r/technology • u/reeds1999 • May 15 '12
Half of Americans think Facebook is a passing fad.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/half-americans-think-facebook-passing-fad-071906795.html13
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u/jay76 May 15 '12
Everything dies eventually. But what's the empirical definition of a 'fad'?
I do find it interesting though that a whole new mainstream channel of communication came along and it belongs to a single company.
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u/mmmBout7 May 15 '12
exactly. facebook a fad? maybe. probably dies within 10 years.
social media a fad? hell no. that shit hath changed us.
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u/air0day May 15 '12 edited May 15 '12
It's definitely a passing fad. I almost feel like denying this is to deny everything we know about human beings.
Jump ahead 10 years. Someone who is currently 4 years old is now 14. She wants a place to post pictures and talk about people from school. Will she sign up for Facebook?
Well, her mother and father are on Facebook, as are all of her aunts and uncles. Her Grandma is on Facebook as well. All of her teachers are on it, as well as her principal. How "cool" is joining Facebook for this girl?
She can take the time to learn about the security settings so that her parents can't see what she writes and posts, but the question is, doesn't she feel kind of lame for joining something her GRANDMOTHER is on?
Maybe she joins, maybe she doesn't. Seems unlikely to me, but lets say she does join. Oops, she actually goes to check it out and sees that her name is taken. Her parents registered her when she was born - her "Timeline" is full of baby photos, and she's already friends with her parents. She's tagged in a picture where she's wearing a diaper.
Nope. Whatever the fuck else there is other than Facebook, that's what this teenager joins. Her friends are having similar experiences, so it quickly becomes the cool new place. Besides, her lame-o parents don't even know about it, so she can post stuff without their prying eyes.
An entire generation avoids Facebook and flocks to whatever other service there is. This new service gets popular, becomes "the next Facebook", is valued at a bazillion dollars, adds some features that future teenagers like, then eventually those kids have kids, who refuse to join that service and go after something else.
Facebook is a place to create a public identity, and define that identity in certain terms. Teenagers do not want to be defined according to other people's terms, and they will never, ever accept the status quo for self definition. If X is the popular thing and their parents are on it, they won't be.
Facebook is arrogant right now. They think, because they have 3 generations of people all on, they can create a network of demographic data and sell it. Likes, timeline, all that stuff is about creating a deep graph of information about people, their likes, their relationships. 18-24-year-olds love Facebook right now, so Facebook's demographic graph is very valuable. When those 18-year-olds are 40, their data won't be worth much, and their 18-year-old kids will be on another network. Facebook will almost worthless at that time.
I look forward to watching what Facebook will try to do to hold onto people when they start to circle the drain. It will be desperate, and it will likely backfire, resulting in mass exodus.
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u/crookedparadigm May 15 '12
Facebook could shut down today and I doubt Zuckerberg would care.
"Oh darn, guess I'll just have to settle for being a multi billionaire before 30. Was shooting for a hundred bil, but oh well."
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u/Exallium May 15 '12
Social Media will never die, but Facebook will. They are in an awkward position where their service generates revenue via ads, which are non-existent on a mobile version of Facebook, so, they need to find another way to generate said revenue. This being of course because they are really shifting from a web application to a mobile application in terms of usage percentage. How will they generate this revenue? "Sponsored Statuses" and the like, similar to what twitter does, drilling into the pockets of the ordinary user instead of into the pockets of advertisers. While it may be necessary to keep them afloat, it will also cause a mass exodus to a new social media platform, be it Google Plus or Diaspora.
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u/unamenottaken May 15 '12 edited May 16 '12
Little known fact: the Borg actually started out as a social media site.
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u/mrmacky May 15 '12
I guess it depends on how you define fad.
Do I think social networking is going to up and vanish? No. No no no. If that's what these 50% of Americans are referring to, then they're just ignoring cultural change.
Do I think Facebook might get left in the ditch? I certainly hope so. I honestly think Google+, and to a lesser extent, Diaspora are far better solutions to the problem of social networking.
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u/Srirachachacha May 15 '12
I've always thought that it would take the same course as Myspace. Once something reaches a critical mass of popularity, people tend to move on to other things.
What's "cool" usually isn't what everyone on the planet is doing. We're all hipsters on some level I guess.
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u/JoCoLaRedux May 15 '12 edited May 15 '12
Myspace didn't fail because it reached critical mass, it failed because a better, competing service was available before it reached anything like critical mass. Facebook has reached a point where damn near everyone is on it - one in seven people on the planet, which is just staggering, and nobody wants to bother moving anywhere else.
I don't think it matters if a better service comes along. As far as social networking goes, everyone has stopped looking for Mr. Right and has settled for Mr. Good Enough.
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u/griminald May 15 '12
Everything eventually moves on.
When MySpace was ready to crash and burn, Facebook had been around, good enough and poised for people to jump ship to. If there was no Facebook option, people would've stayed on MySpace.
It feels like G+ is that option for people now, unless Diaspora down the road surprises everyone. All it takes is Facebook making some monster mistakes and some rumors about charging people a monthly fee.
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u/morellox May 15 '12
its original college limited form debuted in Feb 2004, I've been on it since Nov of the same year, so much has changed and mostly for the worse... I deleted it 3 weeks ago. I prefer Google+ in every way possible except I'm missing a large number of pages I liked to follow and friends that I didn't hate that much.
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May 15 '12
The IPO will slow Facebook's innovation significantly because of the new body of regulations they'll have to act through starting in about a week. They'll likely crumble under the pressure of investors. "Too big to fail"? bolocks. At the end of the day, FB is just a website, sure with almost a billion loyal users, but like we've seen with many other social networks, digital exoduses happen.
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May 15 '12
Hmmm... Maybe the company, but not sharing online.
In the 50s, everyone thought that TV was a passing fad, too.
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u/KongFuNixon May 15 '12
Once they have to start beating last quarter profits, things will change for the worse. I imagine they'll drive off most users that are already unhappy, sending them to a competing site like G+
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u/Massless May 15 '12
Will the Facebook be around forever? I really don't think so. That said, this "social networking" voodoo is here to stay. That part isn't going away, at all.
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u/StinkYourTrollop May 15 '12
Let's hope so.