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Comment by TrainedMonkey | Hacker News Reader

I think it is unlikely that there will be another Facebook. Will there be a big social media website if Facebook dies? Probably yes, and in the near future it will likely be Google+.

So if there was no Facebook would another Facebook clone take it's place? Intuitive answer is yes, until you start thinking. How did Facebook got so big? It was best product on the market. So now Facebook is dead, what happened to Facebook? Is there a reason it died, if Facebook could not survive, how will it clones will not only survive, but thrive?

So here I would like to make a small prediction. The only way there will be another Facebook, if someone would make something better. Something which will either do things that Facebook does better - and hence kill it off, or something that will open entire new market.

TL:DR If you want to get big you can't be another Facebook: you either must be different or better.

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Facebook is the latest in a long range of "clones". It's not the first social media website of its kind, nor the 5th. Many have enjoyed temporary success in this market only to get crushed by some small misstep or other, or simply because something slightly better came along.

How many here remember sixdegrees.com? (1996) That's the first social networking site I remember signing up to...

Of course you must be "different", but the difference between each successive evolutionary step from Six Degrees to Facebook has been tiny.

While it is getting harder as the size of the successive networks have gotten bigger (SixDegrees reached a low number of million users), because of the network effects, it's not so much about features as about finding a way of building the network to a tipping point, and social networks are incredibly fickle and subsets can migrate to new services because they are not the dominant network.

This. There is a definite finite life cycle of social sites. Would do investors well to study the rise, domination, fall, and practical disappearance of such sites. BBSs, usenet, Compuserve, AOL (freaking bought Time-Warner!), MySpace, many others - all out to take over the world at one time, all legitimately worth vast sums at their peak, all now little more than rotting corpses. Know when to invest, know when to cash out, know when to stay away.

Don't forget simply being new and fresh comes with a lot of benefits. Why do kids make top secret forts, no adults allowed? Why do people go to those little hole in the wall coffee shops and restaurants, where there is only one or two tables, and an old women behind the counter? The food? Sure, but even more so because the atmosphere feels unique and unspoiled by the mainstream. Why do people always search out new bands that no one else has discovered?

People like to be unique. They don't like to be grouped in with the rest of the world. This is especially true with teenagers. You don't have to make a better Facebook, you just have to make a new Facebook. It needs that feeling of being fun and exclusive, which Facebook is quickly lacking and can never gain.

Google+ will never succeed. Yes, they've invested countless dollars and time from some of the brightest minds available, but the name Google is simply too big, and too well known. It's boring from day one, there's nothing cool or hip about signing up on Google+.

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