
Ask HN: What can kill Facebook? - twidlit
Facebook is just growing &#38; growing. It has also proven to be duplicating popular startups and effectively killing potential competitors while they're young. Facebook has also proven to be filled with excellent hackers and lots of capital + cash flow. What are possible things that will lessen the power of Facebook and eventually cause its downfall if ever?
======
mtinkerhess
Exclusivity used to be Facebook's greatest strength. You could post photos of
yourself getting drunk in the dorms without worrying that your parents would
find out. Now that Facebook has gone mainstream, a competitor could attack
Facebook by offering privacy within well-defined real-world communities,
authenticating membership by email address, IP address or moderator approval.

~~~
meltzerj
Isn't that what Google Me plans on doing? These well-defined real-world
communities would consist of a friend group, a family group, and a work group.
All types of shared information would be classified into one of these groups
and be visible to only those within that specific group.

Also, what about niche social networks? Linkedin seems to have conquered the
professional social network. Facebook seems strongest in the friend category.
To me it seems awkward having family and friends in the same Facebook network.
Perhaps a niche family social network could succeed...

~~~
jsharpe
You can already do this rumoured behaviour with Facebook (it's called Friend
Lists).

If Facebook hasn't managed to get people to adopt this, it seems hard to
believe that anyone else will.

~~~
onwardly
Facebook doesn't make it easy though. With 1000+ friends, I'd rather not sit
down for 12 hours and try to categorize them.

Surely they can atleast guess for me (based on who I share friends with, when
we became friends, whether we went to school or lived in the same city at the
same time, etc.). If FB would give me a draft to review, then I'd try sorting
through my friends.

If they don't, then I simply won't share many things that I might like to
share, just because it has to be broadcast to everyone.

~~~
philwelch
If you have over 1000 friends I'm not surprised Facebook is difficult for you
to use. 1000 friends is a frighteningly large auditorium of people. Facebook
is far more usable at or under about 100 friends.

~~~
lehrblogger
I'm very late to this thread, but I think this suggests perhaps the biggest
problem that Facebook has:

Because the act of 'defriending' someone has such strong negative social
connotations, it will continue to be very uncommon, and as a result the number
of friends any given user has is increasing monotonically. I've had Facebook
for years, and by friend count has steadily increased and is now nearing 900.
The users who only have 100 friends now will eventually be in the unmanageable
and uncomfortable position of having 1000 friends, and by that point I won't
be surprised if my count is approaching 1500.

Facebook certainly seems to want everyone to have as many friends as possible
(note the friend suggestion features), so it's only a matter of time before
everyone is presenting themselves to such a large auditorium.

~~~
smiler
I was trying to clean out my friends list today on FB and it's clear that FB
do not want you to do that (for obvious reasons). The only way I could seem to
remove them was to click into each friend and click "Remove from my friends".
It takes so long and was so tedious I just gave up!

------
pg
If you want to answer this question, it's probably a mistake to look at
Facebook itself. The biggest danger to successful technology companies is that
the world will change in a way that makes them irrelevant. The new thing,
whatever it is, will initially seem unimportant. By the time the incumbent
realizes how important it is, it will be too late.

This sort of generic answer is not very exciting. It would be more exciting if
you could say what the new thing would be. (To some people at least; to most
it would seem a toy.) But that is quite hard to do.

~~~
twidlit
But Facebook has proven to be very vigilant on potential competitors and has
been effective in snuffing it out by not just cloning them but improving the
(feature based) startup's concept. Or they acquire them or its next smaller
competitor startup.

My money is either in 1 of the 3 giants (GOOG, APP, MS) finally getting the
social web right or Twitter.

But the problem with Twitter is it has fumbled countless times already and is
only growing due to the strength and type of its community. So i have no
confidence they can catch up to Facebook.

So Im guessing if its not the 3 giants, it will be an inter-operable social
layer and a thousand private social networks.

~~~
pg
Whatever it is won't seem like a competitor. It will seem as unrelated to
Facebook's business as Google seemed to Microsoft's business in 1998.

~~~
twidlit
IMHO it will be related in a way that it will still be around replicating
social interactions offline online.

The way i predict success in online businesses is how well they can replicate
real-world actions and dynamic. The bigger and better the set of real human
actions a startup can build a online counterpart for, the stronger it becomes.

Facebook is building online equivalent of verbs or actions you can do with
people. so the more verbs it can do the more unstoppable it becomes.

What if someone can build the Facebook+ phone? i would also bet on that.

------
failquicker
Eventually, complacency and failure to innovate will probably kill off
Facebook. I know it's hard to look at Facebook now and see the possibility
that they will be much less relevant in 10 years. But that will probably
happen.

Prodigy, CompuServe, AmericaOnline, Friendster, Myspace and to a certain
extent even Yahoo and Microsoft. At one point in time they were all pervasive,
disruptive, and dominant. And now they've either gone or are having to pivot
into a niche to maintain viability at a fraction of their former glory.

The internet and technology will keep growing. Facebook will get marginalized
at some point.

~~~
bl4k
I don't think 'Facebook will fail because other companies have failed' is the
right answer.

~~~
failquicker
No, I stand by my statement. I don't believe that Facebook will continually
dominate the hearts and minds of the online world in the way it does now, in
perpetuity. My reason given for failure was "complacency and failure to
inovate" which I believe is the downfall of most great companies. The
companies that I listed were examples of this phenomenon. You can really take
this theory all the way back to the Dutch east India trading company if you
want to. Evolve or die. In all probability, someday facebook will stop
evolving.

Now I'm currently refering to facebook failing in the same way that "Microsoft
and Yahoo" have failed. They still exist, are still (quite) profitable, but
their relavency is fading.

As to apple. I've always wondered if the magic there will continue after Steve
Jobs dies.

~~~
Zev
_As to apple. I've always wondered if the magic there will continue after
Steve Jobs dies._

Apple did just fine while Jobs was on medical leave for six months or so.

~~~
philwelch
Apple's secret to ongoing growth and success is introducing a major new
product category every few years. Six months takes nothing out of that--the
long term visionary work Steve Jobs does can be missed for six months without
much impact. Six years and Apple would be in decline.

------
bl4k
Related from last week, my own Ask HN:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1580464>

One of the comments in that thread pointed to this presentation:
[http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-
networ...](http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2)

Which points out that the current Facebook does not match the needs of real
social networking (ie. multiple networks, different levels of trust, etc.).
These things are hard to implement, but I feel that whoever does get it right
(along with a killer feature to get users, such as what Photos was for
Facebook) will be a winner.

The other feedback that I have from average Facebook users is concern for
privacy (ie. a prospective employer finding your party pics), inability to
control access easily (ie. your grand parents seeing your photos from a
party), an overflow of information and the feeling of a 'fad' wearing out.

~~~
hrabago
> multiple networks, different levels of trust

I keep waiting for either Facebook to solve this problem, or for someone else
to solve it. Google comes closest with their social network concept. On the
one hand, I hope they pull it off. On the other, I try to minimize giving
Google much more information about me than they already collect, so I'm not
sure how comfortable I'll be on their social network. I suppose I'm hoping
their success pushes Facebook to implement a similar concept.

~~~
onwardly
I don't give a shit what Google knows about me.

Its like the big poker websites. If they get caught cheating, then EVERYONE
will jump ship and they will die.

Google is (I think) too smart to truly violate my privacy, nevermind ads
targeted to Prozac after that nasty breakup email.

~~~
jiganti
In 2007 there was a big scandal on Absolute Poker where employees cheated
internally and took millions off of players. In 2008, it was discovered that
something similar was happening on UltimateBet. They refunded considerable
amounts, I received a four figure refund but knew people getting as much as a
quarter million back.

These two sites were semi-boycotted by the online poker community
(twoplustwo.com is the HN of online poker) but this ultimately didn't work.
The reason being that recreational/poor players didn't know about the scandal
and continued to play there, which made the games so easy to beat that many
players tossed their morals aside and made a killing.

~~~
onwardly
I stand corrected ;)

But Google is different than poker sites, just imagine the uproar. Just for
_gathering_ data for maps they've gotten in a ton of trouble.

------
charlesju
Here is the downfall of FB.

1\. FB will go public in the next 5 years. 2\. 5 years after that it will
become filled with old people. 3\. There will be a reemergence of social
networking startups trying to displace the then bloated solution with a more
elegant alternative. 4\. One of these will win and become the next FB. 5\.
Repeat.

~~~
wyclif
RE: #2. Too late. Facebook is already filled with old people.

~~~
thomasreggi
thats what she said.

~~~
WilliamLP
If you're going to do a twss in a humourless forum, please at least make it a
funny one!

~~~
Ardit20
What's a twss?

~~~
thesethings
twss stands for: That's What She Said

~~~
Ardit20
Did you just make it up?

Or is that

dujmiu

~~~
Ardit20
Gee you guys are weird

I get -4 for asking what something is

and he gets +5 for saying what it is

never mind that if I did not ask a lot of people would have been completely
lost

------
ankeshk
Just like a better search engine can't kill Google anymore, a better social
networking site / solution won't kill Facebook. Open protocols won't kill it.
A shiny new more exclusive social networking site won't kill it.

It can only die if:

i. Government intervenes with some crazy law.

ii. An entrepreneur somewhere thinks of a better idea for people to spend time
on - instead of on social networking and quiz taking and game playing online.
(Hmm... Maybe something like Hunch - but a lot more user friendly and socially
interactive (an updates stream).)

iii. Facebook does something crazy and self destructive.

~~~
bitskits
Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more.

I'm sure that Friendster and Myspace shared your opinion of themselves at some
point in recent history. Facebook, Google, and any other site that is popular
today will find itself as the next MySpace if their innovation slows. It won't
take a government to kill Facebook, a disrespect for innovation will do the
trick. There are thousands of startups with FB's users in their sights; all it
takes is one with a good enough idea.

~~~
ankeshk
Thanks for disagreeing and extending the dialogue.

Friendster and Myspace didn't have a chance to figure out a way of making
money that earns billions a year. Facebook has. That is why - Facebook is now
in a position to not wither away like Friendster and Myspace. But thats just
my opinion.

~~~
joe_the_user
Claims for Facebook making billions seem exagerated to me.

You can see that Google is more or less established not because they are
making billions but because there's an "eco-system" of companies who make
money along with Google and can be expected to keep pushing that money _long
term_ back to Google. The same might (or might not) be said about the iPhone.
But you'd be hard pressed to find anything like a _stable_ ecosystem grown-up
around Facebook. The only thing that grows on Facebook seems to be social
games and those depend on FB's own growth. The claim of social network sites
has been that they can sell focused eyes. But I haven't seen evidence that
they can sell social eyes that will do anything.

It seems like even without a competitor, Facebook will become Yahoo in a few
years - not dead but a site that can charge very a premium for ads or
experience.

But hey, I'm just guessing...

~~~
rimantas

      Claims for Facebook making billions seem exagerated to me.
    

Google makes billions by knowing what you are looking for and offering more
relevant ads. Now consider how much more Facebook does know about you and what
it can offer for advertisers.

~~~
joe_the_user
Google makes billions because it is the site where people go _when_ they are
looking for something, often something to buy.

Facebook isn't going to make money _just_ by knowing general things about you.
It still needs to be there when you are looking for something.

What do I care how targeted an ad is when I'm not at a location to buy things
to begin with.

~~~
rimantas
That's a good point.

------
mrpsbrk
Orkut in Brazil used to be just as impossible to displace as FB, and it's in
the process of being displaced. So it can be done. Come to think of it, the
same happened to ICQ over MSN, and in fact the very very old out there might
see Usenet over BB in the same light.

So, 1: it can happen.

But also, 2: it will not happen over a feature list. A friend once said to me
that MSN displaced ICQ because all the dumb hot girls didn't grok ICQ. As
awful as the idea is, i think there is something to it. Something like street-
cred.

Which obviously comes from who and not what. I think the official term is
"cluster effects". But then again, cluster effects only require that YOUR
friends be there, not that everyone is. Which is to say: it's not about
universality, but traction --- similar, not the same.

Finally, 3: should it? Why must FB fall? It is a walled garden, and it is
stifling of competition, for sure. But the thing about walled gardens is that
while obviously flawed from the collective perspective, from the individual
perspective they are, well, gardens. As in pleasant.

I guess anything that "competes" with FB is as bad as, the "good side of the
force" is not killing FB, but creating reasonable ways to mine it's data, like
open protocols. Those will come, sooner or later, just like twitter and FB
kinda interoperate, but they will not kill it, maybe at best make it less
relevant.

------
wolfrom
I think it's been mentioned before that standardization of social networking
protocols might work, to the point that they become part of the Internet
itself, like e-mail. I think it is only a matter of time (2-3 years) before
the majority of Internet users will simply use distributed systems where their
social data will be spread over several services (proprietary or open source),
and the sharing of that data will follow a standard protocol (maybe a future
blend of ActivityStea.ms, Salmon, and others).

Facebook will survive, most likely, but I think its influence will slowly wane
to the point where they will be just another "media company" like AOL and
Yahoo.

~~~
wccrawford
Has there been any standardization of those protocols yet? I know Diaspora was
working on an entire site, but I don't recall them using any standards... Or
even making them.

~~~
what
There are some draft specs on the activitystrea.ms site. FB seems to implement
them in Open Graph.

<http://activitystrea.ms/spec/1.0/> <http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/>
[http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Using_Activity...](http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Using_Activity_Streams)

------
davi
The only thing that can kill facebook is failure to innovate and evolve with
the tastes of its users. This would open the door to a competitor to become
the new 'cool place to be'. It will probably take 5-10 years to find out if
this is going to happen. The internal 'move fast, break stuff' development
model seems explicitly designed to prevent this.

Barring that (or some sustained operational mishap -- downtime, security
breach, etc.), network effects make it unkillable.

~~~
dstein
"It will probably take 5-10 years to find out if this is going to happen."

I won't even take 2 years. I will be surprised if several competitors don't
emerge by the time Facebook goes public.

~~~
lrm242
Why? Facebook is entrenched. Myspace was no where near the size of Facebook
when Facebook came in and snatched the rug out from under them. FB has evolved
to be _the_ social networking platform, just as Google has evolved to be the
primary search engine of the internet. Google gets competitors all the time,
but none that really pose any major threat to their core search business. I'd
say that FB has reached that level of critical mass for their own business.
When it comes to social relationships, they have won. When it comes to
everything else around that (places, questions, yadda yadda) the game is still
very much in play.

I wouldn't for a second assume that just because Facebook came out of no where
that history is a _given_ to repeat. When FB came out of nowhere there was no
web property with anywhere near FB's critical mass and momentum.

~~~
qwzybug
Entrenched in what? What's the compelling reason not to just walk away from
your Facebook account? The scrabble game you're right in the middle of? Photo
metadata? Messages about important parties?

Try just quitting Facebook cold-turkey. You'd be surprised how easy it is, and
you just might like it.

~~~
lrm242
I quit long ago. Unfortunately, you're missing the point that Facebook's
entrenched power comes from a vast population of folks that enjoy it. To them,
Facebook is the internet.

------
hyperbovine
Here's one I haven't seen mentioned: social network fatigue. People gradually
realize that online friendships tend to be shallow, unfulfilling & transitory.
They switch back to the old model where being somebody's friend actually takes
some effort, and has tangible emotional and social benefits associated with
it. FB becomes irrelevant. Cf. that Wilson Quarterly article that was on here
a couple days ago.

Hey... anything is possible :-)

------
dstein
Facebook will "die" when it is no longer unique. They have defined the
template for how all future websites need to operate. And I guarantee within a
few years developers will find ways to standardize (or at least ubiquitize)
every important feature of Facebook.

Once every website has a universal login, contacts, and sharing features, then
why would I use Facebook, when I can use X, Y, or Z which have lots of other
features too? And then the cycle will start over again.

~~~
plesn
Exactly. The two moments of the cycle are: killer feature and protocols.

When a feature goes mainstream, it neads to be openly standartized (Take GUI
toolkits, take instant messenging). Then another feature/innovation moves the
"battle" elsewhere.

Facebook somehow made MSN instantly much less relevant by combining jabber to
their social networking site. Someone else will surely do the same, by
combining social networking protocols (plug Dispora++?) to something else
interesting by itself for its data. Maybe more interactive appliances and
webstores? Imagine for example every appliance (phone, computer, camera…)
having an adapted 'view' of your dashboard and relations, backed by a
distributed datastore with proper backup and cryto.

------
firebones
Innovator's dilemma + architectural conservatism + internal turf-war politics.
As Facebook grows and the third-party innovators in their ecosystem become
larger and more formidable, antibodies to innovation will be developed (higher
barrier for new ideas to be attracted to the platform from the outside, higher
barriers for new ideas to emerge and take root from the inside).

This won't kill Facebook it will just make it less relevant as a way of
attracting innovator mindshare and new capital. As with Microsoft, this may
take a decade or more to play out, and like Microsoft, by most measures (other
than stock price) they'll still be considered a fairly successful business as
this happens. Just one no longer growing insanely or having new Hollywood
movies made about it.

What takes the mindshare? I don't know. Perhaps the marriage of consumer
electronics and a collection of narrowly focused and ubiquitous services seems
more likely to come together and be integrated into people lives than does
belief that a walled garden "portal" conquering the world will continue.

Or possibly: social congregation around digital media. The return of the
shared experience around the TV.

------
cmelbye
It seems as if High School students are getting bored with Facebook as a
whole, and it's becoming less trendy as their parents and grandparents join.
If someone could come up with a site that would be more engaging somehow while
retaining the exclusivity of the early-ish stages of Facebook, I believe they
could potentially do very well.

------
Tichy
It doesn't seem too likely, but there could be an increase in privacy
awareness in the common population.

Or it could become fashionable to do stuff in the real world again.

It might become like TV - mass entertainment, but not really exciting anymore.

Honestly, whenever I log into Facebook, I feel at a loss as to what to do. I
just tried playing a game, and it asks for all my information including
friends list, before I even know what it is all about. Uh, I just want to play
a game... That kind of thing might start it's demise.

I suspect at the moment there is a lot of pushing and nagging to keep users
active ("do you want to send a purple cow to your friends"?). Eventually
people might just tire of being manipulated.

Even if not, and it remains the biggest thing on the net, there might still be
a significant number of people who want something else.

~~~
glhaynes
I've never seen numbers on users vs. number of games played, but an anecdote:
I and many of my friends are pretty heavy Facebook users but few of us play
many, if any, games... just status updates, photos, and messages. But I also
have a few friends that seem to play 50 games for every status update they
post. I wonder if there are two groups of Facebook users, one that mostly
chats and one that mostly plays.

That's how I tend to think of it at least. So if I were trying to make a
Facebook killer, I might attack one of those two groups... provide either a
vastly better social/chat/discussion/link-sharing scheme or a vastly better
scheme to play games. But I don't have any ideas on either -- they both work
pretty well apparently (the completely technophobic all have Facebook pages at
this point!), which makes me think it'll be really tough to compete with
Facebook.

And, besides, if you did compete that way, you'd still be at a disadvantage
because of the network effect and that you appeal to only a subset of the
existing Facebook crowd -- as I said, I don't play a lot of games, but I still
want to be friends with people I remember from high school and that do.

~~~
Tichy
It's so strange to me that all the technophobic people seem to deal fine with
Facebook, whereas I have a really hard time with it. Oh well...

~~~
glhaynes
I've heard that so many times and I think it's really surprising too. I recall
being much more confused when I first started, but now I feel quite
comfortable with it. I'd love to see a study showing which things on Facebook
are initially grasped more easily by the non-techies than the techies. Might
cause us to make our UIs differently ("worse" to us) if we're targeting a mass
audience?

------
ig1
Lack of revenue. It's killed more social networks than competition ever has.

------
hrabago
I still think (or hope) that something that better reflects a person's
multiple networks can emerge and gain widespread use. For instance, I don't
have all my coworkers on my Facebook friends list because I don't like to mix
them in with my personal friends or family. That said, I don't use Facebook's
wall all that much already because what I like to share with my family and
what I like to share with friends are completely separate as well.

------
Eliezer
THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH FACEBOOK APPROACHES

BORN TO A STARTUP THAT HAS THRICE DEFIED THEM...

oh, never mind

------
twidlit
Here are a few of my solid guesses.

1\. A destination site that is closely tied to a mobile hardware device.
(Apple, Google and MS have the closest chance with this). +1 if company has TV
expansion to get the rest of the population.

2\. Implosion. Internal conflict most probably from investors/shareholders vs.
leaders.

3\. Site-wide security breach that affected more than 30% of users and had
serious and press-juicy consequences. The issue should persist for more than a
week.

4\. Zuckerberg's death or serious illness. (non-issue if a strong leader
emerges)

5\. Talent migration. This is inevitable as there will be fewer and fewer
challenges left to excite sharp minds (3-5 years)

~~~
twidlit
To expand on #1.

MS has Xbox, Xbox Live, Windows but weak mobile + web products.

Apple has itunes, ios, macosx but negligible web prowess and zero social web
domain expertise.

Google has strong web engineering output and Android, nothing else come to
mind.

If you can apply a social web layer to their products which would come out
stronger?

The answer to that might be the Facebook killer I think.

------
HerraBRE
Facebook will either be killed by something fundamentally better - or it will
be regulated to death.

Social networking is emerging as far too important a communication medium for
one company to be allowed to dominate. It may take a few yeas for regulators
to catch up, but if Facebook isn't unseated by something better and more open,
it will get broken up by government or at the very least forced to inter-
operate openly with its competitors.

I'm betting something better will come around before the government steps in,
but either way I'd say Facebook will be taken down a peg or three within the
next few years.

~~~
beagle3
You have the weird assumption that government works for the people. In fact,
government will likely help Facebook extend their monopoly in return for easy
access to all the data that facebook collects on you.

If you use facebook often, especially from a mobile phone, then you are
leaving a data trail for everything you are doing in your life, and everything
your friends are doing. It is easy to apply that against you if needed, which
is why a government will be happy to support facebook.

------
james_ash
Spam and viruses.

Two days ago I awoke to find my status had been changed to "penis" overnight.
I have no idea how this happened, since I don't share my account details with
anyone or use it on a shared computer. It had an interesting effect on my
friends, to say the least. Had it been changed to something worse, an attack
like this could easily have led to damage to my social network of friends,
which would definitely be grounds for me quitting Facebook.

------
dgudkov
A few statements related to subject: 1) 500mln have joined FB. Why others
didn't? Isn't it because FB has nothing really valuable to offer them?

2) If FB continue trying to become all-internet-in-one-company then they will
soon follow Yahoo.

3) Future belongs to specialized social networks utilizing unified social
protocols and APIs (not developed yet). LinkedIn is one of early birds. More
to come.

------
wslh
A site with a best relation with developers (that was one of the MSFT
advantages in the past). Facebook often change APIs specs AND if you exceed
their API calling limitation there is not space to buy more "credit" for small
companies.

I think the companies embracing the facebook ecosystem and helping them to
grow are in risk of future policies changes.

------
kaiwen1
A lot of people doing what I just did last week. I closed my Facebook account
because FB is just huge waste of time.

------
siglesias
Take advantage of Facebook's negative brand image, and run attack campaigns
discussing their history of privacy gaffes. Make sure that alternative service
distinguishes itself in nearly every facet and doesn't merely copy Facebook's
usability and functionality. No small task, but the correct approach.

------
praptak
Maybe, just maybe something like stackoverflow could be pulled on Facebook. I
mean someone who already has gained lots of street cred building a working
replacement. Not sure if even that could work. FB is not as universally hated
as the site that stackoverflow killed.

------
davidalln
Facebook succeeded because it's timing was perfect. It was released right
about the time when internet officially went mainstream. Drops in high speed
internet prices combined with a crop of Web 2.0 applications promising a more
dynamic web caused people to digitize a lot of their lives.

Facebook was able to ride this wave by marketing itself as an exclusive club.
It was you and your friends home away from home. It beat out MySpace because
of its focus on "networks", allowing entire schools of students to quickly
have contact with each other.

I think a Facebook killer is unlikely, unless there is another wave of
increased internet activity (which I don't see happening any time soon).
However, niche social websites are on the grow and are gaining with
popularity. Perhaps if enough of these are created, it'll engulf Facebook in
popularity. But then Facebook could simply revert back to its "school" niche
that it used to focus on three years ago.

~~~
dillydally
Er, more important than that (I think) are the failures of Friendster's
management to manage growth and MySpace's sale to News Corp.

The fact that Facebook beat MySpace in the US is astonishing, IMO.

------
cmelbye
I just made a survey to collect things that people like and dislike about
Facebook: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1603643>

I'll share the results if I find anything good.

------
iamgabeaudick
Facebook is Facebook's greatest threat. Consider Myspace: it was largely
because they let their product deteriorate that users switched to Facebook.

------
lowglow
a new generation of kids.

------
marcamillion
At this point...only Facebook can kill Facebook.

For reference, see Yahoo.

Google didn't kill Yahoo. Yahoo did.

------
danvoell
too many games like Farmville? (similar to music on myspace?)

------
sharjeel
Facebook itself

------
darrenkopp
management. that is where the death of something successful is always born.

------
petenixey
VPs

------
troymc
The widespread use of ad-blockers could kill Facebook, as ads are their main
source of revenue.

~~~
hrabago
Apart from myself, I don't know anyone who uses ad-blockers. Almost everyone I
know uses Facebook, including housewives who don't even have a computer in
their homes. I don't doubt that a lot of people use ad-blockers, but I can't
imagine there's a big enough overlap between ad-blockers and Facebook users to
bring down Facebook.

~~~
troymc
Installing ad-blockers could be a nice sideline business for those computer
stores that offer "Virus and spyware removal - only $30" --- they could extend
it to "Virus, spyware, and ad removal - only $40"

------
jorangreef
Time.

------
hotmind
What can kill Facebook? Burnout. And it will eventually happen.

~~~
ronaldj
I believe it.

