Facebook needs to disappear.
FB will survive and do well because it is the most invasive, the most insidious and the most efficient.
I’ve found Facebook to be a tool for getting good face time for service organizations and groups to interact among themselves, or with the public. I maintain two service organization pages that allow interaction within the group, as well as publicize what we’re doing. I also belong to a closed group of former employees of a defunct company, that allows us to get together and reminisce, share stories, and keep up with one another.
For this, I find Facebook worthwhile. OTOH, from a personal standpoint, I spend no time posting errant thoughts or playing stupid games.
However, as the article suggests, Zuckerberg is killing his golden goose with all the new ads and advertisements that are now cluttering up the place. My mom is getting so frustrated with it all that she rarely logs in anymore, and asked me to routinely purge her page of all the crap that is posted there.
I disagree with this article. The reason I believe Facebook will survive where MySpace failed is precisely because my 62 year old Mother has an account.
It’s the first and only social network she has joined on the internet, and guess what? She won’t be going anywhere else. She has a bunch of friends on the site, she’s able to see and share photos with family, and she is comfortable using it.
She isn’t going to be jumping around looking for a better one. She will just log on, read her wall, chat with friends, use the calendar to setup parties, see pictures of family kids and surgery results, and just feel connected.
The author seems to focus on what those under 30 will do, and while it’s true they will grow tired of a lot of what Facebook offers, they will also not cancel their account. They just won’t go to it as often.
But those who are over 50... they will stay on the site for years and years to come. And Facebook, by being simple and consistant, has allowed the senior users of the internet to find a simple and consistant way to connect to those they never imagined they could stay in touch with.
ping—interesting read....
I refuse to risk my career and personal relationships over this stupid website....
I do not want my life out in the open for all to see.
“Microsoft, Apple, Google, Oracle, IBM, Yahoo, Netscape and Cisco...”
Most of these companies make real products, like operating systems, hardware, databases, and routers, things that are really needed by large businesses and individuals alike. These things are sold on the basis of price and performance.
What is Facebook? It’s an overgrown college programming project on a LAMP platform (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). I’m sure the code and hardware is likely to be pretty shaky, and eventually they’ll have to spend hundreds of millions fixing it.
If anyone with any knowledge of software development took a look under the hood, FB would die a painful death. Their IPO valuation is obviously not based on the ability to adapt and expand.
After the rapid fall of Myspace, I won’t be buying into the IPO.
Something else will come along.
Good Article. Same thing could have been written about last year’s bomb that was “Linked In”.
I’m already asking my kids to not use facebook or other social media. You DON’T want that much stuff to be visible to future employers. Forever.
I think this analysis gets it just about right.
But for investors, it’s all beside the point. Of course it will decline eventually. The question is “just how many $ can be milked out of it before it does?”
And that’s an open question.
As is how much will the hysteria about it pump its stock price after the IPO (if at all)?
Those questions aside, there are some more obvious observations to be made.
1) That there are so many people who can afford such excesses speaks volumes about the level of economic devlopment most of us currently enjoy. We’re a far cry from worrying where our next meal is coming from. And by extension - coincidentally, a far cry from any degree of political revolution.
2) Advertising, as old as it is, continues to pay the bills for the media we consume.
Facebook is a fantastic tool for Conservatives to spread our message and organize resistance. It’s not going anywhere.
Reason #1 is the only one of those that’s even remotely true. There will always be something new, the new will find a hook, and the masses will flock to it. What the hook is who can say (the fun part about hooks is nobody sees them coming).
He makes good points, but the example of MySpace’s annihilation by Facebook is flawed. MySpace, with its damn-near-impossible-to-read white/yellow lettering on black background, was designed for 15 year olds while adults absolutely hated it. Vast majorities of the world were never going to use MySpace. That nice, easy-to-read Facebook would wipe it out did not exactly require a crystal ball.
Kind of a side issue but I've never seen a single ad of any kind as part of gmail and use it every day. Guess it's because of adblock, noscript and using the slow interface.
Applications for social networking will come and go. They are based on the technology of the day, and the days change.
What will not disappear, ever, is online social networking.