Can Anyone Stop Facebook?

http://www.slate.com/id/2237376/

by edw519 • 17 years ago

38 51 17 years ago

tiffani• 17 years ago

I have to ask of that article, though, how many people are actively using Facebook nowadays (as in, how many login everyday and actually do something), too. It never mentions it like a lot of articles about Facebook do (although I suspect it's a lot). I ask this because my Facebook usage has declined greatly since graduating from college last year and it's really gone down since they introduced the stream and became more Twitter-like. I tend to sign onto Facebook maybe once every three weeks now. It doesn't help that my stream is populated by my friends' constant romps on Farmville or Mafia Wars and it just drags down the whole experience.

I've really left Facebook more as a living, breathing address book rather than anything else for now. I am much more likely to be on Twitter than Facebook. It also happens that I'll talk to people on Twitter and then eventually add them as friends on Facebook, but just continue talking to them on Twitter. It's even the case now where most of the folks from Facebook (and school) that I'd talk to on a daily basis have migrated over to Twitter and they're more active on Twitter than Facebook. We can't be the only ones doing that...

henrikschroder2• 17 years ago

Well, that's highly anecdotal and as long as Facebook keeps growing your observation does not hold true for the majority of the users.

Everything goes in waves though, it lies in human nature to grow bored with sameness. Ten years ago there existed a community product in my country that had managed to capture 90% of all high-school students, and they seemed unstoppable. Now, the product is almost forgotten, they lost to other products, similar products, but people had just gotten tired of it and wanted something new, something cool, something different.

But ten years from now Facebook will probably be gone. It will be very interesting to see what replaces it though.

electromagnetic4• 17 years ago

It depends if Facebook will be gone. Trust and reliance become significant things in stopping migration, I haven't changed from Google despite it being eternally the same because #1 I rely on it, #2 I trust it.

If facebook can get one, or both, of these from its 350 million users it has a significant chance to stick around. You also have to consider teen markets shift much faster than adult markets. I know in my high-school a single thing could spread throughout the whole school, but when a new grade entered the viral spread had disappeared and they remained 'uninfected' by it. So any trend automatically lost 1/5 of its teen market if it didn't capture the new grade.

This happens less so with more mature crowds, who tend to be more loyal. You don't see people buying from the same car manufacturer time after time because it's an 'in thing', it's because they're loyal, which is in essence reliance and trust.

eru• 17 years ago

About which community product are you talking?

nopinsight• 17 years ago

Facebook just reached 350 million active users and they count only people who log in over the past month.

Also I just read very recently that over 50% of monthly active users log in to Facebook everyday.

bumblebird• 17 years ago

>> "It doesn't help that my stream is populated by my friends' constant romps on Farmville or Mafia Wars"

So surely that shows your friends are using it a lot :/

Personally, I find facebook far more usable than twitter - upload images/videos/share URLs, no silly char limit etc.

theli0nheart• 17 years ago

I totally agree. Facebook at this point is a phonebook. That's all I use it for now. I could care less what a random acquaintance did last weekend. It is totally irrelevant and wastes my time. Twitter forces me to focus on only those who I care about.

http://twitter.com/dwlz/status/1379312535

ivenkys• 17 years ago

"Perhaps one day not long from now, everything on the Web will be a mere extension of Facebook." - a very optimistic view of the growth of FB , to put it mildly.

michael_dorfman• 17 years ago

Sure. But remember that there was a time in recent memory where the notion that AOL would be a mere extension of the web was a very optimistic thought as well, or that some young upstart would knock AltaVista from king-of-the-hill in Search.

"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."

csomar• 17 years ago

+1, may be something new come and take it! It's just a luck for facebook that no other new startup screw them (Twitter is good, but too limited comparing to Facebook)

scott_s• 17 years ago

Optimistic, yes, but I think that's FB's goal.

StrawberryFrog2• 17 years ago

Optimistic for Facebook, pessimistic for the rest of us.

ivankirigin3• 17 years ago

It is entirely possible that the incentives are aligned in such a configuration - where to maintain that position, facebook needs to be better for all parties involved.

Think of this with respect to google. Their business grows linearly with search usage, so their incentives are to create faster and more open access to the internet. Don't believe that "don't be evil" bullshit. They act the way they do because it makes them a great deal of money. AND, it benefits pretty much everyone expect dinosaur incumbents.

[this is just my opinion]

wicknicks• 17 years ago

You mean everything on the "social web"..

mmphosis• 17 years ago

I have one facebook account with a totally fake profile that I used once to view someone's photos. I'm done with facebook, but I guess my once-only fake account still counts towards the growing number of facebook users.

I am surprised by how pervasive facebook is. I insist that people post their photos on flickr or some other service because I don't want to use facebook. They in turn insist that I sign up to facebook just to see their photos.

No, I can't stop facebook but, I don't have to use it either.

zaidf4• 17 years ago

You're in the absolute minority with your fake profile.

I've been a heavy fb user for 5 years and can't recall the last time I saw a fake profile.

far33d• 17 years ago

The only fake profiles I ever see are from other developers testing their facebook apps.

chunkyslink• 17 years ago

I completely disagree. I have a fake facebook profile that I use to access useful groups / access content from organizations that use it.

I would absolutely hate to use my real profile as I find the whole 'incoming' side of it intrusive and desperate.

The last thing is need is to have to deal with all the useless drivel people would be expecting me to take part in with a real profile.

I would also say that at least 4 of my friends do the same.

sireat2• 17 years ago

With all due respect, how do you know you haven't seen a fake profile?

Fake profiles can be quite elaborate.

notaddicted• 17 years ago

I'm a frequent user -- but I mainly use messages. All your friends are like a contact list and you can send them messages. No changing emails, you can use their real names, and the search is very good. Usually the person I want is the first result (for people I'm not friends with.) Phone/email is always changing (and you can lookup phone numbers on facebook: very useful.)

I have been a member since before they added the photo feature, and I have deactivated my account for over 4 months before, but messaging + events + all my friends are on it compels me to stay.

Also, I know people who are either or both email and voicemail bankrupt (more messages than they can possibly ever check), and facebook is the best way to contact.

EDIT: Purpose of this reply: why do I find it compelling to use facebook. Also I don't do IM, don't even answer the phone some days (need quiet time) so it isn't just because I can't help myself.

gaius• 17 years ago

I guess my once-only fake account still counts towards the growing number of facebook users

FB only counts users with recent activity.

I insist that people post their photos on flickr or some other service because I don't want to use facebook

The problem with Flickr is that not everyone is on Flickr. Facebook's ability to tag photos and associate them with events is light years ahead of anyone else, not least because they have a critical mass of the people in the photos on the service.

sireat2• 17 years ago

I am in the same boat, I have a fake facebook profile that I used once for a specific (slightly nefarious) purpose and that was that.

Anyhow, I must be one of the few according to Slate, who does not like sharing everything I do with my friends, enemies and strangers.

fauigerzigerk• 17 years ago

Same boat here. Judging by this thread our boat is getting quite crowded. Maybe the Slate people did their research using a facebook poll ;-)

marltod• 17 years ago

Facebook's business model is busted. Costs are higher than revenue per user. The model has to change, become a search gateway, start selling products people want to buy, or cut costs features and charge high bandwidth users.

zaidf4• 17 years ago

What you said is common for many homeruns. Amazon lost money for a long time. YouTube too. PayPal too.

And yet fb is about to breakeven or hit profitability.

Bust? Not really.

electromagnetic4• 17 years ago

Facebook should be cornering its games market with online payments. Charge $5 for 450 'game points', basically you charge $5 for 450 real-world equivalent 'cents' that you can spend arcade style in whatever game you want.

No facebook game will ever get a payment from me while they're relying on third party providers. There's a slim chance they'll get my money through paypal (since I've had a paypal account longer than I've had a facebook account), but as the money you pay goes into solely one game there's no interoperability. Every developer is stuck developing their own way to implement credits using companies that have no reason to care.

People are going to trust facebook, but they're not going to trust 'cherry credits' or whatever suckass companies you know nothing about that you're signing your credit card information over to. Facebook is already trusted by its users (or they wouldn't be users), which gives them an unbelievable edge without them having to play unfairly against the other game credit providers.

ryanwaggoner• 17 years ago

People are going to trust facebook, but they're not going to trust 'cherry credits' or whatever suckass companies you know nothing about that you're signing your credit card information over to.

Judging by the ridiculous amounts of money that social gaming companies are hauling in, this is clearly not true.

figital• 17 years ago

Look at Facebook ... look at ChromeOS .... it's the same thing (only Facebook is further along). The business is data mining and advertising.

The issue will be who do you distrust the least.

Who is going to make it easiest to export my personal data to use somewhere else? Hopefully us geeks will keep pushing for this and then help everyone else follow.

Until then I feel like I'm just toying around with the flavor-of-the-month.

ams6110• 17 years ago

I don't trust any of them. That's why I don't have a Facebook page, I don't have a MySpace page, I don't use gmail or any of Google's services. I don't have a Twitter account. I do have an account on LinkedIn because my boss at my last job asked me to set one up, but I never update it.

mark_l_watson• 17 years ago

I understand where you are coming from re: privacy issues, but aren't you also missing some real value?

I check Facebook 2 or 3 times a week to see what family and friends have been doing. With Twitter, I follow people into the same technologies that I am interested in, and I get a lot of interesting links.

re: gmail: I have never bought anything from a sponsored search link, but I do occasionally buy things from advertisement links on my email - also, sometimes I get an email from a customer asking me to help them with a problem and a useful link is on the right side of the customer email.

Sure, privacy issues are huge, but I think that people need to make a personal calculation of benefits vs. potential problems.

Quarrelsome• 17 years ago

I don't either which is why i'd never use my real name when signing up to them. I dont mind giving them free content, i'm just not comfortable with how they can tally that content back to me.

acg• 17 years ago

If you start along that road who do you trust. Many organisations now collect data on their customers: loyalty cards are a good example. That is before you get to public organisations. You'd have to be a hermit for data not to be collected on you and to be sold.

Do you just object because some companies make it their primary revenue stream or because it's obvious?

sahaj• 17 years ago

do you use a phone?

i wonder how people felt when phones first came out. the privacy nuts must have gone crazy: oh no! the operator could be listening to my personal conversations.

vital101• 17 years ago

"The business is data mining and advertising."

I often wonder if the business of online advertising really works well. Targeted advertising certainly has better results that blanket campaigns, but don't most users ignore advertisements by now? I know that I hardly even notice them anymore (even the good ones).

HeyLaughingBoy• 17 years ago

don't most users ignore advertisements by now?

Not well targeted ads! One of the forums I frequent has a fairly new ad up almost all the time. A number of people have commented on their experiences purchasing the products from that vendor and as a result, many more (myself included!) plan to buy from them when the need arises. It's a simple banner ad and clicking it takes you to a gorgeous website that is a perfect showcase for what they're selling.

I really don't think most people (non-developers) dislike ads; we dislike annoying, generic ads that have nothing we're interested in.

Then again, my wife and I love the "messing with sasquatch" TV ads because they're so funny although I can't even remember what they're selling!

patrickgzill• 17 years ago

2006: Can anyone stop MySpace? 1997: Can anyone stop Netscape? 1999: Can anyone stop Webvan?

etc. etc.

ivankirigin3• 17 years ago

The first and last example never had anything close to the scale of facebook. Facebook is the first app of its kind to reach this scale. There was no lockin incentive with Netscape - quite the opposite.

I'm not saying facebook will last forever - just that it is easy to poke holes in your examples.

IBM and Microsoft are probably the best examples of decades long dominance that eventually began to decline.

baguasquirrel• 17 years ago

Burger King gave McDonald's a run for its money sometime back in history. The person to "stop" Facebook will recognize that to beat Facebook, you can't me-too Facebook, and you have to provide something that Facebook can't duplicate either. Burger King offered a product that they touted as more sophisticated than the kiddie-image McDonald's. When McDonald's tried to follow suit, they fell flat on their face.

That said, I think there's more to be done in the social networking space than mere marketing differences. Twitter was just the first and probably simplest example of what you can do once you get away from the traditional count-my-friends social networking model.

forensic2• 17 years ago

Seems to me the services facebook provides would be better provided on the operating system. It would have to be built in though - people don't want to download anything.

If Apple got into the business of social networking, they could fracture the community.

I stopped using facebook much when it got bloated and slow. This tends to be what always kills these massive sites. Someone will figure out a way to do better than them and the internet elite will jump shit and eventually there will be more than one facebook.

nathanb• 17 years ago

As history teaches us, the answer is 'yes'. Personally, I think it most likely that Facebook will end up stopping Facebook, by failing to ameliorate ways that it currently annoys its users (or allows its users to annoy each-other) and by coming up with new and creative ways to annoy its users in the future. With one eye on recent history and the other on my crystal ball, I find it probably that future annoyances will come primarily in the form of privacy breaches.

Either that or I'll be the first up against the wall when Facebook becomes SKYNET.

Can Anyone Stop Facebook?

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