Ask HN: Do you know any company likely to beat Facebook?

I believe someone already stated the obvious: no one competitor will beat FB. Here are some of my thoughts on this:

1. They own ALL of Friendster's patents. they are all encompassing regarding social networking. No way any little guy can defend themselves.

2. someone said another obvious thing: ppl use different aspects of FB and not all.

3. after mons/yrs of teaching your grandma to use FB, no way anyone will move away and reteach.

4. FB offers no complete like Goog's Take Out scenario to easily reimport into another social network.

5. too many catfish. I suspect only 25% are real people. rest are entities, multi-accts.

6. too many simple thinking ppl are entrenched and won't change. comfort zone barrier too high to break.

7. governments worldwide now use them to control their people where in some coountries, every individual getting a cellphone must have a FB acct.

8. some countries like India use FB as their "internet." They don't know www exists.

9. FB can only be brought down by itself and they are already doing a fine job of it. There is a cycle for companies like this and although they now have a very long tail, there is an end to that tail. Next generation will have to make that change over so at a minimum, it will take a generation to make that fall.

10. FB are already losing the next gen, so opportunities abound except for the patent fights that will happen.

Bottomline is FB a road most will need to travel on for now, but I suspect like hwys, toll roads can lead a path out for some while the rifrafts will stay on the sinking boat.

"some countries like India use FB as their "internet." They don't know www exists."

This is a sweeping generalization. India has over 500 million internet users (mostly using mobile) and there is plenty of usage besides facebook.

Ghosting Facebook by using Instagram instead. Facebook as a company isn't going anywhere.

yeah, understood and yes, generalizing but not doing indepth analysis here. I also hypothesize that depending on the caste you're in, FB may not be even in your radar. As most of the world sees FB has not only a window to the world but more importantly direct connection to people in the United States as in India a good percentage have never been on an airplane nor will ever leave the country. Furthermore, they mostly marvel at the standard of living they think everyone here lives like. Again depending on the caste, they literally sees all of the US living large like we're all Kim Kard...

Warning: Incoming Hot Take...

Facebook is probably one of the single most hated companies in tech at the moment and it seems unlikely that is going to change anytime soon. I can't even remember the last time I heard someone mention that they actively enjoyed the product.

They are looking down the barrel at multiple major legal issues in the coming years and they are built entirely on a model that is fundamentally about selling personal data to advertisers without any other significant sources of income.

The main thing that is slowing down their decline (other than a lack of viable alternatives) is that they are basically able to hold peoples real life friendships / relationships hostage at the moment. Initiatives like https://datatransferproject.dev/ (of which FB is a member) have the potential to change that.

I could see a social network protocol emerging and that offered a number of different clients of which Facebook could be one.

Unfortunately, the closest thing we ever came to this was ActivityPub which well, let's say is a bit lacking both in adoption but also in it's vision but I think it's entirely possible that something like that could actually find some traction in the next few years.