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> When all these kids leave their high schools and head off to college where are they going to keep in touch with their old friends, Facebook.

If teenagers decide to congregate on a different social network, why would they stop using that and go back to facebook just because they go to college?

If you and your closest friends find a better place online to meet that doesn't suffer from facebook's "everybody's there and can see what you're doing" problem, why wouldn't you continue meeting there after high school?

"If teenagers decide to congregate on a different social network, why would they stop using that and go back to facebook just because they go to college?"

Not only that but parent comment (which does make some valid points) doesn't take into account what could be called the reverse network effect. If stories of facebook's lack of popularity continue to surface (as well as the reasons for it) things would begin to accelerate (stock drops, advertisers no longer see it in a positive light) users who wouldn't leave begin to leave or discover alternatives, someone is spurred on to develop a product which attracts more of their users etc. In other words usage drops, morale at facebook drops it's no longer the place to be. Facebook hasn't been around that long and after a while it is entirely possible that even users today will tire of it and move elsewhere. And losing the network effect will make it less valuable to anyone who sticks around.

That was exactly what happend to the German clones from the so called "VZ" group. The where designed after facebook, but before its internationalisation.

Once FB gained traction here, it was a lost fight for the VZs. The other local social networks suffered as well.

But here the next big thing for the kids/youth is Instagram. So the stay with FB. But listening to them when I commute, it really is, "Have you seen thet thing on Instagram..." when one year back it was "... seen oon FB..."

yep, that's a realistic observation. seen that too

Good thing Facebook were smart enough to buy Instagram. And more importantly, have been smart enough to not screw with it (just look at all the Google+/YouTube blowback)

Bebo, Hyves, MySpace were very popular among teenagers.

Your life dramatically changes after high school, and the types of products and services you use change with it.

Worrying about your parents being on the same social network as yourself ceases to be an issue when you become an adult yourself, and you no longer have to hide the fact that you were out partying when you were supposed to be studying at a friend's house. And as the GP notes, Facebook solves the problem that teens haven't yet had to confront - how do you catch up with your friends when you don't seem them several times a week?

In fact, the thing that has made Facebook such a phenomenon is not that teens found it cool, but rather that the much larger older population found it useful. I would be willing to bet that teens don't even make up 10% of Facebook at this point in time. When adults stop posting and stop receiving notifications on Facebook, then Facebook has something to worry about. Until then, my money would be on teens gravitating back to Facebook as they get older, and being cool becomes less important than knowing that all of your friends are contactable on Facebook.

Anecdote: I'm 55 and I do not have a facebook account. I was recently taken severely to task for this grave omission by cousins, one in her late 60s and the other in his early 70s.

That is a big and growing market, as the 'silver surfers' increase their smartphone/tablet skills and find the web applications that enable them to achieve a major goal: contacting far flung family.

I may have to cave in because they want to use FB for organising family meetups (this is an extended mafia with branches on 4 continents by the way).

Remember your Clay Christensen: The late majority follow the early adopters. In this case, this means where the teenagers move to, that is where the parents will eventually go. The writing has been on the wall for this for a few years now -- FB doesn't stand a chance to last out the decade.

Teenagers as a group are not trendsetters for other age groups, for example when did you ever see a Justin Bieber hairdo on anyone over the age of 17?

They are time rich and money poor, a situation that reverses as you get older. They live geographically close to most of their friends. This is mostly not true for adults, who tend to be time poor, wealthier than teenagers, and geographically separated from their friends. Because of this, looking to teenagers to understand what most people want from their social media does not seem like a particularly good idea to me.

"when did you ever see a Justin Bieber hairdo on anyone over the age of 17?"

Give it a few years...

"In this case" because remember -- they were the ones that started the migration to FB; in this case, they were exactly "the trendsetters for other age groups" and so if they move, your early adopters are moving and the late majority will follow.

Additionally, non-facebook users will find that when they go to college, they won't know when any of the parties are (and they won't know about any of the study groups). If you're a person that has that typical human need to belong, university almost forces you to log into facebook.

For many people, being on the same social network as your parents is still problematic in college.

Facebook solves the problem that teens haven't yet had to confront - how do you catch up with your friends when you don't seem them several times a week?

Twitter. Every teen I know, though admittedly a small sample, says that facebook is for old people and twitter is the way they communicate with each other. Constantly.

Until then, my money would be on teens gravitating back to Facebook as they get older...knowing that all of your friends are contactable on Facebook. No they won't be. The ones in their social circle will be on twitter or something like that that replaces it. Facebook will gray out; even the older people I know that haven't deleted their profile yet are getting tired of it.

I agree Facebook would have no benefit for me when I was a teenager since all the people I wanted to interact with and cared about were close by and easy to get a hold of in school or via phone.

When Facebook went mainstream I was already in university and had started losing contact with people from grade school, high school etc. But facebook allowed me to reconnect with those people and some of my best friends today are actually people that I knew but didn't spend alot of time with in grade school because they were in different classes but through FB realized they had very similar personalities to me and we became great friends.

Facebook is also the preferred means of organizing events, groups and using messaging instead of e-mails in almost all of my friend circles.

May view may be skewed though since I'm from Iceland where Facebook has something close to 50% of the whole country has a Facebook account and 90% in the 25-35 age group. But I live in London though where the use of Facebook is a mixed bag, most of the foreigners here I know use it but my English friends seem less interested in it and prefer e-mail over FB messages.

Exactly correct. The further your friends are from you the more you want to interact with them in some way. If everyone you know is at school who needs FB. I keep in touch with friends from two generations many of whom are spread all over the world and even those locally I don't see often enough.

However I wish FB would be replaced by something simpler that was just for keeping in touch with friends and little else. But since everyone is on FB it's hard to change until everyone has (1) a better choice (2) a reason to leave.

I never cared for the various made up features on FB such as likes, pokes, wall posts etc. but yes, like you said, the keeping in touch really is its killer app. It's basically a self-updating rolodex with discovery.

Yes

Facebook is more of a "friends catalog", you don't care about the newsfeed so much but it allows you to interact in some ways.

But the real action happens elsewhere.

Right, because teens were never the original market anyway. A lot of us original Facebookers hated it when FB opened up to high schoolers.

The "us" in your comment shows the genius behind Zuckerberg's exclusivity as a growth model and it's seeming irony.

Well, that's one possibility, but high schoolers were hooked on Facebook too, at least before it opened up to the general public. The generation that uses Facebook now has used it since high school or college, but the next generation didn't start using in high school and they might not start in college, either. Maybe Facebook is less of a "stage of life" thing and more of a generational thing.

Excellent point. Every two or three week or so, I'm wondering why I'm still on FB. Answer? Because there are those people I met when I was traveling a lot, and even though we don't talk much or at all, it's good to know that there is this one central place where I can get in touch with any of them.

you forgot skype and many other new contenders, what you say sounds highly biased and short sighted. I totally agree with @raverbashing he is so right that Facebook is nothing more than a friends catalog.