> "An appealing-enough decentralized alternative will eventually present itself"
No. The network effect makes this pretty much impossible.
Unless facebook does something truly egregious, above what it already does with privacy settings every few months, a critical mass will never be somewhere else long enough for all and sundry to move on.
I reckon one way that this might realistically happen is if there's a product which replaces facebook by doing something genuinely different, while fulfilling the same functions. I don't know what "genuinely different" might mean in this context though (if I did, I'd be writing it!).
It seems plausible that the network effect that's responsible for Facebook's current success could also cause it's rapid collapse, as knowledge of a viable alternative to Facebook could easily propagate via Facebook itself.
The success of a viable alternative need not be generated instantaneously as a result of some egregious action or catastrophic failure of Facebook. It can slowly grow by accretion as people who are unhappy with Facebook's persistent flaws seek alternatives, and once that population is large enough, then it will become a critical mass and start drawing others in.
Facebook itself grew via a strategy of becoming dominant in increasingly large concentric circles around its initial core - first Harvard, then Ivy League universities, then universities in general, then organizations in general, etc. With each iteration, they used their dominance within each narrower sphere to attract new users from the broader sphere, by relying on the broader population's desire to be where the "cool" people are. The implication here is that if the "cool" people end up leaving Facebook - even if only in search of novelty - then some other alternative will have the ability to build up its own userbase in the exact same way that Facebook did, and in exactly the same way that Facebook undermined MySpace.
I've read this exact same thing over and over and over again, which leads me to believe that it's not true. The genuinely different bit for me, by the way, probably won't be its decentralized nature that makes it appealing. It will be appealing, and someone who cares enough will make it decentralized.
[+] [-] tehwalrus|12 years ago|reply
No. The network effect makes this pretty much impossible.
Unless facebook does something truly egregious, above what it already does with privacy settings every few months, a critical mass will never be somewhere else long enough for all and sundry to move on.
I reckon one way that this might realistically happen is if there's a product which replaces facebook by doing something genuinely different, while fulfilling the same functions. I don't know what "genuinely different" might mean in this context though (if I did, I'd be writing it!).
[+] [-] Gormo|12 years ago|reply
The success of a viable alternative need not be generated instantaneously as a result of some egregious action or catastrophic failure of Facebook. It can slowly grow by accretion as people who are unhappy with Facebook's persistent flaws seek alternatives, and once that population is large enough, then it will become a critical mass and start drawing others in.
Facebook itself grew via a strategy of becoming dominant in increasingly large concentric circles around its initial core - first Harvard, then Ivy League universities, then universities in general, then organizations in general, etc. With each iteration, they used their dominance within each narrower sphere to attract new users from the broader sphere, by relying on the broader population's desire to be where the "cool" people are. The implication here is that if the "cool" people end up leaving Facebook - even if only in search of novelty - then some other alternative will have the ability to build up its own userbase in the exact same way that Facebook did, and in exactly the same way that Facebook undermined MySpace.
[+] [-] b0ing|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prattbhatt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] badman_ting|12 years ago|reply