Ask HN: Do you think there will be full replacement to Facebook?

#1

Post by tuyguntn » Sun, Aug 02, 2015, 7:06 PM UTC

After reading a lot about G+ fail[1], I am really interested to know, will we see full replacement to Facebook in near(10-50years) future or when someone from this community at this time will be alive when full replacement happens? (like orkut -> fb, myspace->fb,...)

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9990919

Re: Ask HN: Do you think there will be full replacement to Facebook?

#2

Post by byg80 » Sun, Aug 02, 2015, 7:25 PM UTC

Not anytime soon. And if there is, it will be something with most focus on mobile and phone numbers. That's why Facebook is already on top of that with Instagram and Whatsapp. Facebook might be in this for the long haul, esp with the stuff they can also do with Oculus.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think there will be full replacement to Facebook?

#3

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 02, 2015, 7:51 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Do you think there will be full replacement to Facebook?

#4

Post by afrancis » Sun, Aug 02, 2015, 8:29 PM UTC

Ten to fifty years is a long time to project into the future .... I think there will not be so much a replacement social media web site to Facebook as 1) fragmentation of the social media space. 2) the waning of social media as the predominant focus of personal computing. I would go out on limb and say that software agents will be the next big thing. That is applications that know a lot about you and do things on your behalf without your direct intervention. Less interaction, not more. I think the proliferation of web APIs and big data, make software agents more viable.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think there will be full replacement to Facebook?

#5

Post by tuyguntn » Sun, Aug 02, 2015, 8:55 PM UTC

afrancis wrote: post #4

Ten to fifty years is a long time to project into the future .... I think there will not be so much a replacement social media web site to Facebook as 1) fragmentation of the social media space. 2) the waning of social media as the predominant focus of personal computing. I would go out on limb and say that software agents will be the next big thing. That is applications that know a lot about you and do things on you…

I guess Zapier and IFTTT already started the way for software agents. If we call them Agent 1.0, how do you see Agent 2.0?

Re: Ask HN: Do you think there will be full replacement to Facebook?

#6

Post by therealmarv » Sun, Aug 02, 2015, 9:11 PM UTC

FB is also struggling... it is not any more this one point of social media. Many young people are not even on FB. This is why e.g. WhatsApp is so critical for FB.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think there will be full replacement to Facebook?

#7

Post by allendoerfer » Sun, Aug 02, 2015, 11:48 PM UTC

What you have to take into account when guesstimating this is, that while Facebook has a lock-in, many of the obstacles it had are fading away. I am thinking of mainly these two:

1. The typical mom in twenty years will be much easier to get on a new web-/app-platform than the current typical mom.

2. Internationalization beyond the US and Western Europe is becoming easier.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think there will be full replacement to Facebook?

#8

Post by greenyoda » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 1:01 AM UTC

byg80 wrote: post #2

Not anytime soon. And if there is, it will be something with most focus on mobile and phone numbers. That's why Facebook is already on top of that with Instagram and Whatsapp. Facebook might be in this for the long haul, esp with the stuff they can also do with Oculus.

It's possible that unlike Instagram and Whatsapp, the next hot new app that's popular with young people will be bought by a competitor of Facebook's rather than Facebook - or will just refuse to be bought by anybody and challenge Facebook on their own terms.

It's also possible that open social platforms like Diaspora will start attracting away some of Facebook's more privacy-oriented users.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think there will be full replacement to Facebook?

#9

Post by seiji » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 1:13 AM UTC

Humans have a stubborn habit of assuming what they experience right now is the steady state future of the universe. It helps our meat selves cope with inevitable futures so we quickly believe things will always be the same from now on. (Also see: housing prices will always go up, my stock prices will always go up, i'm healthy so X doesn't matter to me, etc.)

But, facebook is a fad that will be torn down and replaced one day. If facebook is still around in 50 years, we have failed humanity by letting such a violation of privacy and invasion of decency survive into an even more modern era.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think there will be full replacement to Facebook?

#10

Post by tvawnz » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 1:18 AM UTC

Why would you still use FB today? There are better photo sharing apps, there are better messenging apps, there are better broadcasting apps. The fact that FB monolithically encloses these is only relevant on a desktop browser.

FBs biggest strength is it's market share, the fact that you can be reasonably assured that you _can_ look up that girl from that party on it.

But that strength is waning, especially in the sub 20s who are strangely rediscovering what sharing on the internet used to be. We have yikyak instead of IRC for community based anon-chat. We have whatsapp and wechat instead of AIM for non-anon chat. We have tumblr instead of geocities for free expression front walls.

Kind of funny how far people think we've come and how innovative these new apps are. It's all just a rehash wrapped up in pretty colors with trendy logos.

It was cool for about 5 years, then people started realizing that maybe it wasn't a good idea to have your smoking cyph posting pictured of bongs on your biometric profile that you got pressured into sharing with the boss and mom. No clue what happened to that early 90s generation. The late 90s are way more savvy.