networks (still over the Internet) replacing a server model for some successful widespread apps or services. Facebook style social networking is the PERFECT use case for such a topology.

Facebook's time is coming to an end. Not now (like some are reacting), and not in the next year or so, but soon enough. Their paradigm isn't as good as the alternative. The alternative simply has implementation issues that need to be worked out, but they aren't insurmountable, and different groups of people are solving them in novel ways constantly.

I mean I deactictivated FB long ago. So did most of my friends (from my school, from college, from my past companies etc. ) Even those who still have accounts never post anything. They don't even update their current city/companies etc.

Although I also noticed a trend of older people joining FB and being fairly active on it. But overall FB is definitely losing its appeal.

Sadly, people have ditched FB in favor of Whatsapp which belongs to FB.

But Instagram can't save facebook (the website), though it may save Facebook the company.

If your career goal is to set yourself up as a PHP guru, some FB credentials could be useful. If you think about it, a guy who wouldn't mind his career being about PHP is exactly the type who wouldn't get why ('zuckerberg-couldn't-get-laid(a-busines-carries-founder-DNA)).

I also remember a time when FB was seen as cool compared to MySpace, because it hinted a higher social value because you supposedly needed to be an Ivy league student to have one.

In particular, I'd love to see detailed statistics on top free apps, changes, and what causes them.

I happened to "delete" my profile a week before this shit storm blew up and thankfully someone pointed out the Deactivate vs. Delete dark pattern and I quickly fixed that situation.

It's a weird world when the Smut Peddlers have some sound advice on living.

[0] - I didn't keep a list, but I recall one called "Wittitudes" or something along those lines simply lacked the "Hide" option, and all attempts at blocking it failed.

I read that less as "arguing in favour of FB", and more as a reminder that overindulging in the blood frenzy makes you lose perspective.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FB?p=FB

This feels counter-intuitive to me as these are the major players in online advertising. A facebook exodus would feel like a positive for google's primary revenue driver. Why is the inverse effect true?

Google, Facebook, and Amazon are all on my shit-list. Any company that harnesses hapless users as a product can rot in hell.

I don't remember this being explicitly asked of me in any obvious way. And even if it was, I would have assumed they only needed that permission to get a list of contacts on my phone, and that the rest of it would be unused.

> Apple runs a messaging service called iMessage

Yes, and it's all encrypted and none of it is sent to third-party advertisers or creepy voter manipulation firms.

> Facebook has never sold this data. There is no evidence they've even used the data for anything except its explicitly-stated purpose.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-cambr...

> Procter & Gamble Co. PG 0.66% , the biggest advertising spender in the world, will move away from ads on Facebook that target specific consumers, concluding that the practice has limited effectiveness.

More-and-more-specialized online display advertising rarely delivers as (heh) advertised on any platform.

But on the other hand, the bit you leave out includes both that they weren't cutting their FB budget, and that they'd found some areas where it works better:

> Mr. Pritchard said P&G won’t cut back on Facebook spending and will employ targeted ads where it makes sense, such as pitching diapers to expectant mothers.

So the real question is: were these political campaigns the useless sort of micro-targeting, or the effective kind?

Words having meanings! Let's just use words that mean what they mean. Facebook did not "LOSE" $100B, and the stock is not "falling".