I completely agree that the “people directory” isn’t coming back due to to social hesitation. And I think I stand counter and say it was an anomaly that it existed. It existed solely because it was new. People have different identities across the internet and it’s best to keep them separate. You don’t use your work email for personal stuff. You don’t use your LinkedIn account when you want to create a Tinder account for a reason.
I also agree that the “old media” trashed tech until people finally agreed it was bad. I think some of it’s justified but not all. I’ve long complained about the bias here. I think the shift of democratizing the voice of the people is only going to change society more (in the short term we may call this bad for democracy but I think it’ll be good in the long term). For example, no news site would have run a story about George Floyd, but thanks to social media we don’t need them to. The flip side is misinformation, of course.
I think facebooks drive to video is probably benign trend chasing. I don’t know if it earns them more but I’m sure they’re lowering ad value in the short term until advertisers figure out how to make good ads on it. I don’t have data but I suspect the “home page and FarmVille” era died on its own and the newsfeed was facebooks way of injecting new life (as opposed to the NF killing individual postings)