

The end of Facebook - ThomPete
http://blogs.forbes.com/timworstall/2011/06/15/the-end-of-facebook/

======
JonnieCache
This is borne out by my experience. A slowly increasing number of my friends
are cutting down their use, and eventually leaving. This might just be due to
my cohort of friends getting older, but the article claims it is a general
trend.

What is definitely true, is that _nobody_ I know feels anything positive about
facebook, _at all._ It is seen simply as a sinister, addictive[1] necessary
evil. This is the case regardless of technical expertise. They continue to use
it purely because of inertia and lock in. Yet they are not interested in
twitter either.

Much like smoking, many people get into it as teenagers because everyone's
doing it, now in their 20s they've realised that it sucks but they can't stop.

There is definitely a market for a social network thats simpler, but still
full-featured like facebook, but above all one that's less "evil." One that's
vocally dedicated to your privacy, and whose every move doesn't seem so
machiavellianly calculated to keep you coming back, to the point where you
begin to feel like you're living in a dystopian future world.

I realise that's just a long way of saying "less profitable" or even "not
profitable," but there we are.

[1] The main slang term for facebook amongst it's younger users in the UK is
"facecrack." It has been called that for years.

~~~
bxr
_A slowly increasing number of my friends are cutting down their use, and
eventually leaving._

I know what they say about the plural of antidote, but I've personally noticed
the same. I use it less, and when I do use it, I notice the people I care
about on facebook are using it less too. Everything you say mirrors the
response to facebook I've been seeing. Its no longer a toy, its just that
thing you have and slowly working towards being a burden.

I think a post I saw about facebook email says it the best: "Facebook, you're
giving me email? You're now one ugly paintjob away from being aol". Its
initially funny, but the parallels you can draw between AOL and Facebook are
huge and I wouldn't be surprised if facebook followed a similar trajectory.

~~~
codeup
I agree, but it's interesting that Google is doing so much more than just
search today and they're not inviting the same response. Is it because the
main search service has stayed the same without suffering from feature bloat?

~~~
JonnieCache
Google makes separate products. They're well integrated, but you can use gmail
without ever seeing maps, and vice-versa.

Facebook on the other hand is monolithic, and that gives it a much greater
appearance of omnipresent intrusiveness.

~~~
Ixiaus
I wonder if this is true of each company's management style too - I don't know
anyone in Google or Facebook personally but it does seem to me that Google
values engineer autonomy more than any other company (and that is one reason
for its huge success, trusting its engineers).

------
makeramen
This was a rather pointless article. Yes, every company will reach a point
where growth slows. Yes, every company will have users who quit. Yes,
valuations are high right now. Yes, many companies will get replaced by better
ones that come along. And yes, it is implied that Facebook is a company.

How does any of this lead to "the end of facebook"?? The author even states
"Facebook is still growing very fast in terms of page views and number of
users."

Major linkbait.

~~~
hvs
I completely agree, but one point that he briefly mentions that I think is
even more interesting is the idea of a Facebook IPO.

Consider that Facebook isn't going anywhere (most likely) and will be a major
company for a long time. That still doesn't change the fact that if they've
already done all of the their major growing (user-wise, I'm assuming that they
will continue to look for new revenue sources), their IPO could be a
significant letdown for investors if there is simply no where to go but flat.

That said, I don't know any more (or less) that this guy..

~~~
jordan0day
Yeah, at this point why would they IPO (except to get rich[er], of course)?
Obviously they could grow in some unforeseen way, but if they don't have an
ace up their sleeve, what business reason would they have for needing
additional capital?

~~~
rsuttongee
Well, there may or may not be a pressing business need for capital, but I'm
sure a lot of the current shareholders would see an IPO as a good exit.

I suppose it's possible that facebook could still be acquired, but given how
large they are, and the huge amount of cash/stock it would require to buy
them, that seems unlikely to me.

~~~
sixtofour
Too big to float.

------
dreamux
I'm not the biggest fan of facebook, but this guy is completely unqualified to
comment on the intricacies of long-term growth and sustainability in social
media... just look at his profile:
<http://blogs.forbes.com/people/timworstall/>

He has nothing to do with the technology industry.

Also, he doesn't back up his rhetoric with data... this is an opinion piece
and a flaky one at that.

~~~
narkee
Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.

~~~
protomyth
Asking the dude who stayed at a Holiday Inn how to shutdown the nuclear plant
will fail 99.999% of the time.

------
tokenadult
I like this line in the submitted article: "But to value every company as if
they are the next Google, rather than valuing them all as if one of them might
be, is pretty much the definition of a bubble." I think there is insight in
that. Not every big new online service can have the long-term revenue growth
and user engagement that Google has managed to achieve. (Some of the stories
about Groupon point out aptly that Groupon spends much of its revenue on
Google promotions, so who is the winner when Google, a profitable company, is
paid by Groupon, a company that is losing money on every sale?)

That said, Facebook is the one online service that gets more engagement from
me, by far, even than HN or all the Google properties other than Gmail.
Facebook's algorithm for prioritizing posts from friends into my home page
works amazingly well at showing me the content I want to see. The Facebook
secret groups feature works well for me at forming more tightly knit
communities. All in all, what's cool about Facebook is that I see FRIENDS
there, people I'm glad to see in real life or online.

Back when nobody needed to buy floppy disks, because AOL was endlessly mailing
those out to everyone in America, I was subscribed to AOL for a while. I
couldn't understand why people preferred the chat-like user discussion
interface of AOL to the more threaded discussions available on other online
services at the same time. I found AOL rather tedious, and eventually
unsubscribed, but millions of users stayed on AOL long after I thought it had
lost all of its competitive advantage over other ways of getting on the
Internet. AOL had the financial strength and reputation to take over (and
drain of value) Time Warner, and it still hasn't completely disappeared. I
think Facebook will do at least that well for at least that long. Maybe
Facebook is already in a long decline, but it will be a long, slow decline.

~~~
bostonscott
Is that really the definition of a bubble though?

A bubble implies irrational valuations. Trying to value a company as if they
are the next Google is the purpose of the stock market and can be perfectly
rational.

Google sets a standard, and by its success, it demonstrates what other similar
companies could do, which gives investors more confidence in upstarts like
Facebook, which then leads to higher valuations. The state of our economy also
leads to higher valuations - as money is worth less today than it was when
Google went public, and there are fewer productive places for investors to put
their money than when Google went public.

At times when valuations become increasingly irrational you could say we are
approaching a bubble, but this article's author did not offer a rational
argument to back up his points.

------
blhack
"The more you tighten your grip, Zuckerberg, the more users will slip through
your fingers."

To me, the end of facebook was when facebook started trying too hard to
dictate to me how I would use the site.

I don't see a chronological timeline of what my friends are doing (a la
twitter), I see some posts that facebook _thinks_ I'll be interested in.

What the hell is that, facebook? Most of the things I see now are from people
I really don't care about at all. The only reason I ever log in anymore is to
see what a group I belong to on there is up to.

And what have you done to the pictures? Why can't I right click them and send
a link to one of my friends? Facebook, maybe you've forgotten this part, but
those annoying people using your website are the reason that your website
exists at all. When you take stuff like that away, and when it's obvious why
you're doing it (you don't want people to see _facebook's_ pictures without
_facebook's_ branding on them [the container page, I mean, that you'll see if
you use an approved sharing mechanism to share pictures]), it feels like a
giant slap in the face.

There is nothing _fun_ happening on facebook anymore, and the things that I've
posted to it in the past are now impossible to find (keep scrolling and
scolling and scrolling and triggering that javascript to load more things,
right!?).

I don't really feel like I'm connected to the people that I'm supposedly
"connected" to anymore. It sucks.

The other reason I pretty much never use facebook, is <http://thingist.com/>
\-- a few people have said that it reminds them a lot of '05, '06 era
facebook, which is cool to hear. There are no apps, there is no algo to
determine what it shows you, it's just a very simple way of sharing things
with a group of people (and, more importantly, keeping it organized into a
list [songs I like, quotes, tools for programmers, documentaries you should
watch, etc]).

Full disclosure: thingist is my side project, and my addiction. Obviously I'm
not a designer, so the design is horrible, but the functionality works, and
I'm addicted to it.

------
rkwz
So, what problems do facebook/social networks solve?

* sharing photos

* keeping in touch with friends and families and getting the latest updates from them

* events

* games

* sharing links and stuff

and all these things from one place!

is there any other site/technology that provides all these benefits in one
place?

~~~
possibilistic
The problem is, after an extended use maybe we feel sick of it all. Facebook
was new and fresh when it arrived, but now it's beginning to feel like an
overstayed welcome. They have accomplished the goal of making life seem, in a
way, commoditized, and that makes me feel like I never want to use such a
service again.

I don't think social networks are going to be entirely displaced, maybe just
the ones that attempt to mirror your personal life. I think it's a kind of
impedance mismatch issue--a kind of uncanny valley vibe that they give off.
After doing it so long, it just feels so artificial and flaky.

I know everyone doesn't have such negative thoughts about Facebook, but I also
know I'm not the only one who feels this way right now. I can't see what they
or anyone could do to fix this problem, but I know a solution isn't out of the
realm of possibility either.

I predict future successful social networks will be somewhat like HN or reddit
--semi-anonymous, with no real connection to real life. If they can surround
you with peers clustered around your interest profile, perhaps we could grow
organic communities around professions and hobbies that dynamically or
elastically determine membership and open channels of communication (as
opposed to the current process of self-selection and direct messaging). I
don't know, I'm rambling now.

~~~
rkwz
> _I predict future successful social networks will be somewhat like HN or
> reddit--semi-anonymous, with no real connection to real life. If they can
> surround you with peers clustered around your interest profile, perhaps we
> could grow organic communities around professions and hobbies that
> dynamically or elastically determine membership and open channels of
> communication (as opposed to the current process of self-selection and
> direct messaging). I don't know, I'm rambling now._

Isn't this problem already solved by discussion boards? :D Or is your idea
different from them in some way? Please feel free to share your views.

------
saturdaysaint
I think Facebook has gotten boring in the same way that Google has gotten
boring to me: it's become a reliable, efficient tool that I can use so quickly
it's almost invisible to me. I throw up a picture every so often and get
feedback from friends and family. I can plan a party and quickly/easily
organize invitations. I can quickly reconnect with someone if they come to
mind, whether or not I have their current phone number or e-mail (which used
to be a real problem). I love how they seem to focus on their core products
and speed rather than rapidly expanding the feature set (like seemingly every
other social network).

The News Feed has become less and less "engaging" and chatter-filled which
might be a problem for their business model, but not for me. I'm interested in
most of the people on my friends list in some way, but their stray thoughts
aren't the best way of relating to them.

------
jetz
First wave of SNs were aimed at dating as the lure (Friendster). Second wave
of SNs were/are aimed at social sharing of everything and anything with
everybody and anybody (FB). Third wave of SNs are aimed/will be aimed at
"real" social sharing of everything and anything with _only_ people you choose
(Tusulog.com, our start-up).

We're focused on one main thought: you don't, by default, socialize with all
your friends plus "acquaintances" at once. Just impossible. When you're with
your family you socialize in the context of family. You don't talk about the
crazy party last Saturday with your family. This is the idea we focus on.

People return to FB because of inertia basically, not necessarily because they
_need to_. That's why they start to whine and mainstream media have been
reflecting this situation.

~~~
useflyer
Honest feedback:

I visited Tusulog (the name should be re-evaluated) and there was very little
description of what it is, what it does, why its good, etc.

I then registered and was told that the service was meaningless unless I
invited friends. Ok. Try to wedge out of the chicken and the egg, or piggyback
on something else, because in all honesty, theres no way I'm inviting friends
to a service of questionable value.

Something something "its not what your service does, its how people use it".
Right now, for all I know, Tusulog is the most genius website ever made, I
just wouldn't get to the part where I discover that.

~~~
jetz
Thanks for all the feedback. These will help us greatly. Appreciated.

First of all, we don't say it's the most genius site ever or the next
Facebook. All we say is that our product makes socializing with your friends
easier.

There are very few things on our to-do list before going to work on improving
the home page and so. After that there will be a lot more explanation of what
it is and what it does. Last but not least I hope you all will be using our
product!

------
zaidf
Facebook's biggest blunder could be their continued focus on increasing
engagement at the expense of giving more granular privacy options.

There is no reason I should not be able to maintain all my different
identities--as an employee, as a friend, as a son--on facebook. With the
influx of my younger cousins and older family members, I had to pick my
facebook identity. Now, I play it a lot more safe and don't post half the
stuff I would usually do.

I like to see facebook as kind of like a physical world hangout spot. Before,
it was just people of my generation. Now it is all generation mixed together
in one room. And yet, there it is very possible to let me create multiple
rooms and pick who I choose to have in each of my rooms.

~~~
kalid
Exactly -- facebook has turned into a giant, semi-awkward graduation party
(here is your life!) where you can't really speak your mind.

------
wccrawford
I don't buy it. There's no Facebook-killer at the moment to drive these people
away, and they aren't going to just give up on social networks...

So instead, I think it's something else. Facebook closing invalid accounts, or
something.

~~~
JonoW
Agreed, currently there no real competitor to facebook, if people are closing
their accounts its because they want to remove themselves from social
networking all together (my one friend did this) rather than move to a
different service.

Facebook is so ubiquitous now, it's like email. It will take one hell of a
competitor to kill it.

~~~
DrJokepu
It's usually not competitors that can hurt or even kill a product, it's
substitute goods. Cart manufacturers in the early 20th century didn't see
their business diminishing because of the sudden emergence of a better cart
manufacturer, it has happened because of the invention of the automobile.

Similarly, if something threatens Facebook's position, it's quite possible
that it will be a substitute product, not a direct competitor. A significant
substitute product of Facebook is real life interactions with your friends,
for example.

~~~
dagw
_A significant substitute product of Facebook is real life interactions with
your friends, for example._

I think that's totally missing the point. I don't think anyone uses Facebook
as a substitute for real life interaction. I imagine that most people use it
partially to coordinate the meeting up with said friends and partially to
interact with people whom, due geography or various life circumstances, it is
infeasible to meet up with in real life. I doubt there are many people who'd
rather sit at home and read their friend's Facebook updates if they have the
option to pop around the corner and meet them face to face.

~~~
DrJokepu
I know way too many people personally who do exactly that. I'll let other
decide if it's a good or a bad thing, but in my experience an awful lot of
people use social networks _instead of_ real life interactions. I think those
of us who live far away from our friends and family are in minority.

------
pixpax
This recent spurt of articles about how Facebook is supposedly declining is
based entirely on the Facebook self service ad tool as far as I can tell. An
initial study of the numbers that the tool was reporting back was compared
more recently and the differences supposedly indicate drop off in numbers.

None of the subsequent articles that I've read seem to mention how the data
was gathered, just that Facebook has lost X amount of users in Y country. I
for one dont think that Facebook's publicly accessible ad tool is a very
sophisticated or accurate way of measuring FB's user numbers.

~~~
wmeredith
And Facebook themselves has said the the tool (which they own and maintain)
provides a provides a useful sample of data, _not_ a comprehensive data set.
This is much the same way that Google Adwords estimator tool works.

------
beerfarmer
I'm not a huge fan of Social networking and/or providing Facebook with my
personal info, but as a musician and small business owner the idea of not
having a social profile seems a little ridiculous. I also agree, it's going to
be difficult to find or build a Facebook killer, but what about a network that
works with Facebook offering some of the services they offer with less non-
sense, more utilities and a level of customer service that is not possible
with a user group of hundreds of millions. There is no doubt that Facebook is
great at social networking but that still doesn't mean it's annoying. I use my
Facebook account almost everyday but rarely do I post status updates or even
look at my news feed. I do, however, like the access it gives me to other
utilities on the web with the little effort it requires once you have a FB
account. Much of what I do for work would not happen if I needed to create
accounts for every service I wanted to check out.

With that said, sorry for the plug...I created <http://fishtaank.com>, AKA, my
weekend project... for the last three years. It's a small collection of open
source scripts I've found on the web that allows musicians and businesses to
create a better social profile thats focuses more on what they do/offer as
opposed to what they say. Trivia question of the day? who cares...

<http://fishtaank.com/profile/Beerfarmer> -

------
tritchey
My comment would be that the author is conflating growth in users and page
views to revenue growth. While the two are very highly correlated, they are
not the same thing. How Facebook monetizes its users and page views doesn't
have to be a 1:1 relationship. The question should be how Facebook will derive
ever more revenue from each user over time. Slowing user growth is certainly
an easy proxy to use in lieu of real revenue numbers, but it is a gross
oversimplification.

~~~
eiji
Yes, there is oversimplification, but one observation I believe is correct:

IPO in 2012 is too late.

People will cash in their options by the dozens and move on. If you IPO at
peak, this effect is multiplied. If you IPO way before that peak, some might
leave, but since the stock is still going up, they will continue to work those
12 hours a day for you.

However, I'm no expert on this stuff! It's just what I would do.

------
cubeboy
Maybe its the progression of the web as a communication medium vs fads.
Initially there was geocities and webpages, then blogs came along.

The next step was Myspace with its Geocities like system, but actual network
style functionality. Along with the rise of the social network ecosystem was
user-gen content websites and comments. Comments on blogs and discussion
forums mixed with shared links pushed through 4chan, forums, and then Digg.

Along with these useful mediums was also the fad like rush. If its cool then
you have to use it. Myspace was to ugly though and Facebook brought along
format, and styling, like the Apple way.

Facebook has some brilliant underlying concepts - Events and Messaging mediums
in an online world. Much better than email and sms.

There are also several layers of society and how they interact. The social to
be social groups, and the not so noisy users who like it when they visit a
city can see old mates.

Facebook will still be the top web-based social communication medium (besides
email for business). When HTML5 comes out and web-gaming increases more,
you'll see a bigger explosion of Facebook usage I think.

------
trustfundbaby
I used to be on it all the time because everyone was on, but as my friends got
older, their companies blocked use of it at work, the people left just blab
about how awesome their significant others are, hawk their business products &
nightclub parties, or post baby pics all day.

The people really care about are on now for a few hours/minutes from 6 to
11:45 (if that) so my usage has cut down as well ... once in the morning, at
lunch and at night.

I use twitter a lot more now as a result. I guess facebook has a new
challenge, keeping older folks engaged and selling facebook to younger kids
who are growing up on twitter instead of facebook as the dominant social media
scene.

------
skrebbel
TL;DR: Author had a deadline to meet so he wrote about how nobody, himself
included, knows whether or not Facebook will be big and awesome forever.
Attached a catchy title for the pageviews that his performance will be judged
by.

------
dclowd9901
I am so terribly sick of this: The headline is "The End of Facebook", followed
immediately by the lede "Perhaps a little premature, this idea that the end of
Facebook is nigh, but certainly the end of the beginning," which essentially
completely debunks the entire headline right off the bat.

Writers: If you can't write anything compelling enough to not need to be
carried by an overly sensationalist headline, please put your pens down and go
sell used cars.

------
nachteilig
It really seems that facebook may have overextended their good will with the
public in repeatedly forcing privacy concessions. Only time will tell.

In any case, I'm not sure that this link isn't more than phishing for hits.

------
sebastianconcpt
Yes, some people it's committing facebookcide but is pretty much irrelevant
for you!

Go make a good damn startup yourself and stop procrastinating wasting your
attention on overdramatized utterly irrelevant headlines.

------
Shenglong
This is a little off topic, but did anyone else immediately discredit this
article when they saw "to" where "too" was supposed to be? On Forbes of all
places...

~~~
JoelSutherland
Even Michael Jordan missed the occasional dunk. It wasn't a reason to kick him
off the team.

There is nothing less interesting or meaningful than a typo.

~~~
edanm
(Even more off-topic)

You really reminded me of Jordan's "Failure" commercial, which everyone should
see: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc>

------
futurephonic
This article, and it's source article, fail to reveal the new adoption rates.
It's one-sided, and I agree with makeramen, it's linkbait.

------
sjtgraham
Damn, all these hyperbolic, link bait titles are killing me.

------
paulnelligan
facebook is the new myspace

------
gravityiscool
For some reason all this makes me grind my teeth. I'm not a Facebook
apologist, and I definitely don't side with the 'FB is utter shit' camp, but
it just seems like articles like this, and so much of the discussion they
generate, totally sail past the point of what the rise of social networking
(and the rise of these dissatisfactions) signifies.

This article: [http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100092236/is-
th...](http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100092236/is-this-the-
beginning-of-the-end-for-facebook/) the article the link leeches off, is more
fleshed out but also has some 300 comments. Most of it is inane but somewhere
in there in all the shit people are talking and all the haughty know-it-all
declarations of what is and isn't worthwhile, and what will and will not occur
in the future, there's something really significant encapsulated about how our
society is changing, and how Facebook and the internet is linked in to that
change. There's a big clue in all this discussion - but these newspaper
'experts' sure as shit aren't going to point it out for us.

------
wunderfool
it will be disastrous for facebook to go public if their network is seen as
being in decline or even flat. investors care more about losing users in the
US than they do gaining users in developing markets.

facebook needs to IPO yesterday. facebook fatigue is real and won't go away,
and if it picks up momentum things could get ugly for a group of investors
that have banked on massive potential gains

