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Facebook is Dying

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Re: Facebook is Dying

#81
post #53
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much easier to predict what will happen than it is to predict when. For example, I can make the following predictions: Facebook will collapse India and China will erupt into violent war We will experience a water crisis Oil will run out (that one is actually easier, about 3 decades) Iran will be invaded These are all fairly obvious predictions. Sometimes math can be used to zero in on dates, but for most of us a…

Care to put some details on the India-China war prediction?

Two largest populations and growing. Shared land mass. Declining resources -- many of which are only in China. Water is running out. Energy. There's a possibility it may be contained to an economic war, let's hope. They are more advanced and conscious societies than the west, so they may have the intellectual aptitude to avoid violence, but when people get hungry and thirsty, they get more aggressive -- naturally.

Re: Facebook is Dying

#82
post #45
post #2

As a consultant to the dot-com industry around the turn of the century, I traveled a lot. I took a lot of long cab rides from airports to downtowns. I talked to lots of cabbies. At some point, I knew the end was near. I knew the end was near when cabbies started asking me if it was a good idea to invest in some particular technology stock or another. Why are cabbies investing in Juniper Networks? Recently, I started…

I don't think this analogy works, given the significant differences between investing and product adoption. Just because a product has become mainstream doesn't indicate that the "end is near." In fact, I would argue the contrary, particular in this case. There are significant network effects in social networking. As the number of Facebook users increases, the value of Facebook to existing users (those already on the…

I think it's bubble-nomics. People sign up for services for the same irrational reasons they buy stocks -- they perceive a future value.

Re: Facebook is Dying

#83
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admire your bold prediction, and I hope we come back a year or two later to see how well your timeline bears out. Just one quibble: >Oil will run out (that one is actually easier, about 3 decades) That would be roughly correct at current rates of extraction, but: * The oil production rate is going to start declining by 2-3 percent a year some time in the next several years (we've been plateaued at 85 mbpd since aro…

Production is declining, but consumption is increasing, so it could be less than 30 years. I also believe that oil will be come more valuable as a pharmaceutical base, for fertilizer, and plastics than for energy. We'll have other sources of energy that we will use to extract the oil, so the 1:1 rule may not apply. As long as the energy costs to extract it are lower than its value for all uses, it'll still be extract…

We can't consume it faster than we can get it out of the ground. This is the main reason the oil price rose steadily through the 2000s and spiked in 2008: spare capacity shrank as demand rose against a maxed out supply until it disappeared entirely in 2007/08. The price super-spike was the market destroying excess demand the only short-term way it knows how.

Re: Facebook is Dying

#84
post #8

We're all dying, but that doesn't mean we'll be dying tomorrow. Titles like that should come with a qualifying end-date. Otherwise it's just about some undefined point in the future. If facebook is dying I'd like to see some proof. I'm very much of the opinion that facebook is transient, but I'd be very careful to stick an end-date on it smaller than at least 5 years in to the future, and a lot can happen in 5 years.…

> If facebook is dying I'd like to see some proof

Me too. I think almost all of the claims of "X dying" are wishful thinking.

Re: Facebook is Dying

#85
post #3

Wow. This is the 5th post of the demise or disgust of Facebook -- today. Are we just hating on them, or are these posts signaling a drastic change in our posture towards them? I don't know, but I suspect FB will have to respond to these cries, or risk their hacker users.

Facebook is more like AOL: aimed at the non-hard-core users. "Hackers" represent a tiny fraction of computer users, maximizing market share and maximizing stock value would mean catering to everyone except the "elite." Furthermore, as FB tends to cater to the popular crowd, I'll refer you to a PG essay on the impedance mismatch between the populars and the nerds: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Re: Facebook is Dying

#86
post #53
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much easier to predict what will happen than it is to predict when. For example, I can make the following predictions: Facebook will collapse India and China will erupt into violent war We will experience a water crisis Oil will run out (that one is actually easier, about 3 decades) Iran will be invaded These are all fairly obvious predictions. Sometimes math can be used to zero in on dates, but for most of us a…

Care to put some details on the India-China war prediction?

It's certainly not inevitable, but there are a number of factors, including the massive resources each country requires as industrialization continues and the standard of living increases, political interests and influence in smaller border nations nearby, directly shared borders, and some amount of history

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1974028,00.htm...

Re: Facebook is Dying

#87
Okay, so I meet someone and decide that we ought to keep in touch. We swap phone numbers, and I say, "add me on Facebook when you get home."

They say, "nah, I don't use Facebook anymore. Do you have a _______ account?"

Someone should really fill in that blank.

Re: Facebook is Dying

#88
post #76
post #72

Ok, so now I need a social network obeying the following constraints: - I control my data. My data are where I decide they should be, on my server or web-hosted somewhere. So it is decentralised and everyone has it's node. - It's based on a standard API, not a product. It defines identities (openid url?), associated publishing of data (defined by its url), relation between data (like a comment on a photo. So some JSO…

You are basically talking about the World Wide Web itself.

All parts exist on the web (OpenID, OAuth, JSON, RSS, microformats, etc...), but not in a usable form as easy to use as Facebook.

Re: Facebook is Dying

#90
post #51

I'm generally pretty understanding about typos and occasional grammatical errors in articles, but this entire post is pretty ridiculous. I'll take that back if this person is a non-native English speaker, but if not, I really find it difficult to take anything he says seriously.

Thomas Baekdal is danish.
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