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Comment by josu | Hacker News Reader

So were Yahoo and AOL. If specialized apps start to show up, people may start ditching FB altogether.

Not too sure about that. All of my friends (I'm 23) have FB and while we all more or less hate it we wouldn't dream of not being on FB. It's the best way to connect with someone you meet (through friends, at a bar, etc) and you don't have to ask for a number. Just friend request, chat a little bit and if it works out swap numbers and move to SMS.

Like your parent said I see FB as "essential social plumbing", not the most glamorous or best but a necessity and way to connect to people before you go "off FB" to another app or SMS to chat/interact. The only reason I "post" to FB is b/c my Twitter posts to FB. I rarely use Twitter except from trying to get companies attention after having them ignore support requests or not having any other support at all. Multiple times I've used a websites/app's built in ticketing system only to get no response. A pissed tweet a couple days later and I've got a response within the hour... The squeaky wheel...

> we wouldn't dream of not being on FB

And 10 years ago I wouldn't dream of not having my ICQ friends. Your dreams are not the /most/ relevant.

I am not talking about the future, I'm talking about right now, at this moment. I can't predict the future but I can give my view point from this point in time and that's what I've done. I'm sorry that's not good enough for you.

Your reply was in reference to the future, so it's logical for a reader to assume that's what you were talking about.

> If specialized apps start to show up, people may start ditching FB altogether.

And just because it's happened in the past does not guarantee that it will happen again. People have been predicting the downfall of Facebook for years, but it keeps growing.

It will, I can think of a ton of services I've used in the past that one day you just stop logging on. You don't even remember the last day of using them, just one day you stop. Then slowly everyone stops. (E.g., AOL, AIM, Geocities, IRC^, MySpace, and most recently Path & Instagram).

I assume the same will happen in my life for Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. One day I will just stop.

^I use IRC for dev stuff now, but there was a good 5 years where it was no longer a part of my life. I was a gamer who played CS in the early 2000s.

Obviously nothing stays around forever. But there is a big difference between a trendy app that everyone uses for a couple years and then stops, and Facebook, which many people don't use on a daily basis but still keep it around because its usefulness outweighs the effort required to keep your account. I have friends who have deleted their Facebook accounts, only to come back a month later with a very basic account just because they need to keep in touch with some circle of friends that they otherwise wouldn't be able to.

Not at all obvious to the investors who value these companies at tens and hundreds of billions of dollars. They don't expect them to dissapear in 5-10 years

Seeing as how Facebook has been around for over 10 years now, I don't see how that's relevant in this case.

Reddit? Perish the thought :-)

He mentions exactly that in the article. A lot of 10-16 year olds he knows don't even have FB accounts.

10-16 year olds also live with their parents and often "hate" them. Now that more adults are there, it's not as natural to get on Facebook as a teenager/pre-teen.

Will they join later when they move out and seek ways to stay connected with family? Who knows - but I can definitely see why they're not there yet. I'm older, but the only reason I joined Facebook was to have a way to keep in touch with family once I moved 2000 miles away to California.

You can be sure Facebook will acquire any threatening social networks.

Except Snapchat which refused acquisition so far

Probably because Facebook hasn't offered them enough billions yet. This article and author certainly seems to be promoting Snapchat well though.

Facebook could offer Snapchat 20B and Evan Spiegel wouldn't take it

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