The end of Facebook | Hacker News Reader

The end of Facebook

blogs.forbes.com

120 pointsThomPete106 comments

This is borne out by my experience. A slowly increasing number of my friends are cutting down their use, and eventually leaving. This might just be due to my cohort of friends getting older, but the article claims it is a general trend.

What is definitely true, is that nobody I know feels anything positive about facebook, at all. It is seen simply as a sinister, addictive[1] necessary evil. This is the case regardless of technical expertise. They continue to use it purely because of inertia and lock in. Yet they are not interested in twitter either.

Much like smoking, many people get into it as teenagers because everyone's doing it, now in their 20s they've realised that it sucks but they can't stop.

There is definitely a market for a social network thats simpler, but still full-featured like facebook, but above all one that's less "evil." One that's vocally dedicated to your privacy, and whose every move doesn't seem so machiavellianly calculated to keep you coming back, to the point where you begin to feel like you're living in a dystopian future world.

I realise that's just a long way of saying "less profitable" or even "not profitable," but there we are.

[1] The main slang term for facebook amongst it's younger users in the UK is "facecrack." It has been called that for years.

Facebook needs to take a lesson from what has happened to Microsoft. Microsoft is making its best products ever but the reputation of Windows is so soured that it doesn't matter. People associate Windows with viruses and crashes. Now people use Windows because they have to, not because they want to.

Facebook is in danger of suffering the same thing. Like you, I have a lot of non-technical friends who feel uneasy about Facebook; they just don't trust it. They feel the games are scammy. They find that they can access their pictures when logged out. They use it any ways. But increasingly, they don't like it.

some people want to use windows. i'm not one of those people, but you see them around the intewebs.

They're either gamers or suffering from Stockholm syndrome.

I'm glad someone else thinks the same way about Microsoft I do. Its future might not be as bright as its present, though..

Well to be honest, what are the choices FOR Windows (this applies to Facebook as well):

1) It's ubiquitous so it's not like a statement that you like windows.

2) Main competitor is Apple/OSX which has always required a hardware upgrade/switch as the OS doesn't install on Win boxes.

3) PC manufacturers are operating on razor thin margins, so any joy you might get from the hardware is often minimal due to low quality parts... you have to be an enthusiast to have a decent experience or pay as much as the Mac users do.

Microsoft is a victim of it's own success... they forgot they actually have customers (not just consumers, businesses) and became arrogant.

A slowly increasing number of my friends are cutting down their use, and eventually leaving.

I know what they say about the plural of antidote, but I've personally noticed the same. I use it less, and when I do use it, I notice the people I care about on facebook are using it less too. Everything you say mirrors the response to facebook I've been seeing. Its no longer a toy, its just that thing you have and slowly working towards being a burden.

I think a post I saw about facebook email says it the best: "Facebook, you're giving me email? You're now one ugly paintjob away from being aol". Its initially funny, but the parallels you can draw between AOL and Facebook are huge and I wouldn't be surprised if facebook followed a similar trajectory.

I agree, but it's interesting that Google is doing so much more than just search today and they're not inviting the same response. Is it because the main search service has stayed the same without suffering from feature bloat?

Google never tried to change its core product the way Facebook has. Facebook started as a private network of close friends and they've changed it to an open network of friends, family, and the world. As much as they've changed about the product, they cannot change users' perceptions, which have remained the same throughout. They've basically caused their users to suffer from cognitive dissonance about what Facebook is vs. what they expect it to be.

Google makes separate products. They're well integrated, but you can use gmail without ever seeing maps, and vice-versa.

Facebook on the other hand is monolithic, and that gives it a much greater appearance of omnipresent intrusiveness.

I wonder if this is true of each company's management style too - I don't know anyone in Google or Facebook personally but it does seem to me that Google values engineer autonomy more than any other company (and that is one reason for its huge success, trusting its engineers).

Its an interesting comparison, but I think at least part of the difference lies in the fact many of google's main services -- search, maps, shopping, news -- are about getting you what you want and away from google. The faster you're done using google, the less time you spend there, the better they're doing. Gmail and apps are more time consuming but I think a certain level of "well, I have no choice to do the this work or not, I might as well have a nice interface" comes into play when using those.

Google's tools seem more about facilitating accomplishing something else as fast as possible, while facebook is the ends in and of itself. How long you spend on facebook is the metric of how well facebook is doing.

At least thats my take on it.

Because you can still do just plain search.

Google makes lots of products that you can use however you please. Facebook makes one product, and when you want to use one aspect of it, you get lots of baggage that you don't necessarily care about.

Perhaps you mean anecdote?

I believe the plural of antidote is "I'm not sure which snake just bit me, just give me all the antitoxins!"

I've noticed this as well.

Facebook, to me (others may use features of Facebook I simply don't care about, like the games and apps), is just email done badly, with a big contact list that tells me who my contacts have as contacts, public message board type thing with a little photo hosting mixed in.

Using gmail as an example, nothing facebook does couldn't be done either just as well or better with email: the gmail contact list could be augmented to be a social network - it already almost is and Google have been trying something like this with Buzz. Email is already better as a messaging system than what Facebook could ever hope to do. Mass emails, mailing lists and services like fiesta.cc and we've covered almost all of Facebooks messaging usecases (private, public, mass/event messages). Tack on a Buzz-like public notice board and an RSVP system for events and everything (plus some stuff Facebook is bad at) is covered. Throw flickr or picasa into the mix (or just a more convenient way to email photos to people) and that use case is covered too.

Except that with email, mailing lists, mass email, bcc etc I am put in control of who gets access to what - privacy is under my control.

At least, thats how I see it. YMMV.

This is what I do when I see a personal or corporate link to a Facebook page: I don't click on it. Because I know I can't access it.

The same as I used to do with Scientific American links, and other properties that were inside AOL's walled garden. The difference today is that corporations are smart enough to exist both inside and outside. Since they're already outside, I don't worry at all about what's inside; I'm not missing anything.

As for personal pages, I have the email and blog addresses of all my friends.

We need to look at the type of social groups interacting and using it though. Most people on HN I think would use Facebook less, so we can't be the demographic to base it on. The News Stream is really a gossip magazine just for people you know.

But it's the social party goers that use it. I have a few in my stream, like little sisters. It's used heaps if you're a party goer. Photos, events, global shout outs. It looks like less people use it because you cull a lot of the noisy users.

Well said, and I'm seeing the same behavior and attitudes with friends and acquaintances. The high school and college students I've talked to recently have similar feelings about Facebook as well.

There are a lot of emerging social networks (Hibe, Pidder, Necter) who emphasize privacy a lot more than Facebook and don't have the baggage -- as well as the whole open source Diaspora/AppleSeed/OneSocialWeb/etc. distributed social network movement. True, right now none of them have Facebook's "everybody's there" advantage. But people's dislike for Facebook is so pervasive that I really wonder how much longer they'll continue to be so successful.

As a counterpoint, I moved to a new area five months ago, and I have found Facebook an excellent way to communicate with the new people I have met, and to keep in touch with the friends I left. For most people I know, Facebook is just another way to communicate and coordinate.

Twitter seems to be losing steam faster than facebook, which I think is a shame.

(E.g. http://attentionmeter.com/?d1=facebook.com&d2=twitter.co... )

My experience with Twitter (which I use all the time) is that spam is getting worse and worse and Twitter isn't even doing obvious things to fight it.

Facebook is simply built of spam, so that's not an awful comparison, but I think it's hurting Twitter.

I'm surprised at how few of my friends use Twitter, or even consider it. I wish they would, but for some reason they (all non-techy people) are on facebook every day but if they have a Twitter account at all, it's little-used and dormant.

It's rather easy to 'get' facebook, since it's pretty much a mish-mash of various communication technologies that have already proved themselves, including Twitter. I think new, non-techy visitors to Twitter are confused by what it does in some ways. Twitter's interface and presentation play a large role in that.

Twitter feels less personal than Facebook. The 73x73 image is tiny compared to Facebook's profile image, and there's little info on the page about real social connections. You are limited to one type of content, tiny text messages. It seems like a social site, but doesn't feel very connected. It seems to me Twitter is a mess of missed opportunities and muddled focus right now. They've tried to push it as a way to keep up with celebrities... Apple's iTunes 'ping' hasn't worked out with that whole Pro>Consumer set up.

I think Twitter's strength is in being a messaging system. People could use it to replace SMS, free, with a better interface - or does it have a better interface? Twitter's DM capabilities leave a bit to be desired. The web interface is rather feature-free, and aren't they cutting off API/OAuth access to DMs soon or something? Anyhow, look what the NYT did with Twitter's service recently - that is the sort of building on Twitter I see occurring, but I'm not even sure if Twitter themselves understand the potential for Twitter to become infrastructure, not just a way for people broadcast how much you hate traffic or like a sandwich.

> What is definitely true, is that nobody I know feels anything positive about facebook, at all. It is seen simply as a sinister, addictive[1] necessary evil.

You and your friends probably spend so much time online for work that you reproach yourselves for excesses like Facebook. (FWIW I'm no different.) The majority of the normal, non-technical users I know don't view Facebook as evil. They just think of it as something everybody uses nowadays, like e-mail. I don't think those users are going anywhere anytime soon.

Facebook has reached an inevitable point where everyone who hasn't signed up either doesn't want to, or can't (no internet access). I mean, do you know anyone who really wants to sign up for Facebook but hasn't gotten around to it yet? It's no surprise that their growth would eventually slow. I wouldn't read too much into it. They're going to be around for a long, long time.

"I mean, do you know anyone who really wants to sign up for Facebook but hasn't gotten around to it yet?"

12 year olds.

And so Facebook's customer development changes to that of cigarette manufacturers. As long as 12 year olds continue to turn 13, Facebook can replace the thirty-somethings that drop off.

"...are cutting down their use, and eventually leaving. " "The main slang term for facebook amongst it's younger users in the UK is 'facecrack.'"

If there are any similarities to crack, the people who say they are cutting their use and eventually leaving rarely do.

This was a rather pointless article. Yes, every company will reach a point where growth slows. Yes, every company will have users who quit. Yes, valuations are high right now. Yes, many companies will get replaced by better ones that come along. And yes, it is implied that Facebook is a company.

How does any of this lead to "the end of facebook"?? The author even states "Facebook is still growing very fast in terms of page views and number of users."

Major linkbait.

I completely agree, but one point that he briefly mentions that I think is even more interesting is the idea of a Facebook IPO.

Consider that Facebook isn't going anywhere (most likely) and will be a major company for a long time. That still doesn't change the fact that if they've already done all of the their major growing (user-wise, I'm assuming that they will continue to look for new revenue sources), their IPO could be a significant letdown for investors if there is simply no where to go but flat.

That said, I don't know any more (or less) that this guy..

Yeah, at this point why would they IPO (except to get rich[er], of course)? Obviously they could grow in some unforeseen way, but if they don't have an ace up their sleeve, what business reason would they have for needing additional capital?

Well, there may or may not be a pressing business need for capital, but I'm sure a lot of the current shareholders would see an IPO as a good exit.

I suppose it's possible that facebook could still be acquired, but given how large they are, and the huge amount of cash/stock it would require to buy them, that seems unlikely to me.

Too big to float.

Major point for an IPO: SEC regulation requires businesses with more than $10 million in assets and over 499 shareholders to go public.

Agreed. FaceBook is still growing and will have to continue to change things up and grow in other areas such as deals, etc. The only reason this article is ranked so high on HN is how sensational titles can game the upvote without opening system.

no, this is major fail from all the financial people involved. you want your company going public when there are expectations of substantial growth. instead facebook is flattening...just what i'm looking for in an IPO, low growth

facebook should have been trading for a year already. and now the market is entering what could be a protracted decline. this reminds me of companies that went public in february of 2000. so obvious the train had already left the station...

In this case, I wouldn't care much about the growth of the user base, which is pretty ubiquitous regardless of some dropoff or slow growth. Rather, the only number I'd care about is the growth of profits and advertising, which is relatively unknown at the moment.

Because when other social networks have stopped growing, they have massively shrunk as the next big thing has come along.

Of course, it's very possible that that argument is mixing up cause and effect, and this is still a relatively young field. But the implication is that, if facebook isn't relevant to pretty much everyone, then it will eventually be eaten up by something that is.

I'm not the biggest fan of facebook, but this guy is completely unqualified to comment on the intricacies of long-term growth and sustainability in social media... just look at his profile: http://blogs.forbes.com/people/timworstall/

He has nothing to do with the technology industry.

Also, he doesn't back up his rhetoric with data... this is an opinion piece and a flaky one at that.

Isn't the problem that no-one is currently qualified to comment on the long term potential growth or sustainability of social media? It simply hasn't been around long enough to make any comparisons with the past useful.

You're right, that there isn't much data, but the fact that user growth seems to have at least stalled (if not started to decrease) in the richest markets in which Facebook has a presence has got to be a worry.

Assuming that the yearly value of a user is roughly proportional to national GDP per capita, Facebook needs to gain 40 users in India to make up for every one it loses in the US.

Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.

Asking the dude who stayed at a Holiday Inn how to shutdown the nuclear plant will fail 99.999% of the time.

His flaky opinion piece seems to have done a reasonable job of starting a conversation.

I like this line in the submitted article: "But to value every company as if they are the next Google, rather than valuing them all as if one of them might be, is pretty much the definition of a bubble." I think there is insight in that. Not every big new online service can have the long-term revenue growth and user engagement that Google has managed to achieve. (Some of the stories about Groupon point out aptly that Groupon spends much of its revenue on Google promotions, so who is the winner when Google, a profitable company, is paid by Groupon, a company that is losing money on every sale?)

That said, Facebook is the one online service that gets more engagement from me, by far, even than HN or all the Google properties other than Gmail. Facebook's algorithm for prioritizing posts from friends into my home page works amazingly well at showing me the content I want to see. The Facebook secret groups feature works well for me at forming more tightly knit communities. All in all, what's cool about Facebook is that I see FRIENDS there, people I'm glad to see in real life or online.

Back when nobody needed to buy floppy disks, because AOL was endlessly mailing those out to everyone in America, I was subscribed to AOL for a while. I couldn't understand why people preferred the chat-like user discussion interface of AOL to the more threaded discussions available on other online services at the same time. I found AOL rather tedious, and eventually unsubscribed, but millions of users stayed on AOL long after I thought it had lost all of its competitive advantage over other ways of getting on the Internet. AOL had the financial strength and reputation to take over (and drain of value) Time Warner, and it still hasn't completely disappeared. I think Facebook will do at least that well for at least that long. Maybe Facebook is already in a long decline, but it will be a long, slow decline.

Is that really the definition of a bubble though?

A bubble implies irrational valuations. Trying to value a company as if they are the next Google is the purpose of the stock market and can be perfectly rational.

Google sets a standard, and by its success, it demonstrates what other similar companies could do, which gives investors more confidence in upstarts like Facebook, which then leads to higher valuations. The state of our economy also leads to higher valuations - as money is worth less today than it was when Google went public, and there are fewer productive places for investors to put their money than when Google went public.

At times when valuations become increasingly irrational you could say we are approaching a bubble, but this article's author did not offer a rational argument to back up his points.

I think Facebook has gotten boring in the same way that Google has gotten boring to me: it's become a reliable, efficient tool that I can use so quickly it's almost invisible to me. I throw up a picture every so often and get feedback from friends and family. I can plan a party and quickly/easily organize invitations. I can quickly reconnect with someone if they come to mind, whether or not I have their current phone number or e-mail (which used to be a real problem). I love how they seem to focus on their core products and speed rather than rapidly expanding the feature set (like seemingly every other social network).

The News Feed has become less and less "engaging" and chatter-filled which might be a problem for their business model, but not for me. I'm interested in most of the people on my friends list in some way, but their stray thoughts aren't the best way of relating to them.

So, what problems do facebook/social networks solve?

* sharing photos

* keeping in touch with friends and families and getting the latest updates from them

* events

* games

* sharing links and stuff

and all these things from one place!

is there any other site/technology that provides all these benefits in one place?

The problem is, after an extended use maybe we feel sick of it all. Facebook was new and fresh when it arrived, but now it's beginning to feel like an overstayed welcome. They have accomplished the goal of making life seem, in a way, commoditized, and that makes me feel like I never want to use such a service again.

I don't think social networks are going to be entirely displaced, maybe just the ones that attempt to mirror your personal life. I think it's a kind of impedance mismatch issue--a kind of uncanny valley vibe that they give off. After doing it so long, it just feels so artificial and flaky.

I know everyone doesn't have such negative thoughts about Facebook, but I also know I'm not the only one who feels this way right now. I can't see what they or anyone could do to fix this problem, but I know a solution isn't out of the realm of possibility either.

I predict future successful social networks will be somewhat like HN or reddit--semi-anonymous, with no real connection to real life. If they can surround you with peers clustered around your interest profile, perhaps we could grow organic communities around professions and hobbies that dynamically or elastically determine membership and open channels of communication (as opposed to the current process of self-selection and direct messaging). I don't know, I'm rambling now.

>I predict future successful social networks will be somewhat like HN or reddit--semi-anonymous, with no real connection to real life. If they can surround you with peers clustered around your interest profile, perhaps we could grow organic communities around professions and hobbies that dynamically or elastically determine membership and open channels of communication (as opposed to the current process of self-selection and direct messaging). I don't know, I'm rambling now.

Isn't this problem already solved by discussion boards? :D Or is your idea different from them in some way? Please feel free to share your views.

People feel sick because it add and adds and adds and become too much to handle. UI become bloated. And after some time you're done.

What you described as future SNs are actually more history Usenet, IRC, Well, Prodigy, AOL, Geocities and so on. Yes communities will always be there but SNs are solving a different problem. SNs are more about socializing with your friends than talking what's happening with Rails project lately.

The article neglects that facebook is always looking to expand its feature set, with things like email (on top of existing chat) and music [1].

Also neglected are statistics pertaining to new account activations and account reactivations (secondary and post-secondary students make up a giant portion of the user base, and many make it a habit to deactivate temporarily during exam time).

This article just feels overly sensational, giving no credence to counter-arguments.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2584712

Agreed. Facebook will probably fall in and out of fashion, but they'll have a business as long as they use the social graph to solve real problems. I think it has a chance at winning the emerging messaging war - it's a widely adopted, proven, cross-platform messaging service.

First wave of SNs were aimed at dating as the lure (Friendster). Second wave of SNs were/are aimed at social sharing of everything and anything with everybody and anybody (FB). Third wave of SNs are aimed/will be aimed at "real" social sharing of everything and anything with only people you choose (Tusulog.com, our start-up).

We're focused on one main thought: you don't, by default, socialize with all your friends plus "acquaintances" at once. Just impossible. When you're with your family you socialize in the context of family. You don't talk about the crazy party last Saturday with your family. This is the idea we focus on.

People return to FB because of inertia basically, not necessarily because they need to. That's why they start to whine and mainstream media have been reflecting this situation.

I went over to Tusulog.com, but I didn't find anything to make me want to use it. :(

Thanks. Our site, as all SNs, are useful only if your friends are there. Classic chicken/egg situation.

If you join and have a few friends over there believe me you'll say "I wish all my friends were here then everything become much easier".

You're not helping yourself by saying absolutely nothing on the site about why it's good and what the benefits are.

I will sign up for most things that seem novel or interesting, but I won't fill out a random form with no hint of what I might get for doing so.

well -

Can I at least get a preview before I give away my credentials (say, do you support openID?)

What is so awesome about your site (how do I spell it anyway >.<)?

What does it offer better than dreamwidth, facebook, or twitter?

Understand that I want to get ROI on my signups at this point: I don't join sites just to join, or out of boredom.

Or, to put it another way: market at me; I see nothing to make me stick around your site.

It's simple to use. Uncluttered. Makes your communication with your friends easier.

We use the term "easier than" because only you can decide if it is better. I haven't used dreamwidth so no comment. Twitter and Facebook are gigantic successfull companies doing great work. For the "communication with your friends"-wise our product is easier to use.

Your ROI could be easier and more direct communication with your friends. On Tusulog you cannot broadcast to all your friends at once, only to the specific group you choose. So you don't worry about "if I post this my mom/boss/ex may see too!". This may not be a problem for power users but most people don't know how to tackle those complex privacy settings.

Can I hear the story/reasoning behind how you chose your name? And how do you pronounce "Tusulog" ?

It's an word play in Turkish. It's read as it's written.

Honest feedback:

I visited Tusulog (the name should be re-evaluated) and there was very little description of what it is, what it does, why its good, etc.

I then registered and was told that the service was meaningless unless I invited friends. Ok. Try to wedge out of the chicken and the egg, or piggyback on something else, because in all honesty, theres no way I'm inviting friends to a service of questionable value.

Something something "its not what your service does, its how people use it". Right now, for all I know, Tusulog is the most genius website ever made, I just wouldn't get to the part where I discover that.

Thanks for all the feedback. These will help us greatly. Appreciated.

First of all, we don't say it's the most genius site ever or the next Facebook. All we say is that our product makes socializing with your friends easier.

There are very few things on our to-do list before going to work on improving the home page and so. After that there will be a lot more explanation of what it is and what it does. Last but not least I hope you all will be using our product!

Facebook's biggest blunder could be their continued focus on increasing engagement at the expense of giving more granular privacy options.

There is no reason I should not be able to maintain all my different identities--as an employee, as a friend, as a son--on facebook. With the influx of my younger cousins and older family members, I had to pick my facebook identity. Now, I play it a lot more safe and don't post half the stuff I would usually do.

I like to see facebook as kind of like a physical world hangout spot. Before, it was just people of my generation. Now it is all generation mixed together in one room. And yet, there it is very possible to let me create multiple rooms and pick who I choose to have in each of my rooms.

Exactly -- facebook has turned into a giant, semi-awkward graduation party (here is your life!) where you can't really speak your mind.

"The more you tighten your grip, Zuckerberg, the more users will slip through your fingers."

To me, the end of facebook was when facebook started trying too hard to dictate to me how I would use the site.

I don't see a chronological timeline of what my friends are doing (a la twitter), I see some posts that facebook thinks I'll be interested in.

What the hell is that, facebook? Most of the things I see now are from people I really don't care about at all. The only reason I ever log in anymore is to see what a group I belong to on there is up to.

And what have you done to the pictures? Why can't I right click them and send a link to one of my friends? Facebook, maybe you've forgotten this part, but those annoying people using your website are the reason that your website exists at all. When you take stuff like that away, and when it's obvious why you're doing it (you don't want people to see facebook's pictures without facebook's branding on them [the container page, I mean, that you'll see if you use an approved sharing mechanism to share pictures]), it feels like a giant slap in the face.

There is nothing fun happening on facebook anymore, and the things that I've posted to it in the past are now impossible to find (keep scrolling and scolling and scrolling and triggering that javascript to load more things, right!?).

I don't really feel like I'm connected to the people that I'm supposedly "connected" to anymore. It sucks.

The other reason I pretty much never use facebook, is http://thingist.com/ -- a few people have said that it reminds them a lot of '05, '06 era facebook, which is cool to hear. There are no apps, there is no algo to determine what it shows you, it's just a very simple way of sharing things with a group of people (and, more importantly, keeping it organized into a list [songs I like, quotes, tools for programmers, documentaries you should watch, etc]).

Full disclosure: thingist is my side project, and my addiction. Obviously I'm not a designer, so the design is horrible, but the functionality works, and I'm addicted to it.

I don't buy it. There's no Facebook-killer at the moment to drive these people away, and they aren't going to just give up on social networks...

So instead, I think it's something else. Facebook closing invalid accounts, or something.

Agreed, currently there no real competitor to facebook, if people are closing their accounts its because they want to remove themselves from social networking all together (my one friend did this) rather than move to a different service.

Facebook is so ubiquitous now, it's like email. It will take one hell of a competitor to kill it.

I agree there is no alternative, but I think Facebook can go as quickly as it came. My experience is from using Orkut in Brazil. In 2005 Orkut was as hot as Facebook is now in the US, everyone was there. Nowadays everybody is moving to Facebook. I suspect the same thing will happen again 5 years from now.

I normally compare the odds of unseating Facebook as the same as unseating Google for search. It might happen at some point, but it will be exceptionally difficult. I think FB is so much more ingrained than any other social network has been before, say MySpace or Orkut. I really hope we do see some competition in the future.

Yes and no - personally I closed my Facebook account while becoming much more active on Twitter. No, it wasn't a direct replacement for me, and my reasons for using both services were very different, but the fact that I don't find Facebook useful doesn't mean I don't find any type of "social networking" useful.

I'm finding Twitter of at least some limited use too. The big difference is that I don't follow my "friends", I follow people that know a lot about things I find professionally and artistically interesting, most of whom I'll probably never meet in person.

"Facebook is about people you were friend with, Twitter is about people you wish you'd be friend with"

-- approximate quote from someone I can't recall

This is not quite exact in reality, but I think it captured the difference in essence between the two social platforms.

I see the reality in the Twitter part (even though I'm not a user of twitter myself). But I think that the Facebook part of that assertion is outdated.

It used to be true that I only had friends on Facebook. But nowadays I have way more acquaintances than friends. My point is, if Facebook was still today only about people I am friends with I would still use it as much as 4 years ago. But nowadays the signal to noise ratio is way too low for me to really get anything out of the platform:

* I'm reminded of birthdays of people I don't even know how I met

* I see pictures on my news feed from people partying that I don't recognize...

PS: I might not be a good example of the average user, since I've also been moving from one country to another over the past few years accelerating the process by witch everyday friends turn into acquaintances

EDIT: fixed formatting

Of course there are alternatives. Twitter is an alternative (not saying its a killer though). An alternative doesn't (and really shouldn't) have to contain all of the same features or work in the same way. It's just something that you use instead of. The Windows killer turned out to be "The Internet". Although it's a different beast, it moved Windows to the background. The Facebook killer might very well be a protocol for sharing things on the net. Or simply more sites adding their own social features. Or something no one has thought of yet.

I don't see Twitter as a competitor, for me they're too different and I don't see any problem using both of them parallel. Comparing Windows apps to web-apps; I think for the end-user they're conceptually very similar, just delivered differently. Is GMail that different from Outlook to the user? I think your average person will want something at least a little similar to Facebook; I don't think Twitter is that thing.

It's usually not competitors that can hurt or even kill a product, it's substitute goods. Cart manufacturers in the early 20th century didn't see their business diminishing because of the sudden emergence of a better cart manufacturer, it has happened because of the invention of the automobile.

Similarly, if something threatens Facebook's position, it's quite possible that it will be a substitute product, not a direct competitor. A significant substitute product of Facebook is real life interactions with your friends, for example.

A significant substitute product of Facebook is real life interactions with your friends, for example.

I think that's totally missing the point. I don't think anyone uses Facebook as a substitute for real life interaction. I imagine that most people use it partially to coordinate the meeting up with said friends and partially to interact with people whom, due geography or various life circumstances, it is infeasible to meet up with in real life. I doubt there are many people who'd rather sit at home and read their friend's Facebook updates if they have the option to pop around the corner and meet them face to face.

I know way too many people personally who do exactly that. I'll let other decide if it's a good or a bad thing, but in my experience an awful lot of people use social networks instead of real life interactions. I think those of us who live far away from our friends and family are in minority.

About half of my Facebook friends (IRL) are actually too far away to meet up with in real life. Facebook is a handy way to "keep up".

Unfortunately they don't post as often as I would like - instead preferring to talk "face to face". :-(

I agree that an incumbent is very hard to be beaten head-on. Examples: Google on search. Microsoft on OS or Office.

Over time monopolistic players start to be everything for everybody. This may be just fine but in addition to that they promote bloat at the expense of their main product's usability. That's when new players emerge.

Would you be opposed to considering the idea that the "social network" fad is nearing its end? We devs tend to see social as though it were a silver bullet for our apps; "Make it social, people love being social!"

Maybe people are just rediscovering hanging out in person. I know that I, personally, get no value out of Facebook, whereas I get a ton out of hanging out with people.

One other thing that may be contributing is that on Facebook, activity is required. Facebook has no equivalent of sitting back, relaxing, and silently watching a movie with people.

Yes, because while I can see it's fad-ish, it also serves a need. My friends use the event invites to schedule their parties and it's really easy, since everyone already has a facebook account.

If I tried to get them to switch to another party planning service, I know the answer will be 'It's too hard to get everyone to make an account there. We've already got accounts here.'

I have seen the RSVP scale slide from yes means yes to yes means maybe, maybe means no and no means hell no. Your group of friends may be different, but mine tends to either use email or do invites in person. From this point of view FB is useless to me.

I RSVP'ed to a demonstration against Norway's new data retention law, to take place in my town's major square. Several thousand people had RSVP'ed "yes". I was actually quite psyched at the tought of our own "Tahrir Square" moment. Ultimately, perhaps a total of 100 people showed up. The law passed.

Facebook is going to have to be a lot more than Evite++ to justify its valuation in the long-term though.

Why wouldn't people just give up on social networks? I think a lot of people initially sign up because a lot of their real-life friends do, use it for a while, and then get bored. To me, sites like facebook just become a hassle after a while. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels the same way.

Agreed. I like spending face-to-face time with my friends not so much because I expect them to say something really new or surprising; we know each other too well at this point for that. I just happen to enjoy their company. A firehose of trivia from their daily lives is just an annoying distraction.

Exactly, like myself, i've noticed a lot less noise from my friends on facebook. In my circle people use FB considerably less than when I first used it 5years ago.

It may not need another killer. You get iPhone and after that you're bored and want to try another one.. same analogy..

This recent spurt of articles about how Facebook is supposedly declining is based entirely on the Facebook self service ad tool as far as I can tell. An initial study of the numbers that the tool was reporting back was compared more recently and the differences supposedly indicate drop off in numbers.

None of the subsequent articles that I've read seem to mention how the data was gathered, just that Facebook has lost X amount of users in Y country. I for one dont think that Facebook's publicly accessible ad tool is a very sophisticated or accurate way of measuring FB's user numbers.

They also fail to mention if it's a net loss. Sure, 6 million accounts were closed, but if 60 million new accounts were opened in that same time period, then there's not much point in worrying.

And Facebook themselves has said the the tool (which they own and maintain) provides a provides a useful sample of data, not a comprehensive data set. This is much the same way that Google Adwords estimator tool works.

I'm not a huge fan of Social networking and/or providing Facebook with my personal info, but as a musician and small business owner the idea of not having a social profile seems a little ridiculous. I also agree, it's going to be difficult to find or build a Facebook killer, but what about a network that works with Facebook offering some of the services they offer with less non-sense, more utilities and a level of customer service that is not possible with a user group of hundreds of millions. There is no doubt that Facebook is great at social networking but that still doesn't mean it's annoying. I use my Facebook account almost everyday but rarely do I post status updates or even look at my news feed. I do, however, like the access it gives me to other utilities on the web with the little effort it requires once you have a FB account. Much of what I do for work would not happen if I needed to create accounts for every service I wanted to check out.

With that said, sorry for the plug...I created http://fishtaank.com, AKA, my weekend project... for the last three years. It's a small collection of open source scripts I've found on the web that allows musicians and businesses to create a better social profile thats focuses more on what they do/offer as opposed to what they say. Trivia question of the day? who cares...

http://fishtaank.com/profile/Beerfarmer -

My comment would be that the author is conflating growth in users and page views to revenue growth. While the two are very highly correlated, they are not the same thing. How Facebook monetizes its users and page views doesn't have to be a 1:1 relationship. The question should be how Facebook will derive ever more revenue from each user over time. Slowing user growth is certainly an easy proxy to use in lieu of real revenue numbers, but it is a gross oversimplification.

Yes, there is oversimplification, but one observation I believe is correct:

IPO in 2012 is too late.

People will cash in their options by the dozens and move on. If you IPO at peak, this effect is multiplied. If you IPO way before that peak, some might leave, but since the stock is still going up, they will continue to work those 12 hours a day for you.

However, I'm no expert on this stuff! It's just what I would do.

Maybe its the progression of the web as a communication medium vs fads. Initially there was geocities and webpages, then blogs came along.

The next step was Myspace with its Geocities like system, but actual network style functionality. Along with the rise of the social network ecosystem was user-gen content websites and comments. Comments on blogs and discussion forums mixed with shared links pushed through 4chan, forums, and then Digg.

Along with these useful mediums was also the fad like rush. If its cool then you have to use it. Myspace was to ugly though and Facebook brought along format, and styling, like the Apple way.

Facebook has some brilliant underlying concepts - Events and Messaging mediums in an online world. Much better than email and sms.

There are also several layers of society and how they interact. The social to be social groups, and the not so noisy users who like it when they visit a city can see old mates.

Facebook will still be the top web-based social communication medium (besides email for business). When HTML5 comes out and web-gaming increases more, you'll see a bigger explosion of Facebook usage I think.

I used to be on it all the time because everyone was on, but as my friends got older, their companies blocked use of it at work, the people left just blab about how awesome their significant others are, hawk their business products & nightclub parties, or post baby pics all day.

The people really care about are on now for a few hours/minutes from 6 to 11:45 (if that) so my usage has cut down as well ... once in the morning, at lunch and at night.

I use twitter a lot more now as a result. I guess facebook has a new challenge, keeping older folks engaged and selling facebook to younger kids who are growing up on twitter instead of facebook as the dominant social media scene.

TL;DR: Author had a deadline to meet so he wrote about how nobody, himself included, knows whether or not Facebook will be big and awesome forever. Attached a catchy title for the pageviews that his performance will be judged by.

I am so terribly sick of this: The headline is "The End of Facebook", followed immediately by the lede "Perhaps a little premature, this idea that the end of Facebook is nigh, but certainly the end of the beginning," which essentially completely debunks the entire headline right off the bat.

Writers: If you can't write anything compelling enough to not need to be carried by an overly sensationalist headline, please put your pens down and go sell used cars.

It really seems that facebook may have overextended their good will with the public in repeatedly forcing privacy concessions. Only time will tell.

In any case, I'm not sure that this link isn't more than phishing for hits.

Yes, some people it's committing facebookcide but is pretty much irrelevant for you!

Go make a good damn startup yourself and stop procrastinating wasting your attention on overdramatized utterly irrelevant headlines.

This is a little off topic, but did anyone else immediately discredit this article when they saw "to" where "too" was supposed to be? On Forbes of all places...

Even Michael Jordan missed the occasional dunk. It wasn't a reason to kick him off the team.

There is nothing less interesting or meaningful than a typo.

(Even more off-topic)

You really reminded me of Jordan's "Failure" commercial, which everyone should see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc

This article, and it's source article, fail to reveal the new adoption rates. It's one-sided, and I agree with makeramen, it's linkbait.

Damn, all these hyperbolic, link bait titles are killing me.

facebook is the new myspace

For some reason all this makes me grind my teeth. I'm not a Facebook apologist, and I definitely don't side with the 'FB is utter shit' camp, but it just seems like articles like this, and so much of the discussion they generate, totally sail past the point of what the rise of social networking (and the rise of these dissatisfactions) signifies.

This article: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100092236/is-th... the article the link leeches off, is more fleshed out but also has some 300 comments. Most of it is inane but somewhere in there in all the shit people are talking and all the haughty know-it-all declarations of what is and isn't worthwhile, and what will and will not occur in the future, there's something really significant encapsulated about how our society is changing, and how Facebook and the internet is linked in to that change. There's a big clue in all this discussion - but these newspaper 'experts' sure as shit aren't going to point it out for us.

it will be disastrous for facebook to go public if their network is seen as being in decline or even flat. investors care more about losing users in the US than they do gaining users in developing markets.

facebook needs to IPO yesterday. facebook fatigue is real and won't go away, and if it picks up momentum things could get ugly for a group of investors that have banked on massive potential gains

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