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The end of Facebook

blogs.forbes.com

51–60 of 117 posts

Re: The end of Facebook

#51
post #42
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A slowly increasing number of my friends are cutting down their use, and eventually leaving. I know what they say about the plural of antidote, but I've personally noticed the same. I use it less, and when I do use it, I notice the people I care about on facebook are using it less too. Everything you say mirrors the response to facebook I've been seeing. Its no longer a toy, its just that thing you have and slowly wo…

I agree, but it's interesting that Google is doing so much more than just search today and they're not inviting the same response. Is it because the main search service has stayed the same without suffering from feature bloat?

Its an interesting comparison, but I think at least part of the difference lies in the fact many of google's main services -- search, maps, shopping, news -- are about getting you what you want and away from google. The faster you're done using google, the less time you spend there, the better they're doing. Gmail and apps are more time consuming but I think a certain level of "well, I have no choice to do the this work or not, I might as well have a nice interface" comes into play when using those.

Google's tools seem more about facilitating accomplishing something else as fast as possible, while facebook is the ends in and of itself. How long you spend on facebook is the metric of how well facebook is doing.

At least thats my take on it.

Re: The end of Facebook

#52
post #42
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A slowly increasing number of my friends are cutting down their use, and eventually leaving. I know what they say about the plural of antidote, but I've personally noticed the same. I use it less, and when I do use it, I notice the people I care about on facebook are using it less too. Everything you say mirrors the response to facebook I've been seeing. Its no longer a toy, its just that thing you have and slowly wo…

I agree, but it's interesting that Google is doing so much more than just search today and they're not inviting the same response. Is it because the main search service has stayed the same without suffering from feature bloat?

Because you can still do just plain search.

Google makes lots of products that you can use however you please. Facebook makes one product, and when you want to use one aspect of it, you get lots of baggage that you don't necessarily care about.

Re: The end of Facebook

#53
I like this line in the submitted article: "But to value every company as if they are the next Google, rather than valuing them all as if one of them might be, is pretty much the definition of a bubble." I think there is insight in that. Not every big new online service can have the long-term revenue growth and user engagement that Google has managed to achieve. (Some of the stories about Groupon point out aptly that Groupon spends much of its revenue on Google promotions, so who is the winner when Google, a profitable company, is paid by Groupon, a company that is losing money on every sale?)

That said, Facebook is the one online service that gets more engagement from me, by far, even than HN or all the Google properties other than Gmail. Facebook's algorithm for prioritizing posts from friends into my home page works amazingly well at showing me the content I want to see. The Facebook secret groups feature works well for me at forming more tightly knit communities. All in all, what's cool about Facebook is that I see FRIENDS there, people I'm glad to see in real life or online.

Back when nobody needed to buy floppy disks, because AOL was endlessly mailing those out to everyone in America, I was subscribed to AOL for a while. I couldn't understand why people preferred the chat-like user discussion interface of AOL to the more threaded discussions available on other online services at the same time. I found AOL rather tedious, and eventually unsubscribed, but millions of users stayed on AOL long after I thought it had lost all of its competitive advantage over other ways of getting on the Internet. AOL had the financial strength and reputation to take over (and drain of value) Time Warner, and it still hasn't completely disappeared. I think Facebook will do at least that well for at least that long. Maybe Facebook is already in a long decline, but it will be a long, slow decline.

Re: The end of Facebook

#54
post #4

So, what problems do facebook/social networks solve? * sharing photos * keeping in touch with friends and families and getting the latest updates from them * events * games * sharing links and stuff and all these things from one place! is there any other site/technology that provides all these benefits in one place?

The article neglects that facebook is always looking to expand its feature set, with things like email (on top of existing chat) and music [1].

Also neglected are statistics pertaining to new account activations and account reactivations (secondary and post-secondary students make up a giant portion of the user base, and many make it a habit to deactivate temporarily during exam time).

This article just feels overly sensational, giving no credence to counter-arguments.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2584712

Re: The end of Facebook

#56
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm finding Twitter of at least some limited use too. The big difference is that I don't follow my "friends", I follow people that know a lot about things I find professionally and artistically interesting, most of whom I'll probably never meet in person.

"Facebook is about people you were friend with, Twitter is about people you wish you'd be friend with" -- approximate quote from someone I can't recall This is not quite exact in reality, but I think it captured the difference in essence between the two social platforms.

I see the reality in the Twitter part (even though I'm not a user of twitter myself). But I think that the Facebook part of that assertion is outdated.

It used to be true that I only had friends on Facebook. But nowadays I have way more acquaintances than friends. My point is, if Facebook was still today only about people I am friends with I would still use it as much as 4 years ago. But nowadays the signal to noise ratio is way too low for me to really get anything out of the platform:

* I'm reminded of birthdays of people I don't even know how I met

* I see pictures on my news feed from people partying that I don't recognize...

PS: I might not be a good example of the average user, since I've also been moving from one country to another over the past few years accelerating the process by witch everyday friends turn into acquaintances

EDIT: fixed formatting

Re: The end of Facebook

#57
post #36

This was a rather pointless article. Yes, every company will reach a point where growth slows. Yes, every company will have users who quit. Yes, valuations are high right now. Yes, many companies will get replaced by better ones that come along. And yes, it is implied that Facebook is a company. How does any of this lead to "the end of facebook"?? The author even states "Facebook is still growing very fast in terms o…

I completely agree, but one point that he briefly mentions that I think is even more interesting is the idea of a Facebook IPO. Consider that Facebook isn't going anywhere (most likely) and will be a major company for a long time. That still doesn't change the fact that if they've already done all of the their major growing (user-wise, I'm assuming that they will continue to look for new revenue sources), their IPO c…

Yeah, at this point why would they IPO (except to get rich[er], of course)? Obviously they could grow in some unforeseen way, but if they don't have an ace up their sleeve, what business reason would they have for needing additional capital?

Re: The end of Facebook

#58
post #21

First wave of SNs were aimed at dating as the lure (Friendster). Second wave of SNs were/are aimed at social sharing of everything and anything with everybody and anybody (FB). Third wave of SNs are aimed/will be aimed at "real" social sharing of everything and anything with only people you choose (Tusulog.com, our start-up). We're focused on one main thought: you don't, by default, socialize with all your friends pl…

I went over to Tusulog.com, but I didn't find anything to make me want to use it. :(

Re: The end of Facebook

#59

This was a rather pointless article. Yes, every company will reach a point where growth slows. Yes, every company will have users who quit. Yes, valuations are high right now. Yes, many companies will get replaced by better ones that come along. And yes, it is implied that Facebook is a company. How does any of this lead to "the end of facebook"?? The author even states "Facebook is still growing very fast in terms o…

Agreed. FaceBook is still growing and will have to continue to change things up and grow in other areas such as deals, etc. The only reason this article is ranked so high on HN is how sensational titles can game the upvote without opening system.

Re: The end of Facebook

#60

This is borne out by my experience. A slowly increasing number of my friends are cutting down their use, and eventually leaving. This might just be due to my cohort of friends getting older, but the article claims it is a general trend. What is definitely true, is that nobody I know feels anything positive about facebook, at all. It is seen simply as a sinister, addictive[1] necessary evil. This is the case regardles…

As a counterpoint, I moved to a new area five months ago, and I have found Facebook an excellent way to communicate with the new people I have met, and to keep in touch with the friends I left. For most people I know, Facebook is just another way to communicate and coordinate.
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