This is borne out by my experience. A slowly increasing number of my friends are cutting down their use, and eventually leaving. This might just be due to my cohort of friends getting older, but the article claims it is a general trend.
What is definitely true, is that nobody I know feels anything positive about facebook, at all. It is seen simply as a sinister, addictive[1] necessary evil. This is the case regardless of technical expertise. They continue to use it purely because of inertia and lock in. Yet they are not interested in twitter either.
Much like smoking, many people get into it as teenagers because everyone's doing it, now in their 20s they've realised that it sucks but they can't stop.
There is definitely a market for a social network thats simpler, but still full-featured like facebook, but above all one that's less "evil." One that's vocally dedicated to your privacy, and whose every move doesn't seem so machiavellianly calculated to keep you coming back, to the point where you begin to feel like you're living in a dystopian future world.
I realise that's just a long way of saying "less profitable" or even "not profitable," but there we are.
[1] The main slang term for facebook amongst it's younger users in the UK is "facecrack." It has been called that for years.
Facebook needs to take a lesson from what has happened to Microsoft. Microsoft is making its best products ever but the reputation of Windows is so soured that it doesn't matter. People associate Windows with viruses and crashes. Now people use Windows because they have to, not because they want to.
Facebook is in danger of suffering the same thing. Like you, I have a lot of non-technical friends who feel uneasy about Facebook; they just don't trust it. They feel the games are scammy. They find that they can access their pictures when logged out. They use it any ways. But increasingly, they don't like it.
> What is definitely true, is that nobody I know feels anything positive about facebook, at all. It is seen simply as a sinister, addictive[1] necessary evil.
You and your friends probably spend so much time online for work that you reproach yourselves for excesses like Facebook. (FWIW I'm no different.) The majority of the normal, non-technical users I know don't view Facebook as evil. They just think of it as something everybody uses nowadays, like e-mail. I don't think those users are going anywhere anytime soon.
Facebook has reached an inevitable point where everyone who hasn't signed up either doesn't want to, or can't (no internet access). I mean, do you know anyone who really wants to sign up for Facebook but hasn't gotten around to it yet? It's no surprise that their growth would eventually slow. I wouldn't read too much into it. They're going to be around for a long, long time.
Well said, and I'm seeing the same behavior and attitudes with friends and acquaintances. The high school and college students I've talked to recently have similar feelings about Facebook as well.
There are a lot of emerging social networks (Hibe, Pidder, Necter) who emphasize privacy a lot more than Facebook and don't have the baggage -- as well as the whole open source Diaspora/AppleSeed/OneSocialWeb/etc. distributed social network movement. True, right now none of them have Facebook's "everybody's there" advantage. But people's dislike for Facebook is so pervasive that I really wonder how much longer they'll continue to be so successful.
As a counterpoint, I moved to a new area five months ago, and I have found Facebook an excellent way to communicate with the new people I have met, and to keep in touch with the friends I left. For most people I know, Facebook is just another way to communicate and coordinate.
A slowly increasing number of my friends are cutting down their use, and eventually leaving.
I know what they say about the plural of antidote, but I've personally noticed the same. I use it less, and when I do use it, I notice the people I care about on facebook are using it less too. Everything you say mirrors the response to facebook I've been seeing. Its no longer a toy, its just that thing you have and slowly working towards being a burden.
I think a post I saw about facebook email says it the best: "Facebook, you're giving me email? You're now one ugly paintjob away from being aol". Its initially funny, but the parallels you can draw between AOL and Facebook are huge and I wouldn't be surprised if facebook followed a similar trajectory.
This was a rather pointless article. Yes, every company will reach a point where growth slows. Yes, every company will have users who quit. Yes, valuations are high right now. Yes, many companies will get replaced by better ones that come along. And yes, it is implied that Facebook is a company.
How does any of this lead to "the end of facebook"?? The author even states "Facebook is still growing very fast in terms of page views and number of users."
I completely agree, but one point that he briefly mentions that I think is even more interesting is the idea of a Facebook IPO.
Consider that Facebook isn't going anywhere (most likely) and will be a major company for a long time. That still doesn't change the fact that if they've already done all of the their major growing (user-wise, I'm assuming that they will continue to look for new revenue sources), their IPO could be a significant letdown for investors if there is simply no where to go but flat.
That said, I don't know any more (or less) that this guy..
Because when other social networks have stopped growing, they have massively shrunk as the next big thing has come along.
Of course, it's very possible that that argument is mixing up cause and effect, and this is still a relatively young field. But the implication is that, if facebook isn't relevant to pretty much everyone, then it will eventually be eaten up by something that is.
Agreed. FaceBook is still growing and will have to continue to change things up and grow in other areas such as deals, etc. The only reason this article is ranked so high on HN is how sensational titles can game the upvote without opening system.
no, this is major fail from all the financial people involved. you want your company going public when there are expectations of substantial growth. instead facebook is flattening...just what i'm looking for in an IPO, low growth
facebook should have been trading for a year already. and now the market is entering what could be a protracted decline. this reminds me of companies that went public in february of 2000. so obvious the train had already left the station...
I'm not the biggest fan of facebook, but this guy is completely unqualified to comment on the intricacies of long-term growth and sustainability in social media... just look at his profile: http://blogs.forbes.com/people/timworstall/
He has nothing to do with the technology industry.
Also, he doesn't back up his rhetoric with data... this is an opinion piece and a flaky one at that.
Isn't the problem that no-one is currently qualified to comment on the long term potential growth or sustainability of social media? It simply hasn't been around long enough to make any comparisons with the past useful.
You're right, that there isn't much data, but the fact that user growth seems to have at least stalled (if not started to decrease) in the richest markets in which Facebook has a presence has got to be a worry.
Assuming that the yearly value of a user is roughly proportional to national GDP per capita, Facebook needs to gain 40 users in India to make up for every one it loses in the US.
I like this line in the submitted article: "But to value every company as if they are the next Google, rather than valuing them all as if one of them might be, is pretty much the definition of a bubble." I think there is insight in that. Not every big new online service can have the long-term revenue growth and user engagement that Google has managed to achieve. (Some of the stories about Groupon point out aptly that Groupon spends much of its revenue on Google promotions, so who is the winner when Google, a profitable company, is paid by Groupon, a company that is losing money on every sale?)
That said, Facebook is the one online service that gets more engagement from me, by far, even than HN or all the Google properties other than Gmail. Facebook's algorithm for prioritizing posts from friends into my home page works amazingly well at showing me the content I want to see. The Facebook secret groups feature works well for me at forming more tightly knit communities. All in all, what's cool about Facebook is that I see FRIENDS there, people I'm glad to see in real life or online.
Back when nobody needed to buy floppy disks, because AOL was endlessly mailing those out to everyone in America, I was subscribed to AOL for a while. I couldn't understand why people preferred the chat-like user discussion interface of AOL to the more threaded discussions available on other online services at the same time. I found AOL rather tedious, and eventually unsubscribed, but millions of users stayed on AOL long after I thought it had lost all of its competitive advantage over other ways of getting on the Internet. AOL had the financial strength and reputation to take over (and drain of value) Time Warner, and it still hasn't completely disappeared. I think Facebook will do at least that well for at least that long. Maybe Facebook is already in a long decline, but it will be a long, slow decline.
A bubble implies irrational valuations. Trying to value a company as if they are the next Google is the purpose of the stock market and can be perfectly rational.
Google sets a standard, and by its success, it demonstrates what other similar companies could do, which gives investors more confidence in upstarts like Facebook, which then leads to higher valuations. The state of our economy also leads to higher valuations - as money is worth less today than it was when Google went public, and there are fewer productive places for investors to put their money than when Google went public.
At times when valuations become increasingly irrational you could say we are approaching a bubble, but this article's author did not offer a rational argument to back up his points.
I think Facebook has gotten boring in the same way that Google has gotten boring to me: it's become a reliable, efficient tool that I can use so quickly it's almost invisible to me. I throw up a picture every so often and get feedback from friends and family. I can plan a party and quickly/easily organize invitations. I can quickly reconnect with someone if they come to mind, whether or not I have their current phone number or e-mail (which used to be a real problem). I love how they seem to focus on their core products and speed rather than rapidly expanding the feature set (like seemingly every other social network).
The News Feed has become less and less "engaging" and chatter-filled which might be a problem for their business model, but not for me. I'm interested in most of the people on my friends list in some way, but their stray thoughts aren't the best way of relating to them.
The problem is, after an extended use maybe we feel sick of it all. Facebook was new and fresh when it arrived, but now it's beginning to feel like an overstayed welcome. They have accomplished the goal of making life seem, in a way, commoditized, and that makes me feel like I never want to use such a service again.
I don't think social networks are going to be entirely displaced, maybe just the ones that attempt to mirror your personal life. I think it's a kind of impedance mismatch issue--a kind of uncanny valley vibe that they give off. After doing it so long, it just feels so artificial and flaky.
I know everyone doesn't have such negative thoughts about Facebook, but I also know I'm not the only one who feels this way right now. I can't see what they or anyone could do to fix this problem, but I know a solution isn't out of the realm of possibility either.
I predict future successful social networks will be somewhat like HN or reddit--semi-anonymous, with no real connection to real life. If they can surround you with peers clustered around your interest profile, perhaps we could grow organic communities around professions and hobbies that dynamically or elastically determine membership and open channels of communication (as opposed to the current process of self-selection and direct messaging). I don't know, I'm rambling now.
The article neglects that facebook is always looking to expand its feature set, with things like email (on top of existing chat) and music [1].
Also neglected are statistics pertaining to new account activations and account reactivations (secondary and post-secondary students make up a giant portion of the user base, and many make it a habit to deactivate temporarily during exam time).
This article just feels overly sensational, giving no credence to counter-arguments.
Agreed. Facebook will probably fall in and out of fashion, but they'll have a business as long as they use the social graph to solve real problems. I think it has a chance at winning the emerging messaging war - it's a widely adopted, proven, cross-platform messaging service.
First wave of SNs were aimed at dating as the lure (Friendster). Second wave of SNs were/are aimed at social sharing of everything and anything with everybody and anybody (FB). Third wave of SNs are aimed/will be aimed at "real" social sharing of everything and anything with only people you choose (Tusulog.com, our start-up).
We're focused on one main thought: you don't, by default, socialize with all your friends plus "acquaintances" at once. Just impossible. When you're with your family you socialize in the context of family. You don't talk about the crazy party last Saturday with your family. This is the idea we focus on.
People return to FB because of inertia basically, not necessarily because they need to. That's why they start to whine and mainstream media have been reflecting this situation.
I visited Tusulog (the name should be re-evaluated) and there was very little description of what it is, what it does, why its good, etc.
I then registered and was told that the service was meaningless unless I invited friends. Ok. Try to wedge out of the chicken and the egg, or piggyback on something else, because in all honesty, theres no way I'm inviting friends to a service of questionable value.
Something something "its not what your service does, its how people use it". Right now, for all I know, Tusulog is the most genius website ever made, I just wouldn't get to the part where I discover that.
Facebook's biggest blunder could be their continued focus on increasing engagement at the expense of giving more granular privacy options.
There is no reason I should not be able to maintain all my different identities--as an employee, as a friend, as a son--on facebook. With the influx of my younger cousins and older family members, I had to pick my facebook identity. Now, I play it a lot more safe and don't post half the stuff I would usually do.
I like to see facebook as kind of like a physical world hangout spot. Before, it was just people of my generation. Now it is all generation mixed together in one room. And yet, there it is very possible to let me create multiple rooms and pick who I choose to have in each of my rooms.
"The more you tighten your grip, Zuckerberg, the more users will slip through your fingers."
To me, the end of facebook was when facebook started trying too hard to dictate to me how I would use the site.
I don't see a chronological timeline of what my friends are doing (a la twitter), I see some posts that facebook thinks I'll be interested in.
What the hell is that, facebook? Most of the things I see now are from people I really don't care about at all. The only reason I ever log in anymore is to see what a group I belong to on there is up to.
And what have you done to the pictures? Why can't I right click them and send a link to one of my friends? Facebook, maybe you've forgotten this part, but those annoying people using your website are the reason that your website exists at all. When you take stuff like that away, and when it's obvious why you're doing it (you don't want people to see facebook's pictures without facebook's branding on them [the container page, I mean, that you'll see if you use an approved sharing mechanism to share pictures]), it feels like a giant slap in the face.
There is nothing fun happening on facebook anymore, and the things that I've posted to it in the past are now impossible to find (keep scrolling and scolling and scrolling and triggering that javascript to load more things, right!?).
I don't really feel like I'm connected to the people that I'm supposedly "connected" to anymore. It sucks.
The other reason I pretty much never use facebook, is http://thingist.com/ -- a few people have said that it reminds them a lot of '05, '06 era facebook, which is cool to hear. There are no apps, there is no algo to determine what it shows you, it's just a very simple way of sharing things with a group of people (and, more importantly, keeping it organized into a list [songs I like, quotes, tools for programmers, documentaries you should watch, etc]).
Full disclosure: thingist is my side project, and my addiction. Obviously I'm not a designer, so the design is horrible, but the functionality works, and I'm addicted to it.
Why wouldn't people just give up on social networks? I think a lot of people initially sign up because a lot of their real-life friends do, use it for a while, and then get bored. To me, sites like facebook just become a hassle after a while. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels the same way.
Would you be opposed to considering the idea that the "social network" fad is nearing its end? We devs tend to see social as though it were a silver bullet for our apps; "Make it social, people love being social!"
Maybe people are just rediscovering hanging out in person. I know that I, personally, get no value out of Facebook, whereas I get a ton out of hanging out with people.
One other thing that may be contributing is that on Facebook, activity is required. Facebook has no equivalent of sitting back, relaxing, and silently watching a movie with people.
Agreed, currently there no real competitor to facebook, if people are closing their accounts its because they want to remove themselves from social networking all together (my one friend did this) rather than move to a different service.
Facebook is so ubiquitous now, it's like email. It will take one hell of a competitor to kill it.
This recent spurt of articles about how Facebook is supposedly declining is based entirely on the Facebook self service ad tool as far as I can tell. An initial study of the numbers that the tool was reporting back was compared more recently and the differences supposedly indicate drop off in numbers.
None of the subsequent articles that I've read seem to mention how the data was gathered, just that Facebook has lost X amount of users in Y country. I for one dont think that Facebook's publicly accessible ad tool is a very sophisticated or accurate way of measuring FB's user numbers.
And Facebook themselves has said the the tool (which they own and maintain) provides a provides a useful sample of data, not a comprehensive data set. This is much the same way that Google Adwords estimator tool works.
They also fail to mention if it's a net loss. Sure, 6 million accounts were closed, but if 60 million new accounts were opened in that same time period, then there's not much point in worrying.
I'm not a huge fan of Social networking and/or providing Facebook with my personal info, but as a musician and small business owner the idea of not having a social profile seems a little ridiculous. I also agree, it's going to be difficult to find or build a Facebook killer, but what about a network that works with Facebook offering some of the services they offer with less non-sense, more utilities and a level of customer service that is not possible with a user group of hundreds of millions. There is no doubt that Facebook is great at social networking but that still doesn't mean it's annoying. I use my Facebook account almost everyday but rarely do I post status updates or even look at my news feed. I do, however, like the access it gives me to other utilities on the web with the little effort it requires once you have a FB account. Much of what I do for work would not happen if I needed to create accounts for every service I wanted to check out.
With that said, sorry for the plug...I created http://fishtaank.com, AKA, my weekend project... for the last three years. It's a small collection of open source scripts I've found on the web that allows musicians and businesses to create a better social profile thats focuses more on what they do/offer as opposed to what they say. Trivia question of the day? who cares...
My comment would be that the author is conflating growth in users and page views to revenue growth. While the two are very highly correlated, they are not the same thing. How Facebook monetizes its users and page views doesn't have to be a 1:1 relationship. The question should be how Facebook will derive ever more revenue from each user over time. Slowing user growth is certainly an easy proxy to use in lieu of real revenue numbers, but it is a gross oversimplification.
Yes, there is oversimplification, but one observation I believe is correct:
IPO in 2012 is too late.
People will cash in their options by the dozens and move on. If you IPO at peak, this effect is multiplied. If you IPO way before that peak, some might leave, but since the stock is still going up, they will continue to work those 12 hours a day for you.
However, I'm no expert on this stuff! It's just what I would do.
Maybe its the progression of the web as a communication medium vs fads. Initially there was geocities and webpages, then blogs came along.
The next step was Myspace with its Geocities like system, but actual network style functionality. Along with the rise of the social network ecosystem was user-gen content websites and comments. Comments on blogs and discussion forums mixed with shared links pushed through 4chan, forums, and then Digg.
Along with these useful mediums was also the fad like rush. If its cool then you have to use it. Myspace was to ugly though and Facebook brought along format, and styling, like the Apple way.
Facebook has some brilliant underlying concepts - Events and Messaging mediums in an online world. Much better than email and sms.
There are also several layers of society and how they interact. The social to be social groups, and the not so noisy users who like it when they visit a city can see old mates.
Facebook will still be the top web-based social communication medium (besides email for business). When HTML5 comes out and web-gaming increases more, you'll see a bigger explosion of Facebook usage I think.
I used to be on it all the time because everyone was on, but as my friends got older, their companies blocked use of it at work, the people left just blab about how awesome their significant others are, hawk their business products & nightclub parties, or post baby pics all day.
The people really care about are on now for a few hours/minutes from 6 to 11:45 (if that) so my usage has cut down as well ... once in the morning, at lunch and at night.
I use twitter a lot more now as a result. I guess facebook has a new challenge, keeping older folks engaged and selling facebook to younger kids who are growing up on twitter instead of facebook as the dominant social media scene.
TL;DR: Author had a deadline to meet so he wrote about how nobody, himself included, knows whether or not Facebook will be big and awesome forever. Attached a catchy title for the pageviews that his performance will be judged by.
I am so terribly sick of this: The headline is "The End of Facebook", followed immediately by the lede "Perhaps a little premature, this idea that the end of Facebook is nigh, but certainly the end of the beginning," which essentially completely debunks the entire headline right off the bat.
Writers: If you can't write anything compelling enough to not need to be carried by an overly sensationalist headline, please put your pens down and go sell used cars.
[+] [-] JonnieCache|14 years ago|reply
What is definitely true, is that nobody I know feels anything positive about facebook, at all. It is seen simply as a sinister, addictive[1] necessary evil. This is the case regardless of technical expertise. They continue to use it purely because of inertia and lock in. Yet they are not interested in twitter either.
Much like smoking, many people get into it as teenagers because everyone's doing it, now in their 20s they've realised that it sucks but they can't stop.
There is definitely a market for a social network thats simpler, but still full-featured like facebook, but above all one that's less "evil." One that's vocally dedicated to your privacy, and whose every move doesn't seem so machiavellianly calculated to keep you coming back, to the point where you begin to feel like you're living in a dystopian future world.
I realise that's just a long way of saying "less profitable" or even "not profitable," but there we are.
[1] The main slang term for facebook amongst it's younger users in the UK is "facecrack." It has been called that for years.
[+] [-] MatthewPhillips|14 years ago|reply
Facebook is in danger of suffering the same thing. Like you, I have a lot of non-technical friends who feel uneasy about Facebook; they just don't trust it. They feel the games are scammy. They find that they can access their pictures when logged out. They use it any ways. But increasingly, they don't like it.
[+] [-] hyperbovine|14 years ago|reply
You and your friends probably spend so much time online for work that you reproach yourselves for excesses like Facebook. (FWIW I'm no different.) The majority of the normal, non-technical users I know don't view Facebook as evil. They just think of it as something everybody uses nowadays, like e-mail. I don't think those users are going anywhere anytime soon.
Facebook has reached an inevitable point where everyone who hasn't signed up either doesn't want to, or can't (no internet access). I mean, do you know anyone who really wants to sign up for Facebook but hasn't gotten around to it yet? It's no surprise that their growth would eventually slow. I wouldn't read too much into it. They're going to be around for a long, long time.
[+] [-] jdp23|14 years ago|reply
There are a lot of emerging social networks (Hibe, Pidder, Necter) who emphasize privacy a lot more than Facebook and don't have the baggage -- as well as the whole open source Diaspora/AppleSeed/OneSocialWeb/etc. distributed social network movement. True, right now none of them have Facebook's "everybody's there" advantage. But people's dislike for Facebook is so pervasive that I really wonder how much longer they'll continue to be so successful.
[+] [-] scott_s|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] podperson|14 years ago|reply
(E.g. http://attentionmeter.com/?d1=facebook.com&d2=twitter.co... )
My experience with Twitter (which I use all the time) is that spam is getting worse and worse and Twitter isn't even doing obvious things to fight it.
Facebook is simply built of spam, so that's not an awful comparison, but I think it's hurting Twitter.
[+] [-] qq66|14 years ago|reply
If there are any similarities to crack, the people who say they are cutting their use and eventually leaving rarely do.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bxr|14 years ago|reply
I know what they say about the plural of antidote, but I've personally noticed the same. I use it less, and when I do use it, I notice the people I care about on facebook are using it less too. Everything you say mirrors the response to facebook I've been seeing. Its no longer a toy, its just that thing you have and slowly working towards being a burden.
I think a post I saw about facebook email says it the best: "Facebook, you're giving me email? You're now one ugly paintjob away from being aol". Its initially funny, but the parallels you can draw between AOL and Facebook are huge and I wouldn't be surprised if facebook followed a similar trajectory.
[+] [-] makeramen|14 years ago|reply
How does any of this lead to "the end of facebook"?? The author even states "Facebook is still growing very fast in terms of page views and number of users."
Major linkbait.
[+] [-] hvs|14 years ago|reply
Consider that Facebook isn't going anywhere (most likely) and will be a major company for a long time. That still doesn't change the fact that if they've already done all of the their major growing (user-wise, I'm assuming that they will continue to look for new revenue sources), their IPO could be a significant letdown for investors if there is simply no where to go but flat.
That said, I don't know any more (or less) that this guy..
[+] [-] rm445|14 years ago|reply
Of course, it's very possible that that argument is mixing up cause and effect, and this is still a relatively young field. But the implication is that, if facebook isn't relevant to pretty much everyone, then it will eventually be eaten up by something that is.
[+] [-] KeyBoardG|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wunderfool|14 years ago|reply
facebook should have been trading for a year already. and now the market is entering what could be a protracted decline. this reminds me of companies that went public in february of 2000. so obvious the train had already left the station...
[+] [-] dreamux|14 years ago|reply
He has nothing to do with the technology industry.
Also, he doesn't back up his rhetoric with data... this is an opinion piece and a flaky one at that.
[+] [-] tomgallard|14 years ago|reply
You're right, that there isn't much data, but the fact that user growth seems to have at least stalled (if not started to decrease) in the richest markets in which Facebook has a presence has got to be a worry.
Assuming that the yearly value of a user is roughly proportional to national GDP per capita, Facebook needs to gain 40 users in India to make up for every one it loses in the US.
[+] [-] narkee|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbarooah|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tokenadult|14 years ago|reply
That said, Facebook is the one online service that gets more engagement from me, by far, even than HN or all the Google properties other than Gmail. Facebook's algorithm for prioritizing posts from friends into my home page works amazingly well at showing me the content I want to see. The Facebook secret groups feature works well for me at forming more tightly knit communities. All in all, what's cool about Facebook is that I see FRIENDS there, people I'm glad to see in real life or online.
Back when nobody needed to buy floppy disks, because AOL was endlessly mailing those out to everyone in America, I was subscribed to AOL for a while. I couldn't understand why people preferred the chat-like user discussion interface of AOL to the more threaded discussions available on other online services at the same time. I found AOL rather tedious, and eventually unsubscribed, but millions of users stayed on AOL long after I thought it had lost all of its competitive advantage over other ways of getting on the Internet. AOL had the financial strength and reputation to take over (and drain of value) Time Warner, and it still hasn't completely disappeared. I think Facebook will do at least that well for at least that long. Maybe Facebook is already in a long decline, but it will be a long, slow decline.
[+] [-] bostonscott|14 years ago|reply
A bubble implies irrational valuations. Trying to value a company as if they are the next Google is the purpose of the stock market and can be perfectly rational.
Google sets a standard, and by its success, it demonstrates what other similar companies could do, which gives investors more confidence in upstarts like Facebook, which then leads to higher valuations. The state of our economy also leads to higher valuations - as money is worth less today than it was when Google went public, and there are fewer productive places for investors to put their money than when Google went public.
At times when valuations become increasingly irrational you could say we are approaching a bubble, but this article's author did not offer a rational argument to back up his points.
[+] [-] saturdaysaint|14 years ago|reply
The News Feed has become less and less "engaging" and chatter-filled which might be a problem for their business model, but not for me. I'm interested in most of the people on my friends list in some way, but their stray thoughts aren't the best way of relating to them.
[+] [-] rkwz|14 years ago|reply
* sharing photos
* keeping in touch with friends and families and getting the latest updates from them
* events
* games
* sharing links and stuff
and all these things from one place!
is there any other site/technology that provides all these benefits in one place?
[+] [-] possibilistic|14 years ago|reply
I don't think social networks are going to be entirely displaced, maybe just the ones that attempt to mirror your personal life. I think it's a kind of impedance mismatch issue--a kind of uncanny valley vibe that they give off. After doing it so long, it just feels so artificial and flaky.
I know everyone doesn't have such negative thoughts about Facebook, but I also know I'm not the only one who feels this way right now. I can't see what they or anyone could do to fix this problem, but I know a solution isn't out of the realm of possibility either.
I predict future successful social networks will be somewhat like HN or reddit--semi-anonymous, with no real connection to real life. If they can surround you with peers clustered around your interest profile, perhaps we could grow organic communities around professions and hobbies that dynamically or elastically determine membership and open channels of communication (as opposed to the current process of self-selection and direct messaging). I don't know, I'm rambling now.
[+] [-] rl41|14 years ago|reply
Also neglected are statistics pertaining to new account activations and account reactivations (secondary and post-secondary students make up a giant portion of the user base, and many make it a habit to deactivate temporarily during exam time).
This article just feels overly sensational, giving no credence to counter-arguments.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2584712
[+] [-] saturdaysaint|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jetz|14 years ago|reply
We're focused on one main thought: you don't, by default, socialize with all your friends plus "acquaintances" at once. Just impossible. When you're with your family you socialize in the context of family. You don't talk about the crazy party last Saturday with your family. This is the idea we focus on.
People return to FB because of inertia basically, not necessarily because they need to. That's why they start to whine and mainstream media have been reflecting this situation.
[+] [-] useflyer|14 years ago|reply
I visited Tusulog (the name should be re-evaluated) and there was very little description of what it is, what it does, why its good, etc.
I then registered and was told that the service was meaningless unless I invited friends. Ok. Try to wedge out of the chicken and the egg, or piggyback on something else, because in all honesty, theres no way I'm inviting friends to a service of questionable value.
Something something "its not what your service does, its how people use it". Right now, for all I know, Tusulog is the most genius website ever made, I just wouldn't get to the part where I discover that.
[+] [-] pnathan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makthrow|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaidf|14 years ago|reply
There is no reason I should not be able to maintain all my different identities--as an employee, as a friend, as a son--on facebook. With the influx of my younger cousins and older family members, I had to pick my facebook identity. Now, I play it a lot more safe and don't post half the stuff I would usually do.
I like to see facebook as kind of like a physical world hangout spot. Before, it was just people of my generation. Now it is all generation mixed together in one room. And yet, there it is very possible to let me create multiple rooms and pick who I choose to have in each of my rooms.
[+] [-] kalid|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blhack|14 years ago|reply
To me, the end of facebook was when facebook started trying too hard to dictate to me how I would use the site.
I don't see a chronological timeline of what my friends are doing (a la twitter), I see some posts that facebook thinks I'll be interested in.
What the hell is that, facebook? Most of the things I see now are from people I really don't care about at all. The only reason I ever log in anymore is to see what a group I belong to on there is up to.
And what have you done to the pictures? Why can't I right click them and send a link to one of my friends? Facebook, maybe you've forgotten this part, but those annoying people using your website are the reason that your website exists at all. When you take stuff like that away, and when it's obvious why you're doing it (you don't want people to see facebook's pictures without facebook's branding on them [the container page, I mean, that you'll see if you use an approved sharing mechanism to share pictures]), it feels like a giant slap in the face.
There is nothing fun happening on facebook anymore, and the things that I've posted to it in the past are now impossible to find (keep scrolling and scolling and scrolling and triggering that javascript to load more things, right!?).
I don't really feel like I'm connected to the people that I'm supposedly "connected" to anymore. It sucks.
The other reason I pretty much never use facebook, is http://thingist.com/ -- a few people have said that it reminds them a lot of '05, '06 era facebook, which is cool to hear. There are no apps, there is no algo to determine what it shows you, it's just a very simple way of sharing things with a group of people (and, more importantly, keeping it organized into a list [songs I like, quotes, tools for programmers, documentaries you should watch, etc]).
Full disclosure: thingist is my side project, and my addiction. Obviously I'm not a designer, so the design is horrible, but the functionality works, and I'm addicted to it.
[+] [-] wccrawford|14 years ago|reply
So instead, I think it's something else. Facebook closing invalid accounts, or something.
[+] [-] choko|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trobertson|14 years ago|reply
Maybe people are just rediscovering hanging out in person. I know that I, personally, get no value out of Facebook, whereas I get a ton out of hanging out with people.
One other thing that may be contributing is that on Facebook, activity is required. Facebook has no equivalent of sitting back, relaxing, and silently watching a movie with people.
[+] [-] JonoW|14 years ago|reply
Facebook is so ubiquitous now, it's like email. It will take one hell of a competitor to kill it.
[+] [-] johnx123|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pixpax|14 years ago|reply
None of the subsequent articles that I've read seem to mention how the data was gathered, just that Facebook has lost X amount of users in Y country. I for one dont think that Facebook's publicly accessible ad tool is a very sophisticated or accurate way of measuring FB's user numbers.
[+] [-] wmeredith|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andypants|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beerfarmer|14 years ago|reply
With that said, sorry for the plug...I created http://fishtaank.com, AKA, my weekend project... for the last three years. It's a small collection of open source scripts I've found on the web that allows musicians and businesses to create a better social profile thats focuses more on what they do/offer as opposed to what they say. Trivia question of the day? who cares...
http://fishtaank.com/profile/Beerfarmer -
[+] [-] tritchey|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eiji|14 years ago|reply
IPO in 2012 is too late.
People will cash in their options by the dozens and move on. If you IPO at peak, this effect is multiplied. If you IPO way before that peak, some might leave, but since the stock is still going up, they will continue to work those 12 hours a day for you.
However, I'm no expert on this stuff! It's just what I would do.
[+] [-] cubeboy|14 years ago|reply
The next step was Myspace with its Geocities like system, but actual network style functionality. Along with the rise of the social network ecosystem was user-gen content websites and comments. Comments on blogs and discussion forums mixed with shared links pushed through 4chan, forums, and then Digg.
Along with these useful mediums was also the fad like rush. If its cool then you have to use it. Myspace was to ugly though and Facebook brought along format, and styling, like the Apple way.
Facebook has some brilliant underlying concepts - Events and Messaging mediums in an online world. Much better than email and sms.
There are also several layers of society and how they interact. The social to be social groups, and the not so noisy users who like it when they visit a city can see old mates.
Facebook will still be the top web-based social communication medium (besides email for business). When HTML5 comes out and web-gaming increases more, you'll see a bigger explosion of Facebook usage I think.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] trustfundbaby|14 years ago|reply
The people really care about are on now for a few hours/minutes from 6 to 11:45 (if that) so my usage has cut down as well ... once in the morning, at lunch and at night.
I use twitter a lot more now as a result. I guess facebook has a new challenge, keeping older folks engaged and selling facebook to younger kids who are growing up on twitter instead of facebook as the dominant social media scene.
[+] [-] skrebbel|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dclowd9901|14 years ago|reply
Writers: If you can't write anything compelling enough to not need to be carried by an overly sensationalist headline, please put your pens down and go sell used cars.
[+] [-] nachteilig|14 years ago|reply
In any case, I'm not sure that this link isn't more than phishing for hits.
[+] [-] sebastianconcpt|14 years ago|reply
Go make a good damn startup yourself and stop procrastinating wasting your attention on overdramatized utterly irrelevant headlines.