I think Facebook will change from a product to a technology conglomerate, similar to Yahoo or Google.
The end of the Facebook era
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Re: The end of the Facebook era
#12A big counter point to the Facebook is a fad is Pepsi. Pepsi was considered a fad in the 60's when it was already 40 years old. It's still around. It buys coolness with a massive marketing budget. Pepsi is water + corn syrup + some flavor. And it's been around for many, many decades. Pepsi, and Cola, show that being old does not mean you can't still be cool.
It's a different market with different customer mind sets. More importantly, "cool" is relative. Coke is family oriented, aka not cool. This allows pepsi to be "cool" by associating its brand with "hot" celebrities and trends. On the other hand, Facebook has nothing older to compare to. It's "cool" relative to myspace I suppose.
Re: The end of the Facebook era
#13I think FB is simply transitioning from product to utility, like electricity.
Just one example is its utility to sign up and log in to other services, which is 95%+ of my FB activity.
Re: The end of the Facebook era
#14All social networks have remarkably short golden eras. That said, even though Facebook is declining, I still think all the articles about the "end of the Facebook era" and "death of Facebook" are sensational and exaggerated. They're still, what?... The second or the third highest traffic website internationally? Over a billion registered accounts (regardless of whether only half are legitimate and being used, it's a lot).
As the author noted though, Facebook can still thrive in the "cool factor" with their acquisitions.
Re: The end of the Facebook era
#15Very interesting. A few years back, I was fascinated to see how much Facebook had become the native medium for the whippersnappers. Some of our interns thought of email like I thought of fax machines.
But even if Facebook is prone to stumble, I'd encourage entrepreneurs not to try to be the "next Facebook". As I wrote elsewhere [1]: "Honestly, there probably won't be a 'next Facebook', for the same reason there hasn't been a next Amazon, next Oracle, next Google, or next Apple. There hasn't even been a next Yahoo, because the secret to success for many startups wasn't being another Yahoo, it was being different. Something you should think hard on: Zuckerberg didn't set out to make the next Facebook, or the next anything. He was just making something fun for himself and his fellow Harvard students. It was only when he saw how powerful his creation was that his ambitions increased."
This seems especially relevant to me now that I'm seeing ads around San Francisco for two new social networks that are lamely trying to be the next Facebook.
[1] https://www.quora.com/Entrepreneurship/Is-it-foolish-to-go-t...
Re: The end of the Facebook era
#16Very interesting. A few years back, I was fascinated to see how much Facebook had become the native medium for the whippersnappers. Some of our interns thought of email like I thought of fax machines. But even if Facebook is prone to stumble, I'd encourage entrepreneurs not to try to be the "next Facebook". As I wrote elsewhere [1]: "Honestly, there probably won't be a 'next Facebook', for the same reason there hasn'…
I'd argue that Facebook is actually the next AOL (a tool for managing your connections, communicating, and viewing curated content in a walled garden). Teenagers in the late 90s/early 00s lived on AOL in the same way that they later lived on Facebook. But you don't become the next anything by trying to be it, you try to become something different, and it's only in hindsight that they look the same.
It's also true that the company that looks indomitable today is seen as an anachronism tomorrow. At one point there were lawsuits against AOL to open up the instant messenger network because it was seen as an anti-competitive monopoly. Now nobody seems to care.
Re: The end of the Facebook era
#17>> Teens likely see Facebook the same way the Facebook generation sees LinkedIn – like a utilitarian place to manage connections.
This is why the "millennials are leaving Facebook" worry isn't actually real. Yes, middle schoolers and high schoolers aren't using Facebook. They are at a stage in their life where the idea of their parents being able to see into their life is scary. Their social circle is also disproportionately made up of people they can easily see every day. Facebook's utility for contact management, event planning, and keeping in touch doesn't really begin until people turn 18 and go out on their own. This doesn't even begin to touch the ease of using it to sign up for other products that are built on top of it.
Re: The end of the Facebook era
#18I think Facebook will change from a product to a technology conglomerate, similar to Yahoo or Google.
Low traffic on facebook.com domain = no money
Re: The end of the Facebook era
#19Even if you don't care or agree about what revolves around Snowden and the NSA, I'm sure it got many people wondering about how facebook operated and how information works.
Even if nothing is done about the NSA, it will have the merit of making facebook less and less popular, and make people not trust websites who might be information hungry.
I wonder if people thwarting the way they post their info can really make those info gathering useless. That'd fun to watch.
Re: The end of the Facebook era
#20Here are some titles for the next story.
"The end of the Apple era"
"The end of the Microsoft era"
"The end of the Netflix era"
"The end of the Yahoo era"
Seriously, why do people waste time writing these types of stories? My guess is that it's because it's so much easier than actually trying to build something of value. The real problem is there is no penalty for being wrong. Everyone simply forgets. Write a thousand stories and if just one of them is right then you get to claim your genius.
Where are those guys who predicated that Apple Stores were such a stupid idea? We need to start keeping score.
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2001-05-20/commentary-so...