Comment by david927 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by david927 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

First, the author doesn't understand what is meant by the expression "killing". It's not a morbid death wish for the company not to exist but simply to supplant their position as pace setter. Yes, IBM, Yahoo and MySpace still exist (and are doing fine in many respects), but what we're talking about is becoming the setting where innovation is going.

Google, similarly, will be killed not by a competitor rising out of nowhere, but by falling into irrelevance.

Be careful. What's the quote? "It's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future." People said the same of Yahoo in the late 1990's. It had many competitors but wasn't really challenged for the top spot. Google came out of nowhere and relegated its dominance of search.

"Facebook, on the other hand, doesn't have any such flaws." ... "Facebook is as unkillable as Google." ... "You won 't kill Facebook. No one will."

Facebook and Google usurped their predecessors from out of nowhere. They both wouldn't exist if their founders said to themselves, "I'm not going to try to overtake Yahoo/MySpace -- they're unkillable." Your flimsy advice is now recorded to be ridiculed later because you seem not to understand the very nature of technology.

The next leaders get this sort of insipid advice all the time but, luckily for all of us, they aren't listening.

I don't recall that Yahoo was ever the top search engine, by the way. In the late 90s, AltaVista was the search engine of choice. Of course, it could be different if you look at hard numbers... Yahoo is ranked #4 on the list mentioned in the article, yet I don't know anybody who (deliberately) uses it for search. But anyway...

Facebook and Google usurped their predecessors from out of nowhere. They both wouldn't exist if their founders said to themselves, "I'm not going to try to overtake Yahoo/MySpace -- they're unkillable."

I think Facebook and Google did exactly that. Facebook was just another "me-too" social networking site at first, targeted at a limited audience; I doubt that right from the start they thought they could be the #1 site on the internet, or even the #1 social site. And AFAICT, Google's initial goal was to provide a better search, not to supplant all other search engines.

In fact, in my opinion, what they have in common is that they both didn't aim for the top at first; rather, they carved out a niche, then worked from there.

> "Facebook was just another "me-too" social networking site at first"

That's a little uncharitable. I joined Facebook fairly early on (when it first launched for college students), and it was the first social networking app of any sort to even hold my attention. Friendster came and went without me ever visiting, so did MySpace... We may not like all that FB is doing, but IMHO it was a lot more than a me-too, even in the beginning.

Myspace and Facebook were pretty on par circa 2006, I had both with more friends on MySpace by far. MySpace did more of the kinds of things we wanted. I can play music on my profile! And skin it! Like Winamp! Hell, I even got a date through myspace because I met someone new, try that on Facebook! (chuckle away)

Turns out, those "features" weren't actually good things. And when MySpace turned into a spam infested, buggy, always down piece of crap we all turned to Facebook. Honestly I think Facebook blew up in that time because MySpace dropped the ball. I don't remember anything compelling about Facebook at the time when the bulk of my group switched, other than that it didn't break so much.

The compelling thing about facebook for me, way back when, was that it lacked the crap that drew you to myspace. I hated myspace. Very GeoCities-esque.

I don't recall that Yahoo was ever the top search engine, by the way.

Yes, but lots of people wanted to be like Yahoo. I think the whole portal idea came from sites wanting to be like them.

There is another quote though.

We seem to overestimate change in the short run and underestimate it in the long.

A counterpoint...You can quit using Google, MSFT, Yahoo, and etc.

But you can't quit your friends. Social networking is a winner take all. That is why i agree with the author that Facebook would have to shoot itself in the foot first.

you can't quit your friends

My friend, for your sake I hope you never have to fully understand what I am about to say...

But there are times when you not only will quit your friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife, but you will have to.

You can quit your family too.

When I was twenty I had no comprehension of this, but having almost reached forty I can reel off examples. Most of which are not mine, fortunately, but some of which are so painful that they hurt even by proxy. Mental illness. Divorce. Physical abuse. Emotional abuse.

Facebook, by the way, with its ridiculously naive conception of identity and privacy, is actually a lousy platform for conducting real-world relationships. It's like trying to compose a story out of the messages written on greeting cards.

I really wanted to downvote you cause I thought your response was an intentional misunderstanding of the comment you were replying to, but then you go and write this gem:

[Conducting relationships on Facebook is] like trying to compose a story out of the messages written on greeting cards.

Insightful. Hilarious. Wow.

I thought your response was an intentional misunderstanding

It might have been. Deliberate, experimental misinterpretation is an important essay-writing technique.

Part of the goal of essays is to arrive at new thoughts. To get to someplace new you have to try some wrong turns.

If you can't think of anything novel, write down the obvious. Then try deliberately misinterpreting what you just wrote. It's usually painfully easy to do.

"real-world relationships" - Quite the opposite actually. In my opinion, today real world relationships are now global. Maybe I'm just a small (and growing) portion of people who has friends and family all over the world, in different time-zones and cultures, but I find Facebook the perfect "base" platform for conducting such relationships.

"Conducting relationships" is a multi-faceted concept in my opinion. It involves several layers of communication and Facebook is just one of those, not THE only one.

Let me give you a concrete example of how Facebook has helped me conduct a relationship that I find rather meaningful in my life. I have an American friend living in Switzerland of who I've met some good friends of his. One is a British guy who just recently moved to Dubai from Switzerland for a short term project. Had it not been for Facebook I probably wouldn't have known he moved there and thus provoked me to book a trip to see him several weeks ago. (another form communication - physical presence) He's only there for a few more months and I'm afraid any other form of communication would have been too slow.

Sorry to de-rail your original point but I always find the "Facebook haters" to be rather interesting. And to you're original point about quitting friends. I don't think he/she meant literally that you can't quit all of your friends. The point is that you will always have a social network of people in your life, whether you continually add or delete people. If you don't (and I would feel exceptionally bad for you) then you represent an extremely small percentage of the world's population.

you will always have a social network of people in your life

Sure, but that doesn't mean that Facebook will stay in business, let alone stay fashionable or popular. People have a choice between eating and death, but that doesn't mean that McDonalds will stay in business until humanity is extinct. Though they obviously have quite a headstart in fast food and are doing very well.

The other interesting word in this excerpt is "a". People have "a" social network in Facebook, but they have way, way more than "a" social network in real life. We each have hundreds of overlapping social networks, some with precisely defined membership, temporal, and physical boundaries (I'm not polygamous, so my marriage social network is strictly limited to two) and some with extremely fuzzy boundaries (HN).

Facebook has gotten ahead because, though it offers one particular style of social network, it makes it so very, very easy to use that network -- and it has such a great viral loop and name recognition --- that for the moment it is tempting to pretend that all of your hundreds of real-world social nets can be collapsed into one. But the web is a big place, the future is a long time, and UX innovation can and will be copied.

> Sure, but that doesn't mean that Facebook will stay in business, let alone stay fashionable or popular.

Absolutely agreed. I was raising questions about the point for the absolute existence of a social network. I think what the originator of this discussion was saying is that any social network is a necessity to living (much like food and shelter). In other words there will always be a market for such a platform (as opposed to say something like selling iPods)

Also I'm interested in understanding why you think Facebook's concept of identity and privacy is naive? My identity is composed of the things I like and my privacy consists of the things that I like that I wish to share with people. Facebook gives me every opportunity to do exactly both in an extremely controlled manner.

Yes, this is how it will eventually happen for Facebook if they don't reinvent themselves (and they never do).

It doesn't even have to be that dramatic. People change and drift apart. The older you get, the more extreme the examples become. I often forget the names of people I once considered friends for life.

The more they pile up, the more Facebook changes from keeping in touch to unwilling voyeurism. The FB killer will be something that deftly handles change.

Back in the 90s, all my friends and I used ICQ. Then something weird happened. I can't explain why, but everyone started switching to MSN Messenger (this was in Canada, I understand that AIM was more popular in the US). It probably had to do with the nicer UI, but I can't be sure. Basically, ICQ became irrelevant, except in Russia. It's a perfect example of how all your friends can move somewhere else. The other great example: Friendster.

Good point. Networks are good, but they aren't a total lock-in.

However, Facebook has some things going for it that ICQ didn't. for example:

Grandmothers - Facebook started with the early adopters just like everyone else. But they slowly moved (and are still moving) down the curve, past the 'what's a browser' middle and down to the users for whom email is a big challenge. People who basically don't use computers except for occasional tasks that someone else has shown them how to do and set everything up. These people don't switch easily.

Today's grandmothers won't be around for long. The core generation that joined Facebook because it was cool will become boring old people themselves, and that's why Facebook won't survive.

My fiancée and I are in our late 20s. We were in college when Facebook came out and arrived at the party early. We built our social networks to share the fruits of our newfound "adult" freedoms- namely pictures of inappropriate Halloween costumes and drinking games.

Now, Facebook is different. My mom is on it. My mother-in-law-to-be is on it. But because my fiancée and I are on it, our children likely won't be. It won't be a fun place to share things you don't want mom to know. Mom will be checking in and leaving embarrassing messages on your wall. I think my kids will probably find somewhere else to hang out. It will probably have a name I can't seem to remember, and I will likely embarrass them in front of their friends by pronouncing it wrong or misunderstanding its key features.

Social networks are binding, but they're highly generational. Unless Facebook can figure out how to get my future kids to think its cool, it's toast in 20 years or less.

--Edited for grammar--

Nailed it.

Already I see awkward parent/child relationships. To the parent, they love feeling 'in touch'. To the child, it's just embarassing that their parents are hanging around on Facebook. As they move into the embarrassing photos/stories, they're either going to find a new platform or create a separate identity, or something, to conduct themselves online in private.

SMS was the killer app for teens because they could exchange messages with friends (a) cheaply and (b) without being overheard.

Early adopters have already started to abandon Facebook. However, they come back because there is no better option.

What's going to kill Facebook is something better. Less spam, better privacy, etc, but it still needs to be at least as good as Facebook to get anywhere. And that’s going to take a seriously long runway a great development team and awesome management. Look for a profitable nitch like LinkedIn that just keeps growing.

Even social sites with lock-in can still lose market share because you can socialize on multiple platforms. I still have a yahoo email address cos my grandmother likes to send me email forwards. But when I make new connections, or reconnect with old ones, I don't do it on yahoo.

Grandmothers won't save Facebook. They'll allow Facebook to linger on like a maladapted dinosaur or the old VAX your IT department uses as shelf space. But in a post-Facebook world, just because we all keep Facebook accounts to maintain ossified relationships doesn't mean Zuck still has social relevance.

Yes, but I don't use facebook because my Grandma's on it (well, actually she isn't, but if she was it wouldn't matter).

If I found a new social network that I thought offered something new I would start using that in parallel to facebook. Then I'd use the new one more as more people moved over, until eventually facebook just became a way of emailing my grandma.

A lot of these facebook killer conversations seem to be based on the idea that I'm only going to use one social network. I'd argue that's not true at all.

in Poland ICQ was smashed by GaduGadu, a local IM raised from an SMS sending app, additionally it was the .com bubble times and when the web was raising crazy around here. Yet I remember that fellow nerds and I used ICQ for some time until it was full of spam, so I assume spam was what 'killed' it in most countries.

Australia was the same. ICQ --> MSN MSN had one killer feature -- it saved your contact list on the server. This meant that any time I had a new computer (or re-installed my OS) My MSN list was still there -- ICQ I needed to add everyone again.

AIM and ICQ are not "social networks". I can't ever imagine my parents using AIM or ICQ ever. But they are on facebook. Good luck getting them switched over to another service.

Facebook has 500+ mil users. Most of them, non techies.

Friendster actually proves my point...they shot themselves in the foot. Facebook exists because of mismanagement by Friendster.

Isn't it conceivable that the next social network will start as a place for the younguns to get away from their parents? If you were 15, would you rather be at a party with all your friends and everyone's parents and grandparents and aunts and weird cousins or at a party with just your friends?

If that's the case, then the feature set would be focused toward a younger crowd, rather than the privacy features and such that people discussing a "Facebook killer" usually mention. I wonder if it could possibly be a step backwards in some areas.

4chan anyone?

Yes - 4Chan is the new FB. It's deliberately unappealing, it's the new generation. I liken Mys[ace/bebo/friendster/facebook/linked-in/4Chan/whatever to bars and nightclubs. They can get popular for a while, even wildly popular, but eventually they go out of fashion. Those 'pubs' with a slower cadence like Linked-in will take longer to die, but will also never reach the dizzy heights of the biggest 'clubs' like mySpace and Facebook.

And no one would dump all the contacts and email they have in their Hotmail.

In technology, the word never is a fool's word.

Why you mean by "quit your friends"? About 50% of my friends are not on the Facebook, and I communicate with them using phone, email, or directly meet them. The same with the folks who are on FB...I usually reach them by other means, anyway.

Really? For me it's down to <10% Friends. (Maybe 50% of family when you count aunties/uncles) And aside from 3 people I don't remember the last time I got an email from a friend. FB Messaging / wall posts own that space completely.

Obviously sms still has it's place (ie- want a response in the next 10 minutes rather than the next 24 hours) and nothing can replace in-person communication -- but FB is doing a damn good job of replacing my electronic communication.

There was a point in time where we shared pictures on Flickr. We don't do that often anymore, and even though we're on facebook, we don't share pictures there that often anyway.

You can quit facebook if there was a better way to connect to your friends.

You can quit facebook without quitting your friends.

> Facebook and Google usurped their predecessors from out of nowhere. They both wouldn't exist if their founders said to themselves, "I'm not going to try to overtake Yahoo/MySpace -- they're unkillable."

Google beat Yahoo at their own game.

Facebook beat MySpace at thier own game. It's a different game than Google were playing, but Facebook made their game more important than Google's.

What justification do you have that facebook is "more important" than google?

Google has something like 30x facebook's revenue, and is still growing at a tremendous rate. Facebook has been growing faster but it'd be silly to imagine that their several hundred percent growth rate could continue forever. Worse yet, facebook's per user revenue is so poor that if we were to assume that their user base expanded to include every computer owner in the world they would still not match google's current revenue.

Facebook gets a lot of exuberant press these days but make no mistake, they still have many huge challenges ahead of them. Even if facebook were to double its revenues every year it would still take 4-5 years to catch up to google. A lot can happen in that time.

That's right! The next Facebook will be coming out written by my fingers! In PHP, no less! That's what my client says anyway. I'm being paid in free run eggs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com