
What will kill Facebook? - ssclafani
http://swombat.com/2010/12/15/what-will-kill-facebook
======
david927
First, the author doesn't understand what is meant by the expression
"killing". It's not a morbid death wish for the company not to exist but
simply to supplant their position as pace setter. Yes, IBM, Yahoo and MySpace
still exist (and are doing fine in many respects), but what we're talking
about is becoming the setting where innovation is going.

 _Google, similarly, will be killed not by a competitor rising out of nowhere,
but by falling into irrelevance._

Be careful. What's the quote? "It's difficult to make predictions, especially
about the future." People said the same of Yahoo in the late 1990's. It had
many competitors but wasn't really challenged for the top spot. Google came
out of nowhere and relegated its dominance of search.

 _"Facebook, on the other hand, doesn't have any such flaws." ... "Facebook is
as unkillable as Google." ... "You won 't kill Facebook. No one will."_

Facebook and Google usurped their predecessors from out of nowhere. They both
wouldn't exist if their founders said to themselves, "I'm not going to try to
overtake Yahoo/MySpace -- they're unkillable." Your flimsy advice is now
recorded to be ridiculed later because you seem not to understand the very
nature of technology.

The next leaders get this sort of insipid advice all the time but, luckily for
all of us, they aren't listening.

~~~
js3309
A counterpoint...You can quit using Google, MSFT, Yahoo, and etc.

But you can't quit your friends. Social networking is a winner take all. That
is why i agree with the author that Facebook would have to shoot itself in the
foot first.

~~~
PakG1
Back in the 90s, all my friends and I used ICQ. Then something weird happened.
I can't explain why, but everyone started switching to MSN Messenger (this was
in Canada, I understand that AIM was more popular in the US). It probably had
to do with the nicer UI, but I can't be sure. Basically, ICQ became
irrelevant, except in Russia. It's a perfect example of how all your friends
can move somewhere else. The other great example: Friendster.

~~~
netcan
Good point. Networks are good, but they aren't a total lock-in.

However, Facebook has some things going for it that ICQ didn't. for example:

Grandmothers - Facebook started with the early adopters just like everyone
else. But they slowly moved (and are still moving) down the curve, past the
'what's a browser' middle and down to the users for whom email is a big
challenge. People who basically don't use computers except for occasional
tasks that someone else has shown them how to do and set everything up. These
people don't switch easily.

~~~
trybaj
Today's grandmothers won't be around for long. The core generation that joined
Facebook because it was cool will become boring old people themselves, and
that's why Facebook won't survive.

My fiancée and I are in our late 20s. We were in college when Facebook came
out and arrived at the party early. We built our social networks to share the
fruits of our newfound "adult" freedoms- namely pictures of inappropriate
Halloween costumes and drinking games.

Now, Facebook is different. My mom is on it. My mother-in-law-to-be is on it.
But because my fiancée and I are on it, our children likely won't be. It won't
be a fun place to share things you don't want mom to know. Mom will be
checking in and leaving embarrassing messages on your wall. I think my kids
will probably find somewhere else to hang out. It will probably have a name I
can't seem to remember, and I will likely embarrass them in front of their
friends by pronouncing it wrong or misunderstanding its key features.

Social networks are binding, but they're highly generational. Unless Facebook
can figure out how to get my future kids to think its cool, it's toast in 20
years or less.

\--Edited for grammar--

~~~
brc
Nailed it.

Already I see awkward parent/child relationships. To the parent, they love
feeling 'in touch'. To the child, it's just embarassing that their parents are
hanging around on Facebook. As they move into the embarrassing photos/stories,
they're either going to find a new platform or create a separate identity, or
something, to conduct themselves online in private.

SMS was the killer app for teens because they could exchange messages with
friends (a) cheaply and (b) without being overheard.

------
msy
While I agree with the redefinition of 'kill' I couldn't disagree more about
Facebook not having any flaws that might kill it. Facebook has two that I can
see.

The first is that it is built from the ground up around a flat social network
and that maps really poorly onto real social networks. Sure they can add
things like groups to try and address this but it's baked into the DNA of the
site and the way people think about the site. The blog post that accompanied
the recent profile refresh really brought home how they do not understand
this. Listing work projects and who you worked on them with on a friend-
oriented service? Promoting parts of your life so more 'friends' can learn
about them? Who on earth wants to do this stuff?

The second, which is part of the reason for the first (college social networks
are relatively speaking flat) is that Facebook was built and initially
populated by the Ivy League. It was the classy, exclusive social network. Now
it's everybody's, there's like buttons on every site, every brand from
downmarket crap to luxury. Every market has price differentiation, social
networks will be no different, there is a huge opportunity for a more
exclusive, more upmarket network and when those users bail on Facebook there's
a real chance it'll cause a cascade.

~~~
ssp
How about a social network for very rich people? Charge something like
$1,000,000 to keep the riff-raff out.

~~~
asmithmd1
or small world which has been around for longer than Facebook:

<http://www.asmallworld.net>

I still haven't received an invite:)

~~~
mbesto
Yes, unfortunately the community is slowing go down hill. You're not missing
much. :)

------
andrewljohnson
I have this theory that anything build by a network effect, can be undone by a
network effect. I agree that no company ever gets flat out killed - well, not
if they have a billion in cash and not in just a year or two. However, I don't
think comparing Facebook to Google in the unkillable sense is correct. Google
is far more unkillable than Facebook, because:

A) You need to accumulate lots of data to even have a chance to beat Google.
No algorithm you come up with will be competitive until you have a mound of
data similar to theirs, and accumulating that data takes years.

B) My friends leaving Google has little impact on me. So, with a Facebook, you
can pick off a city or social group, and snowball that. That's exactly what
Facebook did to MySpace, and there's no analog in beating Google.

To beat Google, you need time, money, and it's a moving target. That's why the
only serious contender is Bing. To beat Facebook, you need a better design,
indomitable passion, and clever marketing. Really clever marketing.

What is keeping you on Facebook is just the fact that they have your list of
friends and family. I'm not saying Facebook is easy to beat, and I believe
over time, they have accumulated some of the defenses that Google has.
However, a company built on a network effect can die by a network effect. Easy
come, easy go.

~~~
IgorPartola
Your theory is sound, but I think for the wrong reasons. The _only_ way to
kill a network effect product is with network effect. You cannot bribe 30M
users. You cannot offer a marginally better product (e.g.: better privacy
controls). You have to offer a different product that will not directly
compete with Facebook, but will take eyeballs away from them. Think Farmville.
Farmville is genious: it uses Facebook itself to get into people's brains and
then they spend hours on it. Imagine if Farmville became just slightly more
fun to play than to stalk your ex and her new boyfriend, etc.

If you _must_ create a social network to compete with Facebook, make it be a
part of Facebook at first too. Integrate it. Make sure that it takes me zero
effort to jump between Facebook and your Smashbook. Then start improving your
Smashbook in ways that Facebook cannot or will not. Add those better privacy
controls. Implement a better social model. Remove annoying ads. Basically, do
what Gmail did to Hotmail: it uses the same system and I am not cut off from
my friends if I switch, but I get to use better tools. But there is no way in
hell that you can start a social network about collecting stamps and gradually
outgrow Facebook. You may make a decent chunk of change on this, so it may be
worthwhile, but it will not kill Facebook.

------
malandrew
Zuckerberg already said what will kill Facebook, but he didn't phrase it as
such:

verticals.

There are several social aspects of our lives that are very poorly served by
Facebook and that's where verticals will come in.

Verticals won't necessarily kill Facebook, but they have the potential to chip
away at the centralization of data inside of the Facebook social graph itself.

Under this scenario Facebook would still act as an aggregator, but then again
the barrier to entry for competing aggregators of social network verticals
would fall substantially and allow innovation and specialization.

I know of at least one stealth startup working on such a vertical, but I can't
mention who just quite yet. From the ideas I've heard, the potential is
definitely there in the idea to corner one aspect of a users life that
Facebook couldn't possibly match due to the high level of abstraction FB needs
to maintain as a generic social networking site.

I think verticals could also erode Google as well. Quora is going after one
aspect of knowledge. Wikipedia as well.

If I were to create a search engine today, I'd go after one vertical. For
example, a search engine focused entirely on helping you find code would be
immensely valuable. Sites like Github and Freshmeat have search, but the
search isn't specialized to add any value over what Google already offers. In
fact, in many cases sites with specialized knowledge about one vertical choose
to use Google's search for its own site instead of building a new search from
scratch that better serves the need of that vertical.

Examples of verticals where I see value in creating a specialized social
network or search engine:

\-- Nightlife

\-- Code/Programming

\-- Educational resources.

~~~
bad_user
Problem with verticals is that people lose interest fast.

Nightlife? Sure, but once you have a favorite club or 2 where you hang out
with friends regularly, you don't need a website to tell where to go anymore.

Educational resources? You mean like lots of scanned books that you can
search?

What will make Google irrelevant is a better search engine: just the other day
I remembered a piece of article I first read a couple of years ago. It's
somewhere out there but I can't find it because of all the junk and all I
remember are a couple of words and a number.

In 2002 when I first used Google's search, I had been using Altavista
previously. The results from Google were so good compared to Altavista that it
wasn't even funny. If the same would happen today, Google would be in big
trouble.

Also Facebook is already irrelevant to me. I log in from time to time,
responding to a friendship request, but these days I only view it as a tool
with which I could spam my acquaintances in case I need it :)

~~~
jdp23
> Problem with verticals is that people lose interest fast.

That's a pretty funny comment here on HN -- a vertical

~~~
malandrew
To drive the point further. This is a vertical that has a LOT of unexplored
potential.

The truth is that people spend most of their time in verticals.

Statistics focus on the aggregate amount of time the average American spends
on Facebook, 7 hours per month.

But the truth is that what is most interesting is the 20-40 hours a month
someone spends on the verticals that matter most to them.

For us it's nerd/tech stuff, so we hang out here for hours on end. The number
of hours I spend on here blows the amount of time I spend on Facebook away.
The same goes for Quora.

For companies that make money from advertising, the highest click-through-
rates come from the most engaged audiences and highly targeted advertising.

The truth is that no one has perfected many verticals. StackOverflow is one of
the the best examples of startups that have done an excellent job in a
vertical, but there is still much more potential there too.

Regarding search verticals, the search algorithms for code are going to look
really really different when compared to those for natural language that
Google is after.

Imagine a code search engine where I can save preferences for the languages I
want to search in. This engine then indexes lots of different places like
Github, Gitorious, Freshmeat, SourceForge, etc.

If you are part of the community that cares about code, you all of a sudden
stop going to Google as the default for all code searches. Of course, Google
could then become a portal to your search, but at that point the the barriers
to entry for other companies to aggregate vertical search engines becomes much
lower and Google's dominance is no longer guaranteed.

~~~
bad_user
<http://www.google.com/codesearch>

------
camworld
I used to hate Facebook, but over the years I've come to enjoy it. But now I
am starting to hate it again. The reasons have nothing to do with Facebook's
privacy issues or Facebook's business decisions. No, the issues I am having
are that Facebook has enabled friends, family members and acquaintances to
inject their dumb ideas, religious quotes, backwards thinking, ridiculous
opinions, FOX news talking points and political beliefs into my everyday life.
What I used to be able to ignore is now front-and-center on my Facebook Wall
because I have friends and family members who I love dearly but who aren't
necessarily the sharpest knives in the drawer.

So, what will "kill" Facebook? It's simple. What will kill Facebook will be
its own stupid users.

“Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them
are even stupider!” - George Carlin

~~~
code_duck
Yep, the AOLification of facebook has gotten so extreme that I think many
people are now seeing that they don't WANT to be connected to their
acquaintances in such a fashion.

------
angusgr
It's funny that I was already composing my "this *killer business is nonsense,
where are the historical examples of one tech company really annihilating a
market leader, etc., etc." rant comment in my head, when I clicked to read the
article. :)

------
InclinedPlane
Ultimately? A combination of factors will kill* facebook. (* where "kill" is
defined as dethroning them from their spot as seemingly a social media
monopoly)

Firstly, facebook's technology advantage will evaporate, especially as
hardware improves. The cost of serving facebook's traffic and of managing the
infrastructure to serve that traffic will come down over time until ultimately
it's as abundant and cheap as a linux VPS is today. Somewhere along that trend
you'll see an explosion in very capable facebook competitors. People as savvy
as Apple and as technologically competent as google. Ultimately I think the
result will be fragmentation and loosely federated disjoint services (much
like email is today).

Secondly, facebook will one day become un-cool. When your parents' generation
and your grand parents' generation move into your social media platform en
masse that can change its nature. Eventually facebook's allure will fade, and
perhaps some new thing will draw the attention of the younger generation as it
always has.

Thirdly, facebook has a pretty sloppy business plan. Their core idea has
always been "grow big first, figure out how to monetize that second". The
downside of this is that if their growth stalls or they shrink then they are
left high and dry with no revenue and no wealth to try to turn things around
(see digg, myspace, etc.) More sophisticated competitors with more robust
business plans from the get go have a chance to take facebook to the cleaners.
I competing social media platform able to be far more efficient in terms of
revenue generation would be a serious threat to facebook.

------
michaelchisari
Distributed social networking will "kill" Facebook. Except that it won't kill
it, but will make it less relevant.

The same thing will happen to Facebook as happened to AOL. It will exist for
years to come, but it will be forced to open it's walls, and play nice with an
open standard. Younger users will leave for more niche communities which
interconnect, and older users will stay with what they're used to.

In other words, in 5 years, Facebook will be for old people. As well as other
people who prefer familiarity.

The history of the internet is a history of decentralization winning over
walled gardens. There are too many projects pushing for decentralized
protocols and solutions. Appleseed, GNU Social, OneSocialWeb, etc. I think the
last time I checked the spreadsheet, there was over 50 such projects. Some of
us are pretty close to providing a viable alternative, too.

But most importantly, _we're not going to give up_. No matter how much people
may think of Facebook as infallible, we're never going to throw up our arms
and say "oh well, I guess we can't win". We're going to keep pushing and
refining our solutions and building momentum until we win.

The Next Big Social Network _tm_ may even run our software on the back end,
and people will move to a distributed system without even realizing it.

------
untamedmedley
My guess is the lack of adequate revenues that lead to real profits. Last I
read, Facebook was breaking even. As they grow toward a billion users, I
imagine those costs will rise. This is fine if ad revenues can keep up, but
last I checked their average CTR was less than half a percent.

Facebook is odd in that it improves on a previous solution (communication
tools: mail, phone, cellphones), but doesn't charge for the utility it brings.

------
EGreg
The difference between Facebook and all the software and internet companies
that preceded it, is a big one:

All the other companies won because of their products, for whatever reason --
usefulness, ubiquity, etc. If someone came up with a product that had better
usefulness, ubiquity, etc. then users could leave.

Google leveraged network effects with publishers. A search engine to rule them
all. It had publishers by the proverbial "balls" -- if they didn't play nice,
Google could just delist them and they'd lose their main source of traffic.

But the users were always free. Free to switch to yahoo, or bing, at the drop
of a hat if they liked their search engines better.

Facebook is the first company I know that has successfully pulled off the
following: it has its own USERS by the balls.

If you don't like facebook, you can bitch about it and even delete your
facebook account, as various random people claim. And then a couple months
later your friends want to share their X (pictures, notes, etc.) with you and
not EVERYONE IN THE WORLD. And to do that, you have to join facebook again.
Yes, facebook, because joining some other site will do no good.

This works because leaving facebook is no longer as easy as making a personal
choice. You now have to create more work for all your "friends" who are
sharing stuff with you on facebook.

"Larry, didn't you hear? I got married! Everyone came to my engagement party!
It was all over facebook"

"Sorry baby, I'm not on facebook anymore... I guess I'm out of the loop"

This is a new ball game. Of course, facebook also has PUBLISHERS by the balls,
just like Google, since it drives lots of traffic to them.

But it's the first company to have users by the balls. So what if you delete
your account? You are in a tiny minority. And chances are, half of you will be
right back on there the minute your friends refuse to share with you anywhere
else.

~~~
brc
I would agree with you, but I've had 1 new friend join facebook in the last
year or two. I've had about 5 leave. I also have a significant number of
people who either never will join Facebook (due to attitude, principle or
plain un-interestedness) and probably the majority who never log on, even if
you send them a direct mail.

So I would be a pretty lousy friend if I just notified people within facebook
and ignored my other friends.

------
lwhi
A lot of the time, it takes a few iterations before a product becomes truly
useful. Once a product has become useful and has fully integrated itself into
its customers lives - it's very _difficult_ to replace it.

For many, Facebook solves a unique problem - it provides them with tools to
help them manage their various relationships. It's ubiquity is a key part of
its solution, and any other platform that wanted to supplant Facebook is
obviously going to find it difficult.

Having said that, I think it's perfectly reasonable to think about what will
replace Facebook.

As a company becomes larger - it will usually become less nimble. Unforeseen
changes in the market's landscape, provide opportunities for new entrants -
where the larger Goliath companies aren't as able (or willing) to adapt.

Facebook will be killed (replaced / supplanted) .. but without the benefit of
hindsight, it's very difficult to know which company will succeed.

------
oldpond
Why do we have radios in all our cars? So we can pipe advertising to a captive
audience. Why do we have TV's in all our homes? So we can pipe advertising to
a captive audience. Why do we have our computers plugged into the internet?
Hm.

Why is it that when you buy a phone now it comes with Facebook (and twitter
and google)? And, on many plans it's "free" to use Facebook and twitter, and
you can't remove it. It's all about the channel. Facebook/Google/Twitter +
ISP/Phone Provider = secure advertising channel. Can you turn off your radio?
Can you turn off your TV? Can you use a plain old cellphone that just dials a
number? The only way to kill Facebook is to turn off the advertising channel.

------
dr_
Facebook is different than Yahoo, Google, Microsoft etc, because of it's
social aspect. There will be decades upon decades of memories, photos, videos
and all the comments associated with them on fb that most people are not going
to want to give up. Today I could switch away from Yahoo to AOL or MSN, Google
to Bing and Microsoft Windows to Mac OS X and I wouldn't notice any huge
difference. I can't switch away from facebook to another social networking
site and have it be of any utility to me - and I can only imagine the
dominance of facebook because of this social aspect growing in the years to
come.

As an aside, the author feels that Microsoft tried to kill itself with all the
delays and bugs in Vista, which I would also disagree with. Google, along with
a host of other companies, killed Microsoft - because of the talent drain.
Once your best and brightest are jumping ship for, as Michael Lewis would call
it, the "new new thing", you are pretty much screwed because your product
development is going to start going down the tubes.

------
aufreak3
Top level observation - the linked post was made on a blog and was shared via
Hacker News. "Facebook" only features as a word in this whole multi-log.

That means, to me, that there is a really solid and significant world outside
of Facebook.

------
maxawaytoolong
This article assumes that companies die due to competition. In reality, tech
companies die from within. What would kill Facebook is a bunch of dumbbells on
the inside making stupid decisions and sticking to them.

~~~
dkasper
> The only company that can kill Facebook is Facebook.

From the end of the third paragraph in the post.

------
AngeloAnolin
Nothing. Until the time that it is evolving with the way how people wants to
connect socially. And Facebook does a good job at it by hiring visionaries,
getting people with a good common sense and attracting talents whom they know
would be excited being part of a technical social revolution.

Nonetheless, the only thing that could probably kill Facebook is when people
stop using it. Simple as that.

------
te_chris
What's with all the Vista hate? I mean seriously. I run a MBP mostly with OSX,
but on my music mixing machine @ home I run vista and have never had a single
problem and greatly prefer it to XP.

The whole thing was just manufactured by angry computerworld journo's who
couldn't believe that MS actually started considering making an OS easier to
use.

------
fredliu
Major premise: Startups won't be killed by competitors but only by themselves
(ref to pg?). Minor premise: Facebook is still a "startup" (well... in some
sense). Conclusion: Facebook won't be killed by anyone but themselves.

------
lyudmil
I don't think thinking about "the next big wave" gets you anywhere either.
Zuckerberg and Anderson didn't figure out that social networking was going to
be big - they invented it instead. When you think about it the basic idea
isn't even remarkably clever. However, it turned out keeping track of friends
online was really compelling for people. I have to believe this came as a
surprise to them as well.

As always, the trick is to think about a problem you're having and to build
something to solve it (a cliché at this point). That's certainly what
Zuckerberg did with Facebook, which is why it was initially aimed specifically
at college students at specific campuses. He was scratching his own itch. The
rest of Facebook's story is one of coincidence and evolution.

~~~
chopsueyar
Zuckerberg did not 'invent' social networking. If he had, Facebook would not
have spent millions of dollars buying patents from Friendster.

------
skbohra123
The article adds zero value to my knowledge. It's all noise it seems.

~~~
RP_Joe
Google is killing themselves. In case you have not noticed many of the SERRPS
are not good. Today I did a search for "acronis true image". Acronis was not
of the first page. In Bing they are number one. These daily changes in the
code are finally catching up with them. Then there is the stupid stuff with
all the ads, image search that shows other websites with adwords and doorway
pages. <http://www.seobook.com/google-doorway-pages>

No one can kill Google except Google.

No one can kill Facebook except Facebook. Many people don't trust Facebook.
That's a problem.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Acronis is #1 for me. Maybe you've got something weird going on with your
computer? Fire up incognito mode of Chrome and see whether you see Acronis
then.

P.S. Thanks for posting a specific query. 90% of the complaints I see like
this never mention a specific query, which kills me because I want to dig into
it. :)

------
krakensden
You could kill facebook in a year or so under the right kind of management.
Set a rapid pace of change that users dislike, let the spammers back in, lose
data, crash constantly.

------
ojbyrne
Market saturation (everyone who wants to be on facebook is probably already on
it) and excessive valuations (which assume the whole world will eventually be
on it).

------
geoffw8
This really made it to the front page?

"What will be the next giant wave?"

Great conclusion.

~~~
mindcrime
Half (or more) of the problem with finding an answer is knowing what the
question is. It was actually a very good article, in terms of framing and
context setting, to help seed the discussion about what the question is. In
that regard, it was very valuable.

Don't underestimate the value of a good question; and don't expect every
informative article to spoon feed the reader the answers.

------
wooptoo
The inability to adapt. And short sight.

This can kill any company.

------
Finster
As soon as we all find out what will kill Facebook, we can figure out what
will kill WoW!

------
greyman
Conclusion of the article: I don't know what will kill Facebook.

~~~
swombat
False. Conclusion is: nothing will kill Facebook, or Google, or Microsoft.
Stop worrying about "what will kill Facebook".

~~~
narag
OK, so the question is "what will be the next giant wave"? What about "will
people use whatever the next giant wave will be _instead_ of Facebook?" IOW,
will the next big think overlap enough with Facebook usefullness to mean a hit
for Facebook?

Supposing the answer is "yes", I'd say FB flaws matter a lot. Even flaws that
users don't see now as such, maybe because they see them as unavoidable. What
if a new service, based on another model, arised and it hadn't such flaws?

~~~
swombat
No, the next giant wave will not overlap with Facebook's wave. Whatever
overlaps with their wave, Facebook will be on top of. People will use whatever
that next big thing is along with Facebook, not instead of it.

~~~
lwhi
But you're assuming that there isn't anything that people will choose to use
_instead_ of Facebook. I think it's possible that Facebook could be supplanted
by another platform.

There'll always be overlap when a competing platform comes into the picture -
so any 'death' will necessarily be drawn out.

I like your wave analogy, because it highlights the way that these service-
orientated companies are tied to the current socio-economic landscape. This
helps to show how competition between companies isn't the most important
factor. A change in market conditions can prove just as disastrous (as a good
competitor) for a company like Facebook, and this kind of change is probably
more likely to signal its demise, because a market-leader's success tends to
increase exponentially when conditions stay the same.

I think the most interesting question is; what change would be necessary for
people to migrate from Facebook to another platform?

It will happen - but when and how?

------
zephyrfalcon
The strong point of Facebook is that so many people are on there, including
many who are normally less comfortable using computers. I assume it will keep
growing for a while, as there is no real contender in sight. So let's say we
reach the point where pretty much _everybody_ has a Facebook account. At that
point, it would only seem stronger than before.

The weak point of Facebook is that it lumps everybody into the same "friends"
pool. This is not a new observation of course, but is _is_ still a problem,
and Facebook hasn't really done much to alleviate it. Sure, you can add people
to different groups, set different filters, but for most people (especially
those who are less tech-savvy) this is just _too much work_ (or too difficult,
even). So the problem remains, and as Facebook gets bigger, so does the
problem.

I think that at some point, there will be huge opportunities for "spin-off"
sites, that address some kind of niche. There would be a mini-social network
were you talk to your family. Another one for friends (of the kind that you go
to bars with, for example). One for networking. One for co-workers. Ones for
specific games (quite a few people on Facebook have thousands of "friends",
most of which they don't really know, but were added for the benefit of
playing Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc). And so on.

Some of these already exist, like LinkedIn; and likely, the process is already
underway. However, I think such sites would have more success if they were
friendly with Facebook in some form or another; log in with your Facebook
account, maybe share certain things, etc. (Look at Zynga; would their games
have anywhere near the current number of users if they had not integrated with
Facebook?)

When you meet new people, online or in real life, in whatever situation, the
common denominator would be that they all have Facebook. (Still going by the
assumption here that Facebook would get so big that people _without_ an
account would be rare.) So it would retain its function as a "hub" where you
can find anybody at all; but the actual social interaction, in whatever form,
would be done at the spin-off sites. You don't post work-related things to
your Facebook because nobody cares but your co-workers. If you had a wild
night out, you don't post pictures of it to a specific site, not to Facebook
where your mom/kids/spouse/boss can see it. For those things, there would be
the aforementioned specialized sites. Likely, it wouldn't be long before we
would think of such a situation as normal; you won't post specialized info on
Facebook, any more than you would post it in the newspaper.

I am just brainstorming here, but if that would actually happen, Facebook
would slowly be supplanted by a myriad of smaller sites, each with their own
purpose. Facebook itself would slowly become irrelevant other than as a hub to
connect all those specialized sites. Like Microsoft nowadays, it would be big,
bulky, probably rich, but it would just kinda sit there; the action and
innovation would happen elsewhere.

tl;dr: Hypothetically, there might not be one Facebook killer, rather, it
might be replaced by many smaller, specialized sites.

------
chopsueyar
Time?

~~~
frostbyte
Very true. Just like Bing is beginning to give Google a run for their money.
There will be something that will eventually make Facebook's tiniest nuances
look like glaring flaws.

Look at how IE is struggling against Chrome and Firefox. A few years ago
Microsoft was in the comfort zone in terms of market share. Things began to
stagnate. Now they are being pushed. They know they have to innovate, or face
the possibility of fading away.

It's not a question of what will kill Facebook. It's a question of when.

~~~
phodo
As long as the "when" is: after the investors and principals have played it
through.

Sure, every company gets more vulnerable as it gets bigger and markets evolve,
etc. as stated here. but if you notice, NONE of the examples cited above
"became vulnerable" before the liquidity event happened.

I could make an exception with Apple, but that seems to be the exception not
the rule. in fact, you could argue that there is a 3rd phase of a company
(which Apple is in), after the liquidity event, after the company gets
vulnerable (think apple 10 years ago, think yahoo now). some die - but some
survive to see a new healthy dominance.

------
sabat
Time.

------
honza
I will.

------
qq66
Someone.

