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Facebook hype will fade

cnn.com

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Re: Facebook hype will fade

#81

Post by tokenadult »

zacharycohn wrote: post #49
lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got my Facebook account in 2005 when I was a college freshman. At first it was amazing, then they opened it up to high schoolers which was okay, but not really what I wanted from Facebook. Then they added things like the Friend Feed which bombarded you with "Your friend [name you know] just added [someone you don't know or care about}." Which was okay, but then they opened the gates and suddenly all your coworkers…

I had the exact same experience as well, and then I discovered the "hide" button. I developed some rules and then spent about 20 minutes every day for a week hiding people who didn't fall within those. Examples of my rules were: 1) If I don't remember who you are, hide. 2) If I knew you in elementary/middle/high school/college and I don't think I'll ever see or speak to you again, hide. (This would cover people who d…

Why not unfriend rather than hide for some of those situations?

Re: Facebook hype will fade

#82

Post by peteforde »

kragen wrote: post #64
Tichy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they like Facebook, or are they only on there because of peer pressure?

Nobody likes Facebook.

I love Facebook!

I derive a huge amount of value out of it. I put in the time to train it to show me what I want to see, and I don't become friends with everyone I meet.

It's silly to say that nobody likes Facebook. You don't, and that's fine. But you're in a very small minority (and arguably for a reason).

Re: Facebook hype will fade

#83

Post by michaelchisari »

dominostars wrote: post #68
michaelchisari wrote: post #7

I agree that popularity of social networks is faddish, and that Facebook will follow that rise and fall pattern, however... I think that an open, distributed social networking protocol is a game changer. If there exists the ability to move between social networks while maintaining your social graph, that makes the way that social networks rise and fall very different than when sites hold your social graph hostage if…

> If there exists the ability to move between social networks while maintaining your social graph Facebook Connect accomplishes most of what you want here. At least, it could.

Except that's a thoroughly one-directional approach. How can I log in to Facebook with an external identifier, without having a Facebook account? How can I add someone on Facebook as a friend, while maintaining my identity on another site? Until it can accomplish those basic things, it's less than a solution.

Re: Facebook hype will fade

#84

Post by lhnz »

tokenadult wrote: post #81
zacharycohn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the exact same experience as well, and then I discovered the "hide" button. I developed some rules and then spent about 20 minutes every day for a week hiding people who didn't fall within those. Examples of my rules were: 1) If I don't remember who you are, hide. 2) If I knew you in elementary/middle/high school/college and I don't think I'll ever see or speak to you again, hide. (This would cover people who d…

Why not unfriend rather than hide for some of those situations?

There is social stigma. You'll be seen as petty and somebody that micromanages unimportant parts of life.

Re: Facebook hype will fade

#85

Post by hnal943 »

kragen wrote: post #8
klochner wrote: post #5

facebook growth went something like this: college --> high school --> young adults --> everyone Trendy stuff generally follows the same cascade, more or less, where you don't see college students emulating the dress habits of the elderly. facebook's biggest potential for failure is in not capturing the next generation of young users. The young users pick up some other social network, everyone else follows suit, and f…

Most of the teenagers I know have Facebook accounts. Facebook might lose the high school class of 2018, but they already have the class of 2014 sewn up.

How many people have MySpace accounts they never use anymore? The point of the article is not that people won't ever sign up, but that they'll lose interest.

Re: Facebook hype will fade

#86

Post by adrianbye »

lhnz wrote: post #84
tokenadult wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not unfriend rather than hide for some of those situations?

There is social stigma. You'll be seen as petty and somebody that micromanages unimportant parts of life.

facebook gets much better when you unfriend lots of people. fred wilson has his "only bar mitzvah" rule and only has ~80 friends. i still have around 600 down from almost 1000.

Re: Facebook hype will fade

#87

Post by hnal943 »

lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #22
fkeidkwdq wrote: post #11

Comparing Google with Facebook. I was using google since it was pretty unknown, I think it is still, after all these years, a good tool for searching. I will never use facebook, I think local solutions for meeting people will emerge soon and they will be much more appealing and useful. Facebook only can exists if it can find a way to be a local tool.

I've never met anyone on Facebook, they're all people I knew somehow previous to our friending .

I've never met anyone on Facebook either. I've run into the strange misconception from non-facebookers that Facebook is somehow a dating site, which is strange. Obviously those people also perceive that facebook is a way to "meet people."

Re: Facebook hype will fade

#88

Post by rsepassi »

samtp wrote: post #58
cookiecaper wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really unique to Facebook. It's called lock-in and it's the desire of every service provider and software maker; they want you to be held hostage to their network, so that even if you want to leave, you can't without potentially serious ramifications (like losing contact with your grandma, or losing access to your documents). Facebook has reached a level that had never been reached by any social network be…

It's not really 'lock-in' unless the potential switching costs are too great to overcome. If another social network could set up your friend network with minimal effort (and are better than Facebook), they will win. No one has long term contracts to use Facebook or pay a monetary penalty (like a cell phone). So if someone can re-create your social graph with you putting in less effort than you normally put into faceb…

Switching costs are absolutely the thing to focus on here, but limiting the switching costs to a replication of the social graph may be understating the true cost. Think of all the photos, and to a lesser extent, wall posts. I would imagine a lot of the time that's spent on Facebook is just browsing through photos (and again, to a lesser extent, people's wall posts). Much of it probably is just new photos, so obviously those don't need to be replicated since if you port the social graph over, people will start posting photos on the new site and people will just look at those, but a ton of the viewing is probably of legacy photos. That is, some of the viewing is seeing what's happening with your friends (the party last night) but a ton of it is just checking people out (facebook stalking). How can I stalk somebody without seeing all their past photos/videos/notes/posts/etc.?

Re: Facebook hype will fade

#89

Post by imkevingao »

Facebook needs to generate more revenue or if they go public, their stocks are going to tank like crazy after the speculation fades. Facebook's P/E ratio is out of proportion. Doesn't matter how many users Facebook have, if the company doesn't generate the proportional profits to match its valuation, then the company is going to go through some tough phases.

Many people are looking at the Facebook stocks like it's a Pablo Picasso painting, and with users twice as the population of United States, it's bound to be valuable. However, in the economy of supply and demand, the bubble will pop if it decides to go public. Unless Facebook can think new ways to earn more money.

But that's hard, because Facebook users hate changes. They aren't exactly Obama fans.

Re: Facebook hype will fade

#90

Post by philwelch »

lhnz wrote: post #84
tokenadult wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not unfriend rather than hide for some of those situations?

There is social stigma. You'll be seen as petty and somebody that micromanages unimportant parts of life.

By people who aren't actually your friends? Chances are they won't even miss you.
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