Facebook unfriended

http://www.economist.com/node/21559947?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/workinprogress

by briandear • 14 years ago

96 85 14 years ago

alpine• 14 years ago

I really, really wish an Open Source alternative to Facebook and Twitter would happen so we can put the proprietary social era behind us.

biomechanica4• 14 years ago

Well, there is Diaspora, heh.

Personally, I think the future of "social networks" will, in a sense, go back in time once again where it will be peer to peer, encrypted end to end.

I think the guys working on the Freedom Box are trying to crack the riddle.

Joeboy4• 14 years ago

> Personally, I think the future of "social networks" will, in a sense, go back in time once again where it will be peer to peer, encrypted end to end.

Except, people like to use Facebook as a broadcast medium, and the message size is likely to get prohibitively large if you're encrypting to a lot of people.

crafter3• 14 years ago

But do we really need an open source social network? Do we need more/different online social networks when there is so much out there already?

Why don't people just use preexisting technologies like email? What's the obsession with social networks anyway? Let's rethink this and come up with something radically different.

There is a alternative, all inclusive solution right under our noses...

biomechanica4• 14 years ago

Well, the very first of these social networks is, I would say, the Internet itself. Facebook, MySpace and co., are/were basically trying to bring all that traffic to a single place where they could take advantage of the sharing.

I agree, there should be something created completely different. However, I don't think that can really be achieved. I think it can be made to look different but in the end it will just be a different implementation of the same thing.

I think the next big thing won't be necessarily social networking. Social is basically an expected feature of all new software. There is nothing new to be had there. People like to share things and talk with friends, meet new people, etc. That won't change.

The appearance will change and the technology that becomes big will have all of that stuff in it. I just hope it's free software and disconnected from a centralized source.

Personally, I think the next big thing will be accidentally created by the "the people" and not some corporation.

rabidsnail2• 14 years ago

You mean email (or maybe email+vCard)?

Actually, to make that work I think you'd need to add three things:

1. An extension to the vCard format to represent relationships (maybe this already exists? can you embed RDF triplets in vCard?)

2. A plugin for the popular mail servers that displays vCard info of its users as html in response to web requests (with appropriate RDFa metadata).

3. Some way to make an http request that proves "I am johndoe@example.com" or "I am the mail server responsible for johndoe@example.com" so that servers could make a distinction between private data, public data, and "friends only" data. Maybe have a chain of trust that starts with DNSSEC keys?

crafter3• 14 years ago

Email + vCard - plugin (to keep it dirt simple, streamlined and to reduce friction and increase adoption) is what I was thinking.

vog2• 14 years ago

>1. An extension to the vCard format to represent relationships (maybe this already exists? can you embed RDF triplets in vCard?)

There is FOAF ("friend-of-a-friend", based on RDF). At the moment, this is mostly provided by websites (such as identi.ca), but could also be transferred via E-Mail.

There might be some way to embed FOAF into vCard, but why should be care? E-Mail allows for more than one attachment ...

superuser25• 14 years ago

Open source only makes sense for a social network if it's federated, in which case you're talking about Diaspora.

taligent3• 14 years ago

Exactly we have open source social network already. Nobody cares about Diaspora.

Because at the end of the day user experience is order of magnitudes more important than some arbitrary geek obsession with being open. Which isn't important for most people since they are used to having their personal information owned by third parties e.g. banks, employers, insurance companies, government.

DanBC• 14 years ago

I'd prefer a standards-based approach.

Define an open standard for a message; a photo-share; tagging; etc etc. Include stuff that clients and servers MUST do, or MUST NOT do. Write a nice server, and host it. Write a nice client (Browser extensions? Website?)

Now you have an open ecosystem that is as flexible as people want it to be. There's a reason that all discussion sites end up being a worse implementation of Usenet.

Silhouette4• 14 years ago

I'd prefer a standards-based approach.

Exactly. The problem isn't that we don't have useful social networks. The problem is that we have too many of them, with varying heights of wall between their respective gardens that make interoperability and data migration absurdly difficult in many cases.

I suspect the roadblock is that these networks are tied together by the underlying concepts of identities and relationships, but for many valid reasons a lot of people would like to present different identities in different contexts or treat some relationships differently to others. Until there is some reasonably standardised approach (or set of compatible approaches) to representing these ideas, there's no robust foundation so you can build different kinds of messaging and content sharings systems on top.

That in turn leads to practical issues of authentication and trust networks, and we haven't completely solved those problems in a way that Just Works for non-technical users yet.

olliesaunders• 14 years ago

There’s quite a precedent for OSS--actually even closed-source software--innovation driving standards definitions.

mseebach2• 14 years ago

The nut to crack isn't writing the software. That's (in comparison) trivial, it's been done over and over again.

The nut to crack is to allow a user to transfer the network effects he currently has on Facebook to a new network.

slurgfest2• 14 years ago

What is the best open alternative currently usable? Do you have a URL?

Obviously the problem of porting the data is 100% up to Facebook to allow, which I strongly doubt it will ever do (what is its commercial interest in allowing that?)

RexRollman• 14 years ago

I think what we need is to find a way to have a non-profit organization run a social networking site, perhaps run by something like a cross between Debian and Wikipedia groups.

Of course, the real problem with that would be paying for it. Hardware and bandwidth isn't free and it seems like most people are unwilling to pay anything for social networking.

mapster• 14 years ago

The article presented very little factual info other than FB stock price and the latest Wall street social media drama (anecdotal). FB is the envy of any large media company so it's multi billion valuation is spot on.

ChrisNorstrom3• 14 years ago

This is why you really need to research a company's growth potential before you buy its stock. Just because something's popular doesn't mean it can grow forever. Had all those investors realized that Facebook was a one trick pony they might not have lost 40% of their money (and counting...).

They had all these visions of grandeur that Facebook could plug various services to their existing users and make endless amounts of money. Maybe add a Facebook classified ads service, document sharing service, auction site, shopping e-store for its members that takes a small commission. Whatever other companies did, just copy it and add it on Facebook and watch users instantly abandon competitors. After all FB has close to a billion users. Little did they know that Facebook users were never that engaged nor will they ever be.

The collective hive mind of bored humans completely ignored Facebook Questions. Zuckerberg's first attempt at trying to cultivate its legion of human potatoes. He quickly pulled FB Questions after no one used it and tried again later by changing it to Ask Questions and shoving it right after the "Add Photo/Video" link above the status update box itself. People are still ignoring it. Its members are there to share photos and talk to friends, not seek knowledge, not sell photos, not start businesses, not buy digital products, not share documents, or anything else productive or profitable for that matter.

In general users follow the "One website per one purpose" rule. Auction site neanderthal, eBay learned that the hard way when it simply tried to tack on classified ads thinking its members would ditch craigslist. Even monopolistic cro-magnon Microsoft has tried and failed numerous times at getting its installed base to use more profitable tacked on services and products. Ironically they only succeeded in spreading the worst internet browser in human history this way. Facebook's still in denial about it's useless network of potatoes. Sorry. Humans.

After all these years Silicon Valley still values massive droves of bored users without problems over clusters of customers with money in hand. In some ways they're right, Facebook still makes massive amounts of ad revenue and is still profitable. But I doubt it'll experience any further population boom or miraculous revenue growth.

The company isn't going anywhere for now, but as Facebook fatigue sets in and members find new and easier ways to share photos with friends (a user's main activity) things might not always be "flowers and sunshine" for FB. And in the future we'll look back in hindsight and say "I can't believe they didn't foresee it, all the signs were there."

loceng• 14 years ago

People are mobile online, they aren't stuck on any controlled ecosystem. This is what will be the end to Facebook, along with their abusing of members.

thatusertwo• 14 years ago

iOS isn't a controlled ecosystem?

taligent3• 14 years ago

I just love armchair experts.

Did you ever think that maybe those investors aren't looking for a short term return and don't care about the stock price day to day. You know the type of investors we actually need more of.

And if you actually were a little more creative you would see that Facebook doesn't have to bundle everything into the website. It can have separate brands like Instagram and grow into new markets that way. And with its sheer user base and content it would be able to decimate smaller competitors.

AlisdairO• 14 years ago

> Did you ever think that maybe those investors aren't looking for a short term return and don't care about the stock price day to day. You know the type of investors we actually need more of.

That kind of intelligent investor was probably unlikely to buy in on a clearly overhyped IPO, in fairness.

Silhouette4• 14 years ago

I just love armchair experts.

You didn't need to be an expert for this one. You could have seen the inevitable dive coming with nothing but the most basic understanding of stock markets and concrete measures like the expected price/earnings ratio, without even referring to anything specific about how Facebook operates.

And if you did consider anything deeper than that, applying the slightest common sense to where Facebook's growth has come from so far and the current global population for example, or looking at Facebook's dubious record with regard to building a sustainable, efficient advertising system to monetize their users, or keeping those users on-side with sensitive issues like privacy or just the everyday user experience, every single one of these indicators would have been a red flag.

Did you ever think that maybe those investors aren't looking for a short term return and don't care about the stock price day to day. You know the type of investors we actually need more of.

I imagine most people who bought Facebook were banking on an irrational market-driven rise in the early days followed by a quick cash-out. You know, exactly the type of investors we actually need fewer of. Anyone who made the slightest attempt to consider the fundamentals from either an economic or a business standpoint was on a different continent on IPO day.

Except that in something like eight years so far, they have no demonstrated record of successfully doing those things, so banking on hypothetical future values based on what they might do (assuming any of a dozen major tech firms don't each their lunch first) is exactly the kind of foolish speculation that drives a $38 starting point.

ChrisNorstrom3• 14 years ago

You're 100% right about long term investors. I remember seeing a statistic that shows most of today's most successful stocks started out bombing at their IPOs.

I didn't mean to come out as an armchair expert, just a believer in common sense. I reached my opinion by bundling the stock drop with: 1) Facebook's "ad click bots" story (I had a similar problem when I advertised on FB years back and have been hearing on and off about Facebook ad problems a lot over the years. 2) The revelation that at minimum 10% of FB accounts are fake (still not a bad percentage assuming it isn't secretly higher). 3) Revenue being based mainly on advertising (whose 0.1% click-through rate is going down each and every year). 4) FB getting closer to reaching its maximum realistically possible users. 5) A serious lack of innovation, drive, diversifying or anything at all going on at Facebook. 6) Near zero horizontal growth with no sign of vertical growth either.

At the moment it's just a sitting duck. I mean, my God what have they really done all these years? When a company branches out too far we call it a "Microsoft", when it has all branches and no trunk we call it a "Yahoo", and when it has only a trunk without branches it's now a "Facebook". The fact that they released "time-line" and "ask questions" shows how few options they have at growing or expanding (or how few they've tried). One trick, one pony indeed. They might go the way of Google and start expanding and experimenting after their IPO but from what we've seen. I'm not so sure at all.

el_cuadrado• 14 years ago

> investors aren't looking for a short term return

Do you really think facebook is there to stay? What is its life expectancy, 10 years?

joering25• 14 years ago

> Had all those investors realized that Facebook was a one trick pony they might not have lost 40% of their money (and counting...).

No, I am sorry but this is wrong. You didnt need to realize it was a "one trick pony". All you had to do is read their P/E at the IPO. This should scare you away.

The major issue here was that users and investors both forgot that stock market doesnt care how big of a celebrity you are (as a stock). Math and basic accounting rules thats what counts. Besides you had many smart guys comin up on a TV explaining how wrong this investment is.

Edit: upvoted because it was a good comment.

maigret2• 14 years ago

Not really. Look at Amazon's PE, keeping strong since years and much higher than Facebook's. If there is really a huge growth potential and a good track of growth for many years, a high PE can be justified. Of course, the future will tell us who was right...

TDL• 14 years ago

If you look at the studies that were done about high PE firms you will see that those firms were not attempting to secure the maximum valuation possible @ IPO. In FB's case they were attempting to secure a $100 billion valuation (the maximum valuation that any stock prognosticator had called for.) I also do not believe high PE studies go further back than the 1990's. There is something there, but more data is needed.

pbreit• 14 years ago

> All you had to do is read their P/E at the IPO.

No, this is wrong. Earnings are almost totally irrelevant at this stage. Companies raise money through an IPO because they are in growth mode which typically means minimal or negative earnings.

SideburnsOfDoom• 14 years ago

> and members find new and easier ways to share photos with friends

They share photos and status updates. And event invites. Chatter basically.

But making an easier way is hard. Really hard. Because everyone is already on Facebook. That's where the social graph is.

powertower• 14 years ago

> Ironically they only succeeded in spreading the worst internet browser in human history this way.

IE6 came out in 2001, and at that time was the most standards-compliant and feature full of all the browsers on the market (well, except for IE 5.5 for MacOS).

Why do people keep compairing it to the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox?

ChrisNorstrom3• 14 years ago

It's not what you release, it's how you maintain what you release. MS is at failt for using monopolistic methods to force a poorly maintained browser.

To this day IE is still garbage, it's gotten better but even the latest IE9 has simple rendering issues. It still doesn't have text-shadow support and if you use gradients with rounded corners it destroys the rounded corners and cancels them out. So much for modern :(

antidoh2• 14 years ago

"So Facebook must make money from the members it has rather than simply by adding new ones."

The test will be if they can charge for membership. People find phone service worth paying for. People find internet service worth paying for. Some people even pay for TV.

Would 50% of current users pay for Fbook?

praptak• 14 years ago

Fifty percent? Is there even a precedent where more than a few percent of users switched from free to paid?

theorique2• 14 years ago

I get a lot of value from Facebook and I would be willing to pay a nominal subscription fee.

However:

• As a customer, my demands are much greater than as a user. I feel more entitled to make demands and get real attention than for a free service. Customer service becomes more important when money is involved.

• I would expect absolute control over my own data. No advertising. No selling aggregate data to advertisers. If I quit the side, my data needs to be gone completely, without a trace.

• If my friends started quitting the service in droves, due to fees, I might no longer consider it worth the money and would probably leave or wind down my involvement as well.

antidoh2• 14 years ago

I pay for bookmarks (pinboard), even though I have a free alternative right in my browser.

A paid Facebook would likely look different than today's Facebook, both in features and in financial organization, but it may be a more predictable and sensible investment.

maigret2• 14 years ago

As a way to make that visible to Facebook (probably someone there is looking at that thread, but your vote count isn't visible...) - I would totally pay for FB also, at the price that linkedin or others are proposing.

My demand would then be data security, no advertising. Other users could stay on free service, but the apps they use shouldn't have access to my data anymore.

EDIT added mention to invisible votes

noarchy• 14 years ago

That would turn users into customers. This would probably have interesting ramifications, in terms of what such users would begin to demand (and expect to receive).

vibrunazo2• 14 years ago

They don't need to charge for membership. It doesn't need to be black or white. That's what apps are for. You should be asking, would users pay enough for facebook apps to grow their profits?

Facebook has had reasonable success with apps. But the whole app use/discovery/interaction/development experience on facebook has a lot of room for improvement (euphemism to mean it's terrible). And they do seem aware and willing to improve on this arena.

kragen• 14 years ago

They can't legally charge for membership; the existing users, access to whom would be the product they would be selling, signed up on a page that said "It's free and always will be."

petitmiam• 14 years ago

What about a "Facebook Pro" account, that adds extra features (no ads?) on top of the standard basic free account?

tomp• 14 years ago

FB is slowly becoming background noise, a part of our infrastructure that everybody has come to depend on, but that noone is really hyped about. Kind-a like Google Search.

joering25• 14 years ago

No it doesnt. Not only i personally not care about all the "be the first of your friends to like this post about deadly car crash", there is further no "infrastructure" that internet relies on when it comes to facebook. To me and billion other net users it could dissapear overnight and i would see or feel the difference, other than websites would get little bit cleaner. Google, on the other side feeds website owners with monetary gains by leasing space from them for adsense. If that would get shut down, i would assume many could not afford to continue with their websites.

tomjen32• 14 years ago

And my grandparents would be quite happy to see the internet going down.

But that doesn't mean that billions of people don't rely on it.

steve8918• 14 years ago

Facebook has done what every other company only dreams of doing, which is get almost everyone in the world to use them, and on a relatively consistent basis.

The problem is that they haven't been able to follow this up with another home run. They have all these users, and unfortunately their best way of monetizing these users so far has been ads. And even then there is anecdotal evidence that these ads aren't very effective. And even worse, their users are moving onto mobile far quicker than they anticipated, and because that space is unmonetized, they are losing a large source of income. They are facing the perfect storm of poor monetization of their current users, a mobile platform that is completely unmonetized, and quicker-than-anticipated migration of their current users to this unmonetized platform.

The Facebook desktop experience is a lot less sticky than they believed, and now they need to scramble to fix this gap in monetization, and until they do (and if they can), their stock will be under pressure. The movement of users from Facebook desktop to Facebook mobile is something that probably could have been picked up a lot sooner through their analytics, and something they should have addressed a lot sooner, instead of publicly scrambling now for a solution.

I thought 2-3 years ago that the logical next step for Facebook was to invest heavily in their Facebook app ecosystem, so that people would log into Facebook and stay there the entire day. They could have email, IM chat, world news, tv shows, music, word processing, etc all from various Facebook apps and keep their users engaged all day long. It would follow the natural progression of Operation System to Browser to simply Facebook. And with the iPhone App store as a model, maybe they could charge 30% and make loads of money that way.

But this never seems to have taken off, which seems like a strategic misstep. I find the Facebook app space to be relatively inactive, except for games like Zynga, but even Zynga's results show that Facebook app usage appears to be dropping. Because the Facebook app experience is relatively non-existent, it means that the only really useful feature of Facebook is the newsfeed and photos, both of which can be reproduced very well on the mobile. If they had a healthy Facebook app ecosystem, it might slow down people's migration to strictly mobile, and allow for better monetization of users as well.

As a side note, I've been trying to develop a Facebook app just to learn, and I have to say that the developer documentation is amongst the worst I've come across. Things have changed so quickly that doing Google searches is relatively useless. And even the latest documentation doesn't appear to be proof-read, lacks good explanations or examples, is confusing in many places, and some links don't even work. Thank God for stackoverflow! There are a lot of weird loops that have to be jumped through as well, which feels hacky, but I imagine there are technical reasons for it. But still, it feels like the entire experience of developing an app should be cleaner and easier. Part of it is probably because you can't host your apps on Facebook servers, so all this indirection causes technical issues, so maybe the solution (if it even matters anymore since app development doesn't seem very popular) would be to offer their own hosting service.

alaskan• 14 years ago

This article is just a rehash of all the articles that have been discussed on HN in the recent days. I just don't understand why stuff like this gets upvoted. This anti-facebook anthem on HN has to die

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