[leokun]

A big counter point to the Facebook is a fad is Pepsi. Pepsi was considered a fad in the 60's when it was already 40 years old. It's still around. It buys coolness with a massive marketing budget. Pepsi is water + corn syrup + some flavor. And it's been around for many, many decades. Pepsi, and Cola, show that being old does not mean you can't still be cool.

[coldtea]

>Pepsi was considered a fad in the 60's when it was already 40 years old. It's still around.

Tons of things have been considered fads through the decades, some rightly (hula-hoops) and some not (rock music). The question, when making an analogy, is how they relate to Facebook.

Unless you connect Pepsi and Facebook with something more besides (both have been considered a fad), we cannot draw any conclusions from Pepsi with regards to Facebook's situation except this:

Sometimes, people can consider something as a fad when it isn't.

If you want to make this analogy work, you have to show why Facebook will be more like Pepsi and less like the hula-hoop or piano neck-ties.

[bentcorner]

Maybe it'll be that the concept of social networks is here to stay forevermore, but Facebook is just a brand. Social networks are becoming a dime a dozen, so using Facebook is a brand choice.

There's a social cost to be seen doing the things that everyone else is doing (the equivalent, say, of wearing a mainstream band t-shirt), so having a presence on Facebook is just meeting the bar. To be "cool" you need to find the social networks nobody else knows about, and hang out with your friends there. Bonus points for alluding, on Facebook, to conversations you had on the not-Facebook social network.

It may be amusing to find in 10 years that using Facebook becomes a new fad again and is seen as "retro". Certainly a possibility if Facebook does not innovate itself to non-recognizability.

[neakor]

It's a different market with different customer mind sets. More importantly, "cool" is relative. Coke is family oriented, aka not cool. This allows pepsi to be "cool" by associating its brand with "hot" celebrities and trends. On the other hand, Facebook has nothing older to compare to. It's "cool" relative to myspace I suppose.