

Ask HN: what could kill Facebook? - petervandijck

Considering their rather iron grip on identity (FB Connect etc), and the network effects of the social graph (everyone is there), and their so-far pretty good execution (they're down a lot less than, say, the much smaller Twitter), what could, at this point, kill Facebook?
======
TomOfTTB
Honestly I don’t think Facebook will be that hard to kill because at its root
it is a social movement and all social movements die based on two basic facts.

1\. Kids rebel against their parents and don’t want to use the same things
their parents use. Ironically this issue will be exacerbated by Facebook’s
desire to force people to make everything public (“I’m grounded because my Mom
saw those pictures you took at the party last night”).

2\. The young are still building their social graph and can be more open to
new things. So all those things that tie people to Facebook won’t be relevant
to kids growing up today.

So new generations come into the market both inclined and able to pick new
movements and hence unseat the existing ones.

Right now Facebook looks invincible because they have no real competition.
They did a very smart thing in creating an API. In doing so they’ve tricked
startups into making Facebook stronger with apps rather than creating
competing solutions. So all Facebook has to do now is fend off the pathetic
attempts at competition from large companies who aren’t agile enough to
compete. So they have no real competition and kids have no real alternative.

But if an industrious startup with innovative ideas comes to market targeting
the youth demo I think they could kill Facebook pretty quickly among that
group and become dominant as that group grows up.

~~~
callmeed
I like your points but I'm not sure FB is just a "social movement". We are on
the 2nd generation of mobile phone users. My 15 yo daughter didn't forsake a
cell phone because I have one.

~~~
TomOfTTB
In my mind it's an issue of "Enabling Device" vs "Venue". Put it this way. Say
your hang out as a kid was a bowling alley you used to drive to every weekend.
As you grew up and had kids you took them to that same bowling alley for
Family Night. When your kids become old enough to drive they'll probably still
use a car but they probably won't choose their parents' bowling alley as their
hangout.

Same here. Kids will still use Laptops, PCs and Cell. Phones but probably
won't use the same sites as their parents when going on the web. Because the
PCs are enabling devices that get you some place while the sites themselves
are venues that you go to.

------
jorangreef
Facebook won't be "killed". It probably won't disappear in an instant. But it
may most likely fade away in time due to a confluence of many factors, not
just one: 1. early adopters growing up, 2. decreasing marginal utility, 3.
failure to directly align revenue with consumers, 4. lack of vision, 5.
corporatism, 6. solipsism, 7. something better coming along.

See: "How the Mighty Fall" by Jim Collins ([http://www.amazon.com/How-Mighty-
Fall-Companies-Never/dp/097...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Mighty-Fall-
Companies-Never/dp/0977326411)).

~~~
tocomment
Somewhat OT, but what's the difference between solipsism and solopism? I seem
to get the same search results for both.

Just two different spellings of the same thing?

~~~
w1ntermute
_Somewhat OT, but what's the difference between solipsism and solopism?_

Solopism is a misspelling: <http://omploader.org/vNHJtZA>

------
holman
There's a number of angles of attack available. It's certainly hard to top
Facebook purely on the social graph (as you mentioned, everyone is on it). But
I think you can attack Facebook on areas they lack and areas they've fallen
down on.

1\. Mobile. Facebook does have one of the top mobile apps on the planet, with
its iPhone app at the top of the download list for quite some time. But I
think it's fair to say Facebook doesn't really care about mobile; the iPhone
app languished with overt bugs for half a year before they fixed some of them
recently. They have no iPad app. They no longer innovate in this arena (more
on that next), and while that probably won't be the case forever, there's a
great opportunity for a network with a best-in-class app to take the lead
here.

2\. Innovation in social. Take, for example, geolocation. Foursquare and
Gowalla have definitely found some new niche that will be here to stay: people
like to know where friends are, where the currently happening thing is. I've
tried those services three or four times each and, while interesting, still
aren't compelling enough. Facebook has done nothing here. Yet.

3\. Out-facebooking Facebook. I'm a member of the initial Facebook group: my
school was something like the fifth school on the site. Things have changed
dramatically from those humble beginnings. It's much harder for me to cut
through all the Facebook app bullshit today and actually find out what's going
on with my friends: status updates, photos, events, that sort of thing. Things
that actually _matter_. People still will want to play games, but I think
there's a huge part of the population that just want a clean, social network
again. I've expanded on this on a short blog post last month, if you're
interested in reading more (and I apologize if you're not):
<http://zachholman.com/2010/05/rebuild-facebook>

While I don't think Facebook will die a Friendster death in a poof of magic
scaling sprinkles, I do think there's opportunity yet for a small outfit to
out-innovate them, out Facebook them, or just otherwise carve a lucrative
niche for themselves in the market.

~~~
neutronicus
Completely with you on point 3. I know a lot of people who do one thing on
Facebook: spy on people. Facebook singlehandedly turned "stalk" into a word
for a socially acceptable activity. Every new feature that got added after
"look at people's photos so they don't realize it, with better web design than
myspace, and the assurance that you actually know your 'friends'" has been
grumbled about in my social circle. Any product that preserves that essential
capability while cutting out the BS has a shot. Honestly, I think explicitly
billing yourself as a recreation of "the old facebook" is not only a good
idea, but the best idea, from this standpoint.

Perhaps "Ye Olde Tome of Countenance: A Throwback to the Days When Facebook
Didn't Suck - Click here to import your profile and photos"

------
richlittlehale
This is a great question, but I'm not sure "kill" is the right way to look at
it. The better question might be, what makes it less relevant? I have a hard
time believing that Facebook will ever "die." A lot of websites that were once
hot and the leaders in their categories are pushed to the side as a somewhat
tangential/very similar product is introduced. I'm thinking Yahoo and Myspace
as two examples.

Both Yahoo and MySpace are still around (and still very relevant for some),
but have shifted as Google and Facebook respectively have come in. They've
become less relevant in what we think as their core competencies - Yahoo for
search (though their drive to be a portal might have done them in) and Myspace
for social networking. What is interesting is how both of these companies have
evolved into I would say more niche specialties. Yahoo has great finance and
fantasy football tools. MySpace is now the place for music/bands to post their
work (The first and probably only time I went to MySpace this year was when I
stumbled on a link to the very popular TV show Glee tryouts (a friend was
trying out I was supposed to vote for) on MySpace. It got me thinking, why
wouldn't they do this on Facebook, soon recognizing that Facebook couldn't
support the type of functionality required for the contest. Could that be
potentially something Facebook will suffer for in the future? Probably not
that one example, but maybe a suite of features.

I guess my point here is that I doubt Facebook will ever "die." The only time
that I could see it dying (nice post TomOfTTB) is as it's a complete
generational shift where our generation's kids (I'm 23) use some wildly new
disruptive technology that's more relevant for the time. My guess is, though,
our generation will be using Facebook for many many years to come.

I will be interested if and how it evolves like MySpace/Yahoo. Will it end up
niching itself? I took an informal survey of friends who talked about using
Facebook explicitly for "what's going on with my friends" (aka stalk their
facebook albums and walls to get up to date on what's going on) as opposed to
Twitter which is (for me and some of my friends at least) much more about
"what's going on in the world? what articles did these cool people I respect
find?" Pictures on Facebook are done very well and I could see that being a
future niche.

It's a fascinating time to be involved in the internet as it's still to young
almost to have "history" or "throwbacks" (some might disagree, I know). I
would guess that the "movements" TomOfTTB refers to will be happening
throughout the history of the internet. To give an metaphor with the auto
industry, it might be like the revival of the VW Beatle/Bug cars (popular in
the 60s) get revived 40 years later. It might be that a website like MySpace
(or even Facebook someday) goes out of style one decade, but then somehow
comes back. It sure will be an interesting ride whatever happens!

------
alain94040
If you had asked in 1994 what would kill Windows/Office, would you have
understood the answer of "people want to socialize with their friends"?

The same thing will happen here for a timeline of 5-10 years: Facebook will
likely be the dominant player in an old and boring space called social
networking.

Maybe virtual reality will be big (people walking around with really helpful
devices in their pockets/on their eyes), or something you can't even think of.

~~~
techiferous
What killed Windows: the Internet and mobile devices have made the desktop OS
less relevant, combined with healthy competition from Apple.

What killed Office: once again, the Internet is making desktop applications
obsolete. Enter Google docs.

Socialization is in a different market than office productivity, so "people
wanting to socialize with their friends" killing "Windows/Office" seems a non
sequitur.

~~~
codingthewheel
The only problem with this argument is that Windows and Office are both more
popular than they've ever been and industry-wide, people are purchasing more
desktop/laptop/notebook PCs per year than ever before. So if by "dead" you
mean "more popular than ever" then I guess this argument holds water.

<http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/26/microsoft-numbers/>

It's true that of late the focus has been mobile, mobile, mobile, and
Microsoft missed the boat here to a degree, but only in comparison to what
Apple did, which is start a revolution around the idea of easy, mobile
devices. This is a completely different market than the desktop market, and
the popularity of one doesn't mean the death of the other. By the way, people
have been calling for the death of the desktop since the 80s. 90s. 00s. Hasn't
happened yet. Down the road...who knows.

~~~
techiferous
Perhaps "dead" is hyperbole and "past-its-prime" is more accurate. Microsoft
is still huge, but its hegemony is starting to wane.

~~~
codingthewheel
You're right, and I think they are starting to sense it. This presents an
interesting parallel universe in which Microsoft actually starts to channel
some of that famous "underdog" energy that Steve Jobs himself channeled.

Lately I've actually heard sympathy for Microsoft in areas that used to be
viciously anti-MS. It seems some of the hatred for MS has been transferred to
Apple, and to a lesser extent, over to Google. But that's probably my
subjective experience. I do think to the extent Microsoft can go lean, hungry,
and humble, it will go better for them in the years to come.

------
codingthewheel
Facebook could die a slow death when the world figures out how to create an
open, federated version of Facebook.

Instead of placing central control of our social graph with an organization
that believes people are essentially targets on the great Advertising
Dartboard of the future, you could distribute control of that graph.

Instead of logging into Facebook to connect to your friends, you'd simply have
your "profile"--your web page or other net identity--and things like status
updates, tweets (because this is also how you "kill" Twitter), likes, groups,
friends, etc., would be handled by the protocol.

In short: you kill Facebook by building an open protocol that does the same
thing.

~~~
dotBen
"Facebook could die a slow death when the world figures out how to create an
open, federated version of Facebook."

So my whole career in this industry is helping companies 'get open' and
embrace 'open'... and I can tell you this is not what will kill Facebook.

Being 'open' isn't a feature consumers directly care about. The teenager on
the street corner, the mom in the grocery store, the middle-aged office
worker... they are not going to use Service X over Facebook "because it is
open".

That means nothing to them. There's nothing in there which explains to a
normal person why there is any problem in making their tweets, likes, groups,
etc on Facebook.

Further more, disparate services which rely on users having their own control
of their node (Dispora, DiSo) make no sense when 99% of most normal people
have no web hosting or other way of hosting such a node.

If there's one thing we've learnt from recent Facebook debacles, it is that
people appreciate a level of privacy and control around their profile data.
Now, open doesn't equate to no privacy - but you have to expect and assume
that all nodes will treat privacy the same, otherwise the system fails. With a
closed system you simply have to trust one actor with your privacy - the host
network.

Finally, the 'dartboard of advertising' is what gives companies like Facebook
the resource to outcompete their rivals. If an alternative service doesn't
have that kind of advertising strategy then it's going to find it hard to
compete with the might of FB.

Open may form part of the ultimate successor to Facebook, but it is just as
likely to be something totally closed as Facebook. Open/closed is [sadly] not
what consumers care about.

~~~
codingthewheel
Well actually I agree. Well-stated. Open _may_ form part of the ultimate
successor to FB. It's 100% true the average Facebook user doesn't know, and
doesn't care, about "open". But what being open wins you is support of the
community, and in particular, "developers, developers, developers".

Take the (by no means parallel, but similar) case of iPhone vs. Android. The
typical user could care less about whether iPhone is "open" or not, provided
their apps work and their calls don't drop (heh). Still, Android makes a
compelling case to developers and to handset manufacturers. Android gets huge
points for being "open", and over time, I think that creates a head-leads,
body-follows scenario where early adopters, tech evangelists, and people who
surf sites like HN move to the new platform (whatever it is) en masse. Some
time later, "normal" users then gravitate to that platform because the thought
leaders have gone there, that's where the hype is, etc.

To put it another way: being open doesn't necessarily win you normal, everyday
users. But it can win you the power users, the early adopters, and the thought
leaders; and where they go, "normal" users tend to follow in time.

As for the "how do users host their own node" issue, I agree. This will never
happen if people have to (my God, the horror) sign up for a web hosting
account to have a Facebook page. But in an Internet where "websites" are torn
off from the cloud at will, and where creating a "website" or "web identity"
is as easy as pressing a button -- easier, in fact, than it is to create a
Facebook page currently -- I think that's when you'll start to see user-
controlled nodes become a real possibility for the mass market. Not before.

~~~
dotBen
"But what being open wins you is support of the community, and in particular,
"developers, developers, developers"."

I think the Android argument can play out the other way, and I say that as
someone who is onto his 3rd Android phone, never owned an iPhone yet was an
Objective C programmer in a former life and total mac-head.

Android may be open, and Apple App Store has it's problems but monetization
opportunities are much bigger on iOS platform because everything is geared
towards paying for apps. No one I know pays for apps on Android.

Plus, app dev for iPhone is cheaper because it's (sort of) one platform rather
than Android's disparate handsets due to it's very openness.

Another case in point: Facebook FBML Platform vs Open Social. Developers way
preferred the close Facebook Platform over the open standard Open Social
(again, I was part of that so I say it with some disappointment).

------
benwr
I don't see any way of killing Facebook "at this point." Think about what
Facebook does: It connects people, in a constant stream sort of way. And you
can count on being connected to almost everyone you know through Facebook just
by signing in (over 1/4 of everyone on the internet is on Facebook, and I
imagine this fraction is much higher in The US and other English-speaking
countries). How would one overcome this barrier?

Another problem is that Facebook is responsive to market pressures. Despite
the recent "Exodus" of privacy-aware folks being little more than a trickle,
they made changes to the way their privacy works. They adapt, and any
significant improvement offered by a competitor will be added to Facebook's
arsenal (Tagging in statuses, for example).

Finally, knowing all of this, it is much easier to simply include Facebook
Connect in a social service than to leave it out. By including it, you get
over that first critical-mass hurdle. The problem is that by including it, you
are also putting no pressure on Facebook or increasing the drive to migrate to
your service.

------
petervandijck
Google's attack on identity seems to consist of making it more open, through
various standards. Hasn't succeeded yet, but it's possible that, once identity
settles down in a form that's stable (there's too much innovation still going
on), the open formats will become more attractive and eventually win. So
that's how identity might play out, although it would take time.

~~~
Volscio
They're going to have to hire more people who can increase their "social" DNA.

------
astartup1
Facebook was good to keep track of friends but as friends and applications are
increasing, I am seeing high noise to signal ratio. I think if Facebook
doesn't manage that part it is going to be like Altavista of search. Lots of
people used it but they didn't know what they were missing until Google came
along. We need something that adds value in peoples lives along with
entertainment and socialization. Facebook killer would not be something having
more features and something more shiny than facebook but it rethinks how
people should socialize. Not just serve as platform for viral marketing and
time sinking games.

------
edge17
I'm thinking a Facebook IPO might change the pace of things a bit. Once
they're answerable to shareholders and wallstreet and people that are more
concerned about profit than social media, their tune may change slightly. I'm
sure they'll do okay, but being a public company and answerable to
shareholders does make things different. Recall the outrage when YHOO refused
to sell to MSFT, who was offering an above market value per share. No one
cared about the well being of either company. Certainly not the shareholders
and certainly not wallstreet.

------
alexgartrell
Facebook most powerful use case was that of doing social research. You want to
know who your future employee, classmate, brother-in-law, etc. is. It made all
of us our own private investigators, and allowed us to make judgements from
the comfort of our own homes. With a [rightfully] increased consciousness of
privacy (the backlash of the consequences of all of this "research"), Facebook
is going to be less and less useful for this task moving forward.

Now that I've got a year of undergrad left, I can safely say that my two uses
of Facebook are Tetris and connecting with family. For Facebook to succeed, it
needs to get better at intentional information sharing (writing on walls and
messages do not encompass the ideal experience) as opposed to the passive
information sharing that we've all used it for for so long.

I don't think it's possible for Facebook to pivot (and, basically, abandon a
whole lot of work) to just being a way to share pictures, messages, and plans
with friends and family (which, I believe, will be what people want moving
forward).

------
akrymski
An open / distributed alternative. Facebook today is like some initial
proprietary version of email. Sooner or later, an open standard protocol for
"sharing" and "social networking" (EMAIL + FOAF?) will take over. (And it has
to be distributed, like email)

That's what we're building at the mo :)

------
petervandijck
Could a consistent effort by a deep-pocketed competitor kill them, if they
can't find a good way to monetize (which seems unlikely)? The same way Bing is
attacking Google search: just spend heaps of money on it, and wait for the
other party to make a mistake?

~~~
adrianscott
I'd bet on a competitor without deep pockets unseating them.

------
jrnkntl
International privacy regulations.

------
petervandijck
If Google can somehow get access to the data they need to make search social,
enough of it to make sure facebook's search isn't better, then they might not
need to kill fb, they may not be threatened.

------
twobar
Here in Germany studiVZ is the leading social platform. studiVZ started off as
a clone of facebook and they're still pretty much stuck on the initial
version.

facebook only recently started to slowly gaining traction here.

Given that facebook is functionally (news feed, apps) and visually (less
obtrusive adds) way superior to facebook the main reason for the slow adoption
is surely that "everybody" is on studiVZ.

Given that facebook is real good executed I don't see any way it's getting
serious competition anytime soon.

------
adrianscott
What could kill Facebook would be a solution that respects people's privacy
needs and doesn't try to change people in this respect. This is obviously only
one piece of the solution, but Facebook are setting themselves up for this
market entrypoint / wedge (recall Friendster's war on Fakesters).

Facebook is trying to change people rather than serve their needs.

~~~
alain94040
No one cares about privacy. At least no significant number of the 500M users
of Facebook. At best, maybe a million cares? And I'm being generous. Not even
a thorn on Facebook's side.

~~~
evancaine
I disagree. People do care about privacy, they just have no way to show it
other than to quit facebook and that's something they're not prepared to do.

They'd rather put up with poor privacy controls and keep their account than
have no account at all. Just because they're not leaving now, doesn't mean
they won't leave when a viable alternative to facebook comes up.

~~~
neutronicus
Yeah, I remember telling my increasingly wall-eyed girlfriend about all the
data facebook collects and what they do with it and why this means we and
everyone we know should switch to the first viable alternative. Her response:
"So what? How does it change my life one bit if every company in the world
knows exactly what I buy on the internet and what's on my facebook profile?
It's not like there are naked or even particularly embarassing pictures there.
I just want to see if someone I used to go to school with is fat/a
skank/ugly/got religion and then check back in a month or two to see if it's
still true. If I can do that, I don't care what Facebook knows about me or who
they sell it to."

------
tarkin2
Decentralisation of social networks: A protocol built on top of email.

All your info would be held by your email provider (gmail, say), and when your
friends log onto their email (yahoo, say) your new updates are download for
them to view.

If problems with getting email providers to abide by protocols specs aren't
too large, I really could see this working.

------
uast23
I would say, practically nothing! FB already has a mammoth number of users
hooked to it and don't forget the ever increasing population as well as number
of internet users in countries like India. So there still are more number of
people joining FB than leaving it.

------
yurylifshits
I think Facebook is very strong and unlikely to die anytime soon.

One thing that can happen is HUGE breach in upcoming Facebook Credits
platform. If they manage to loose a lot of money of their users and partners,
it can be big. But I do not think it is likely.

------
SkyMarshal
Time.

------
kqueue
An asteroid.

~~~
paul
That's actually the most accurate answer here.

------
iterationx
Maybe Facebook will kill Facebook. Like how Winamp killed Winamp. Winamp is so
bloated now that I can't believe anyone still uses it. Maybe there will be so
much Farmville and other garbage that its more trouble than its worth.

------
Mark_B
I don't know if it would completely "kill" Facebook, but there would be a
dramatic drop in usage if Zynga (Farmville,Mafia Wars,etc.) fell off the face
of the earth.

------
roboneal
What about a well funded startup that allows developers to port existing
Facebook apps with little or no modifications?

------
DanielBMarkham
Facebook's weakness is that it thinks it is an owner instead of just an
enabler. So instead of just easily enabling you to keep track of your friends
and your communication with them, FB thinks it owns all of this -- a crazy
idea that any 12-year-old would reject.

The only reason they've gotten away with it is because legally they have some
basis to work with, and socially they haven't annoyed their users.

FB will die when somebody launches a new browser that takes all of your social
information and copies it to an open, secure, and non-proprietary format --
perhaps in addition to posting it on FB. This poses no pain for the user, yet
allows others to participate in their social graph without having to use FB.
It's also the thing FB fears the most.

Other than that, not much. As more and more people get sucked into FB by their
friends, the service becomes more and more ingrained in the psyche of the
users. Just guessing here, but I don't see product X coming out with a few new
whizbang features and putting much of a dent in that.

------
rick_2047
The only thing that can kill facebook (if nothing changes about the product
itself, i.e. the same growth and same increasing utility) would be people
losing interest in social interaction.

