Uncovered emails showed how Meta struggled to keep Facebook culturally relevant

Facebook isn't dead because friending is heavy, it's dead because people's timelines are filled with garbage they don't care about rather than content from the friends they willingly chose.

If you ask me, Facebook died the moment that they started to put random garbage, randomly ordered on your timeline.

Hardly a shock as Facebook is not culturally relevant anymore. I guess it is a surprise that they were / are aware enough to know it too.

If I had to pick a date that facebooks cultural relevance peaked it would be the day of the IPO in 2012.

It’s a pretty clear corollary from the network effect: if social networks are only useful when a lot of people use them, a decrease in user engagement is the beginning of a death spiral. Fewer users -> Facebook is less useful -> fewer users.

Part of the problem is that friendship is binary: you’re either a friend or you’re not. But that leaves little wiggle room as people’s lives and real world relationships evolve. You’re constantly being reminded about old friendships that are much less relevant now.