Half of Americans think Facebook is a fad
cnn.com
cnn.com
Then you learn leaving Facebook is easy and fun -- http://joshuaspodek.com/leaving-facebook-easy-and-fun.
After deactivating my account, the only reason I haven't logged in one last time to message everyone that I left (mainly because I find their privacy policies creepy and getting more so) is that I'm in China for a month, which blocks Facebook.
Don't use the site for a few days and you find you don't miss it. At least that's my experience. Missing the invitations and updates from there didn't leave me alone in a room with nothing to do. I did other things, with people who invited me in person or directly.
As have all people in my generation, I saw the boom and bust of AOL, and it wouldn't surprise me at all for Facebook not merely to become uncool but also actively to lose money. It's been done before. I've been surprised, actually, at how well Facebook has scaled (I never thought its servers would be able to keep up with so many user actions in real time) and I've been pleasantly surprised too at how well I like to interact even with friends I regularly see in person on Facebook. But I could well believe that something shinier or newer could come along and draw away my friendship network as rapidly as it has been drawn away from other online services in the past.
College is a weird out-of-band gap in most people's social lives, and it's not really any meaningful indication of how they will live post-college.
Using the number of text messages sent/received per month often vastly distorts the picture. When you've got an unlimited texting plan, many of the texts you send are just "yes", "no", "lol", or ":)".
Perhaps you meant "spiked"?
But none of these services do anything that wasn't already available via incumbent technologies (which were somewhat inaccessible to non-geeks), e.g. BBSes, Usenet, IRC, IM, web forums, etc., and people have been developing more accessible iterations of these types of technologies (reddit, for example), and people will eventually migrate away from the constrained, privacy-compromising services like Facebook into the wider internet.
People say that the open web is dead, but I think the walled garden approach is never really long-term sustainable.
You don't think so, because ... ?
Facebook is trying to be the middleman in its user's online experience, and we all know what the internet does to middlemen.
I'm even more pessimistic than that about it. I think the real lesson of all these predecessors such as AOL is that you can't put a wall around the garden in the first place. You can say you have, but that would be putting your mouth in a place your money shouldn't follow.
People thought nobody would leave the AOL because of network effects - if all your friends are there, and your Internet social life is centered there, then that would create a barrier to exit. What it seems to really create is something more like the effect that happens in real-life social gatherings: For a while people may stay, but only because of social pressure. They're actually ready to leave, they're just waiting for a cue that causes them to be comfortable with leaving. That usually comes in the form of someone else finally deciding to go. That triggers a chain reaction so that all of a sudden, a party that seemed to be still going strong empties out all at once and without much warning.
A lot like the WeLL, AOL, MySpace, etc.
People have been dismissing geek-centric alternativesl like Diaspora for having a built-in limitation on growth, but most communities on the internet - and the internet itself - grew out of geeks gradually building up enough of a user base to pull in everyone else. Maybe it just takes time.
BTW, I received my first Diaspora invite this week.
lol
facebook is merely a service that will exist till some better service comes along.
disclaimer. never had a facebook account.
The inevitable comparison when this comes up is to Friendster or MySpace, but it's really a poor one. Neither had anywhere the reach of Facebook even at their height, nor a large percentage of the world's internet users. Earlier social networks had significant competitors. Isn't it remarkable that in the ~4 years that Facebook has been dominant, _nobody_ has successfully challenged it?
Facebook will likely diminish in importance at some point, but it's not going to happen any time soon.
I don't think Facebook is a "fad" but I do think that it has a shelf life. It annoys me. I do get to keep up with the lives of people I once knew... but it annoys me. And honestly I'm not sure what annoys me more, Facebook or the people that treat Facebook like the Golden Calf. I would rather be on G+ but their lack of a full feature API is a barrier.
It very weird to watch a American society buy stock in the very company that is trying to enslave them.
Having lots of capital might have enabled Facebook's short-term success, but you need a lot more than capital to sustain a compelling product and maintain a market over the long term.
It's possible that this is just the lifecycle of social networks - they gradually get infiltrated by money and adults, and the young people move on, causing the network to stagnate and die.
I guess it's still possible that there's a niche for a stable, long-term social network for people over 30, but I guess only time will tell.
Kids who feel the need to be somewhere cooler will be both there and on Facebook.
Why is that outcome not more likely than Facebook will stagnate and die?
Also, I think we don't like dividing our attention/loyalty.
It's seriously fucked up, though. Now that I'm free of the Facebook mental disease, it's disgusting to watch my friends in college mindlessly scrolling through the News Feed and not reacting to anything. Down, back up, back down... Facebook will be easy to replace with something new soon, I think that will be a really opportunistic window in about a year or so.
Aha, now I know why Google+ seems so pleasant :)
The one thing I used to miss is party invites that get sent out to the masses. I would often not hear about them, so I started only going to parties I was personally invited to. Also much happier this way.
Come on, that doesn't prove anything. Nobody else uses Google Plus either.
"facebook is stupid and for old people. It will change instagram"
Edit: By the way, most of teens use facebook heavily
It's possible that this is just the lifecycle of social networks - they gradually get infiltrated by money and adults, and the young people move on, causing the network to stagnate and die."
I've considered Facebook a nightclub for a long time, but somebody (I think Mark Susser) said that the difference was timing, and Myspace and Friendster were simply too early. That made me pause to think, and I have to admit there may be something to it.
So my opinion these days is that there's a small chance he'll turn out to be right, and a much stronger chance that these things are nightclubs - "nobody goes there because it's too crowded" is the beginning of the end for them, and it hits all of them sooner or later.
Two words: Friends Reunited.
In this way, they gather together a core group of users who in turn draw marketshare away from others both within and outside of their generational cohort.
In my family, it certainly worked that way with my sister pulling my mother, father, and eventually myself into using Facebook as the primary way to share family information.
Based upon the history of the internet industry and especially social networks its a lot riskier to say something will be relevant in 5-10 years than not
Edit: Grammar
Facebook is one part of it. Texting is another. Phone calls are big with some friends (mostly with family). Email combines massive amounts of information that's not immediately useful (payment verification, tracking numbers, bank statements, etc) with a response that's far from instant. Combine that with the "no one uses it, because no one uses it" effect, and email is one of the most inconsequential technologies in my life.
But Facebook is not, at its core, integral to their/our lives. Instant broadcast information is. Like I say quite often, the iPhone didn't need Apple to make it, Apple just happened to be the one who did. Facebook could be supplanted tomorrow by anything, and the effect would be exactly the same.
Don't you prefer things piling up in a queue(email) rather than being constantly distracted?
Just because I'm made aware of something instantly doesn't mean it will take all my attention instantly, just that I can now process and prioritize that event within whatever else I have going on.
I tried several other keywords without encountering any problems.
The CNN article was basically this mashable post: http://mashable.com/2012/05/15/facebook-fad/
The bulk of my news feed is the same 4-5 people. I was shocked to find that when I checked in yesterday 6 "friends" had deactivated their account within the last 2 weeks. I have vastly scaled back my own activity to only checking in once a week. I have less than 5 status/stories in the last year. When I look on my friends' walls/timelines, I see the same amount of activity. This same group of friends would generate that amount of activity in a week. With the better privacy controls, most friends including myself don't share tagged photos anymore.
The only thing I still see Facebook being used for in my circle is chat with Google Chat just as popular.
Will Facebook continue to grow for the next few years? Yes, it will grow outside the U.S. Will Facebook continue to grow in the U.S.? No, the "cool" factor is gone. I think it has already peaked. Will Facebook stock go up after IPO? Yep Is it the next AOL? I believe so.
* 18-39 -- few people think it's a fad.
* 39-60 -- many people think it's a fad.
* 61+ -- most people think it's a fad or don't get it.
Lump all the groups together and you get 45% believing FB is a fad.
I know I'm stereotyping horribly, but I can't see a lot of legitimacy in a survey that clumps everyone together into one big group when the subgroups probably have wildly varying opinions.
I imagine half of Americans think far more foolish things.
are you implying that 'fads' can't be extremely profitable?
maybe the term "fad" gives it a different connotation, but people get rich off of economic bubbles all the time, and I would assume those can be classified as 'fads' as well...
This should be fun to watch.