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After Facebook fails

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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Re: After Facebook fails

#211
post #20
post #9

I could see facebook being replaced by nothing more fancy than a web design app with a social webring gizmo.

Facebook's advantage over any competitor is that everyone is already on Facebook. I could see early adopters moving to what you're describing, but it would take ages to move the other 90% of the users over. So at least for the next few years, it's unlikely that people will transition en masse to a completely new service.

"Everybody" is already in a lot of places.

They're on FB. They're also on Google. A hell of a lot of them are still on Yahoo mail. They're using Craigslist. And eBay. And Amazon. And The New York Times and/or Fox. Hulu. Whatever Apple's calling its offerings these days. Even Microsoft. To say nothing of a bunch of B2B service sites that have large user lists (ADT, Delta Dental, Beico, etc.).

There are a bunch of sites that have a very large userbase. Large enough at least to get past the network effects problem sufficiently to start boostrapping social onto things if they want to do so.

Which is one of the reasons that network effects, in and of themselves, offer such transient advantages. You may be able to corner the network effect in one area for a time, but you're not going to conrner all network effects in all areas, leaving you vulnerable to intrusion and erosion.

Several of the players listed above have a vastly better advertising or direct revenue capacity (Google, Apple/iTunes, eBay, Craigslist, and most of all in my mind, Amazon).

Craigslist is a wonderful example of a site that leave huge amounts of potential revenue behind (charging for only a small fraction of jobs and housing listings) to create a hugely compelling advantage in the classified advertising market, and supporting some "social" features (there is a pretty active, if not grossly overwhelming, forums section). Amazon also has discussion. Google has entered directly into the frey. The direct problem of social networking is one of coupling a modicum of engineering talent to a financing capacity and and existing network.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: social is mostly a way of tying notices and feeds to specific users, and there's absolutely no inherent reason why it needs to be based on a centralized application model. Diaspora is already a community-based project, and may be heading toward a decentralized hosting model. Once that happens, IMO, the jig is up. Not because Diaspora will instantly subvert Facebook, but because all the 2nd-tier social networks will have the option of joining FB (or whomever leads the siloed SN space at the time), ceding significant power and control to them, or of playing in the open space.

It's the same strategy that's lead Linux to subvert all other operating systems on the server, embedded, and handheld/mobile markets (less successfully still in desktop/laptop). Sun, IBM, HP, LG, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Google, Amazon, B&N, etc., couldn't take on Microsoft directly with their own OS offerings, but they could join forces by agreeing on an open standard which offered none of them a proprietary advantage of itself, but allowed them to exercise other business strengths to benefit (and yes, Apple's been doing quite well with an alternative strategy, though also based on an open UNIX base).

So yes, I'm bearish on Facebook.

Re: After Facebook fails

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AdBlockPlus and Ghostery are always the two plugins I install first on my Firefox. http://adblockplus.org/en/ http://www.ghostery.com/

Also Adveristy and Anti Social subscription for AdBlock. http://code.google.com/p/adversity/

How is it different from Ghostery?

Re: After Facebook fails

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you entertainment is a cash cow. But FB is _free_ entertainment. As is your photo-album and the discussions you have with your friends. You appear to be referring to future success. It's like Microsoft talking up "vaporware". It gets people's attention, maybe it convinces some to believe and some to invest, but it offers them nothing. Only a promise of some future of which no one can be certain. We have…

It really isn't "free" entertainment. There are many companies making lots of money (zynga for instance) selling virtual goods on facebook with FB credits. FB gets 30%. I'm not trying to say it's the same amount of money that google makes, but that alone is in the millions of dollars per month of gross profit.

[deleted]

Re: After Facebook fails

#214

I didn't get through the whole post as it's kind of disjointed and meandering, but its initial assertions seem shaky. Personalized ads do have business value. After looking at some videos about Native Instruments audio gear on YouTube, I started getting a lot of Native Instruments ads pretty quickly. Unlike television, I am being shown ads for something I might actually buy rather than ads for things I will never buy…

> "After looking at some videos about Native Instruments audio gear on YouTube, I started getting a lot of Native Instruments ads pretty quickly." So, you sought out the product first, then received ads? I think that's the point. What does this accomplish from a brand awareness point of view? You have already made it clear you're interested.

>So, you sought out the product first, then received ads? I think that's the point. What does this accomplish from a brand awareness point of view? You have already made it clear you're interested.

A traditional sales technique is to retain a list of potential leads and call them every once and awhile to see if the lead is interested in converting into a sale. This technique exists because it works and the purpose of the targeted advertising is similar. Keep me reminded of the product and at some point I might be inclined to buy.

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