Facebook is Dying

As a consultant to the dot-com industry around the turn of the century, I traveled a lot. I took a lot of long cab rides from airports to downtowns. I talked to lots of cabbies. At some point, I knew the end was near. I knew the end was near when cabbies started asking me if it was a good idea to invest in some particular technology stock or another. Why are cabbies investing in Juniper Networks?

Recently, I started another side business. One of my cousins who knows almost nothing about technology came to me and said, "Let me tell you something. I know how you can get your business started and I want to tell you about it."

At this point, I was already skeptical, but she continued... "There's this thing on the internet called Facebook and millions of people use it and you can make millions of dollars there..."

Oh no, I thought.

But I knew the end was near for facebook. I've known for quite some time. Years in fact. I can't explain to them why I don't join facebook anymore than I could explain to those cabbies why they shouldn't put their money in to Juniper Networks or pets.com. Decisions like that can't be rationalized to those who see a bright future in their bets.

But history tells us a lot and history moves very fast on the internet. Facebook is not sticky. Share prices are not sticky. Users can leave and investors can sell -- and they do. And they will.

Facebook will fall far and it could, and I suspect is falling fast.

You gotta understand, for hackers, most things are binary: black or white. Either facebook is great, or they are evil and the switch just got flipped.

Hackers are trend setters on the web. Watch them.

Facebook is not sticky? hundreds of millions of people logging in every day and consuming the site for a high number of pageviews redefines sticky.

We're all dying, but that doesn't mean we'll be dying tomorrow.

Titles like that should come with a qualifying end-date.

Otherwise it's just about some undefined point in the future.

If facebook is dying I'd like to see some proof. I'm very much of the opinion that facebook is transient, but I'd be very careful to stick an end-date on it smaller than at least 5 years in to the future, and a lot can happen in 5 years.

In my own circle of friends facebook is definitely past its prime, indicating that there is a lifecycle to a facebook account, if that is a universal truth then we should see a downturn in facebook traffic in the next 12 months or so.

One data point: management at my large government enterprise are suddenly getting all jiggy with social networking and want to do an internal Facebook (for no discernable business reason).

That's a sure sign that something has passed it's prime.