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Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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

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