Parrying the Latest Predictions of Facebook’s Demise

I don't find my Facebook experience more disrupted. There was a time when ads started appearing on my feed. And they stopped again.

I get the impression Facebook is highly attuned to how much engagement it gets and does everything it can to keep that high.

I think the problem is more just the problem you get being at a party with interesting people for a long time. No matter how interesting the people might be, you get tired of them after a while.

Moreover, the process of disenchantment and disengagement happens at a different rate for different people. And because Facebook works hard to engage the people who are engage-able, you get an effect where some people have left, some people at the door hoping for others to shut up so they can leave and some people are happily engaged with the remainder of the party.

And it seems like longer term, the process of disengagement will only increase because the division between those "still at the party" and those who have left will tend to breed antipathy.

Oddly, I think you also have a division between those who post photos of themselves and those who post little comments and links - good looking photos are hard to maintain and so the photo part only happen occasionally. Snark can happen often. And so you the splitting of social groups.

And this is a social experiment, more or less, effecting millions of people today.