

Is Facebook dying? - catastrophe
http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/295959/facebook-dying

======
jonnathanson
It seems a little hasty to proclaim the death of Facebook based on a sample
size of two kids. In fact, when I worked in marketing, I used to dread
statements from leadership (or whomever) that began with "My kid was doing X,
so we should get into X," or "I heard about Y on the radio, so I wonder...,"
etc. Dangerously flawed assumptions can come from this line of reasoning.

Anecdotal samples can be useful to form hypotheses, however, and in this case,
I don't think the hypothesis is out of the question. My own anecdotes, be they
personal, from friends, or from co-workers, seem to be indicating a very
subtle paradigm shift in social networking. It's not so much that users are
abandoning Facebook, or abandoning social, but that users are segmenting
themselves by use case (or worldview, as the wonderful Amy Hoy would probably
describe it).

The world _seems_ to be dividing into People Who Use Facebook Every 5 Seconds,
and People Who Use Facebook About Once a Week, with perhaps some other
segments of significance within that spectrum. But "seems" is the operative
word here. I'd need to look at actual usage data to make any real assumptions
here, and my guess is that Facebook isn't going to share data that contradicts
its own growth projections.

~~~
s_henry_paulson
Fair enough, but I think the reason this is getting upvoted so much is because
I think many of us can relate to the content in the article, so maybe there is
something here worth considering.

After all, with many predecessors like Friendster and Myspace, most people
that left didn't even bother to delete their accounts, they just stopped using
the service.

As far as anecdotal evidence, I'm seeing the same thing happen as well, both
with myself and others.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I think stories like this get upvoted because a certain percentage of HN users
want FB to fail.

A certain percentage (probably other people) want Google to fail and upvote
those stories.

A certain percentage want YC to fail and upvote those stories.

A certain percentage want Apple to fail and upvote those stories.

I don't think anything meaningful can be derived from such upvote patterns.

~~~
novamantis
Since it's absolutely impossible for anyone to legitimately relate to the
proposed sentiments because in reality all people are is haters... That's what
you're saying. So let's disregard any and all anecdotes.

------
stevenj
Several of my friends have quit Facebook. Many on multiple occasions.

Nearly all of them have eventually come back. Many of them multiple times.

I think the ones who are still gone will come back sometime.

Some inevitably won't.

But I think the number of people who dislike Facebook enough to never want to
use it are in the extreme minority. I think most people just don't think about
whether it's evil or not. It's just where they message their friends, upload
and view photos, and keep track of upcoming events.

The author of the post references his kids. Someday, his kids will probably be
embarrassed by their dad and grow somewhat distant from him as they grow up.
Most of the time, though, I think people realize that family is important and
so I'll bet that his kids will rediscover the value of their father's love.

Facebook is like your online social homebase. You leave it, travel different
places, see new things, meet new people, but it's what you come home to. It's
a part of your identity as it serves as an online archive of your life. And
for many of its users this archive started pretty early.

In 20 years, I think I'll be happy that I have my Facebook to look back
through.

~~~
iskander
I've been off facebook for half a year but I'm still tempted to return. There
isn't a good alternative for sharing photos with a group of friends, though
hopefully something will emerge.

~~~
e40
I've taken to posting photos on google's picasa web and marking them unlisted,
then posting a link on facebook. It's not perfect, but when I tried to get
everyone I want to view the pictures to get a free flickr account, it was just
too hard. Only about 1/5 of them were able to understand and do it, and
probably a small fraction of those that did every really checked for new pics.

The problem everyone has been trained on facebook and most have no reason to
change. The people on HN don't like it, but the friends and relatives I have
on facebook couldn't care less about the privacy and other issues. They just
use it.

------
cs702
I recently heard of two teenagers (relatives of a business acquaintance) who
quit FaceBook because -- well, because it's no longer the freshest gumbo. They
no longer feel it's cool.

A few anecdotes do not make a trend, but FaceBook should be worried, because
social networks can implode quickly when they stop being perceived as 'the
place to see and be seen:' <http://diegobasch.com/social-networks-implode-
quickly>

\--

PS. I can relate to the author's complaint: "on Twitter I can find the stuff
I’m interested in. On Facebook I can only see the stuff other people are
interested in." Very true!

~~~
mirkules
Besides agreeing with your point about "coolness", I also thought about the
"stuff I'm interested in" vs. "stuff other people are interested in". It
struck me as an insightful sentence that perfectly describes their respective
social networking models.

The argument comes down to reference/reinfocement vs. discovery. The former
provides reference to your knowledge and interests and reinforces them. The
latter lets you discover new knowledge. There is definitely room for both
ideologies, as they are both kind of necessary for social interaction.
Twitter: find people with same interests, Facebook: connect with those people
on a more personal level, and find out their interests. Of course, I am
neglecting the fact that you can find out other people's interests on Twitter,
too, but Facebook strikes me as more of a passive way to do that -- Twitter
just moves too fast for that (for an occasional user, like me).

So, I think while there are many, many problems with Facebook, their model of
interaction might not be one of them.

------
prostoalex
Is communicating with friends dying?

Sure, nearly six billion people do it. But I for one am dealing with a serious
case of burnout. And I know I'm not alone.

Ok, I admit: The question that serves as the headline for this post seems on
the surface a bit absurd, if not downright crazy. Any day now seven billionth
person is about to communicate with friends, and that's a population more than
21 times that of the United States.

The reason I ask if communicating with friends is dying is simple: It’s
because my kids have pretty much stopped doing it. Just the other day my 16
year old son told me he rarely does it, because he’s tired of other people’s
whiny life updates. He’d rather spend his time reading books and discovering
new things (when he’s supposed to be doing his homework, naturally). In other
words, he’d like to do his own random discovery, rather than rely on his
friends to do it for him.

My 13-year-old daughter, a much more social creature, was all over
communicating with friends for the first two years she tried it.

But lately she has discovered scrapbooking, where she can build her own
scrapbook and find others that interest her – without getting all this stuff
she doesn’t care about pushed at her by her parents, relatives, and assorted
friends.

In other words, the generation that follows Gen Z has grown disenchanted with
the very nature of communicating with friends. And I gotta say, I’m starting
to see their point.

More and more when I am bored and looking for distraction in real life I go
first to newspaper or TV. Last night, for example, I spent a ridiculous amount
of time following the CNN coverage of 47 percent and all the snark that
erupted from Mitt Romney’s “off the cuff, inelegant” comments about the half
of America he apparently detests.

I was listening to national news anchors, whose voice and ability to stay fair
and balanced are far superior to the local TV station experience (and miles
ahead of any political coverage I ever get from my friends and family). The TV
remote let me quickly change channels without having to buy a new television
set or turn it off and on again. So I spent a solid hour skimming through news
bytes and listening in-depth to those that piqued my interest.

~~~
alberich
Your kids as just finding out that people that talk too much about themselves
are boring. On facebook there is an army of people ready to post what they ate
for breakfast, what they saw on TV, and so on. These people just want an
audience to watch what they are doing (mostly uninteresting stuff heh).

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
That army is also on Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, Wordpress, LiveJournal,
MySpace, and any other free website that allows them to publish themselves for
others to publicly see. That doesn't mean that those services aren't useful to
those of us who have friends that aren't narcissists.

If your Facebook news feed (or your Twitter stream, or whatever else) is full
of nothing but self-indulgent crap, then maybe you should find some better
people to be friends with?

~~~
alberich
Actually I found that most people acted like they had an alter ego. When they
are online they are boring, but when you meet them personally they are nice
people.

I'm pretty happy with my friends, I just don't feel the need for something
like facebook and the need for filtering stuff that I never had to filter
before.

For those that find facebook to be so great, more power for them.

------
tatsuke95
> _"She has at last count at least three accounts, possibly more, which she
> uses for different purposes – some of them just to play those stupid spammy
> Facebook games and quizzes."_

Impossible! According to Facebook, multiple accounts are not an issue, and
people like this are outliers!

And yet, almost everyone I know has more than one account. That 900MM user
number is phonier than a three-dollar-bill. I wonder what the real number is?

~~~
unreal37
Facebook has 955MM "monthly active uniques". That's not number of accounts
(which is surely over 1B), that is number of active users over a 30 day
period.

So all these fake accounts - people are using them (active). Ads are being
displayed, activity is happening, Facebook is making money on every single one
of 955MM accounts.

So what makes them phony?

~~~
tatsuke95
> _"So what makes them phony?"_

Let's start with the fact that in the article, a 13-year old girl is using
multiple accounts to play games, and nothing more. Yes, she logs in and is
counted as an "monthly active user". Yes, ads are being served to her. _That's
the problem_.

She's one person. But as far as Facebook (and, hence, advertisers) are
concerned, she's _three_. Do you really believe the demographic information
she's entered in the fake accounts is accurate? Do you think that she uses the
fake accounts with the same commercial intent? As someone who himself has
multiple accounts, I'm skeptical.

------
w1ntermute
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines>

No.

~~~
cletus
It's so predictable that someone posts this on every submission with a
question headline. Seriously, it's old. We get it. Just move on.

~~~
waterlesscloud
If I ran the world I'd ban all links to wikipedia and lesswrong entries on
"laws" and "fallacies".

They never actually contribute anything to the discussion.

~~~
getsat
Neither do most fallacies.

------
tptacek
Can anyone point to a single good ITWorld story ever posted to HN?

We get an anomalous number if ITWorld postings, because they use spam accounts
to seed their stories here. But that aside: have any of them ever been good?

Be mindful that you could spark an interesting HN thread by asking any
inflammatory question and then just filling the article with lorem ipsum text.

~~~
duked
I'm with you man, and that's one of the reason I stopped reading slashdot.
ITworld/networlworld/crapworld are really not the best source of information
when it comes to IT...

------
halayli
The title should be: "My kids are using Facebook less these days".

~~~
pacomerh
Absolutely, and because his kids are his world, then facebook is dying. Same
reason why everybody posts pictures of their kids thinking the world will be
interested.

------
mrchess
I'm tired of these stupid sensationalist articles. Pre-IPO everyone talks
about how amazing it is, post-IPO everyone just talks about it dying and
failing. People need to do something better with their time then speculate
over stupidity. It's simply way too early to tell anything.

~~~
agscala
This is all anecdotal, but frankly I have noticed a serious decrease in
Facebook's quality since their IPO. More often I have ads thrown (not so
coincidentally) at the top of my feed, and I feel like Facebook has
practically started begging me to 'like' various companies' pages.

Also I've seen and endless amount of meme pictures. Surely this is related to
the people I'm friends with on Facebook, but I know I'm not the only one who
is being bothered by this.

------
hugh4life
No, Facebook is not dying because Facebook is the Walmart of the internet. I'd
prefer not to shop there but sometimes there's no way to avoid it.

------
RandallBrown
A friend of mine I haven't talked to in awhile told me that he deleted his
facebook. He said that any of the people he actually wants to be in contact
with have his phone number and can catch up with him that way. The thing is
though, we live on other sides of the country. I'm not really the kind of guy
that randomly calls up his friends just to see how they're doing. There really
aren't any other reasons to talk to him, so we just end up not talking.

With my friends that are on Facebook though, I can read what they're doing,
they can see what I'm doing, and we can comment and talk about it. Oh, you saw
a movie? I also saw that movie, wasn't it good/bad/funny/whatever?

Also, the groups and events on Facebook are just fantastic for planning
things. I went on a trip with some friends from college a couple weeks ago. We
all live in different parts of the country and coordinating something like
that would have been a nightmare without Facebook. We made a group and used it
to post all the information about when our flights were leaving, what hotel
we'd be staying at. It was really really convenient.

If you're annoyed with your friends posting stupid stuff, just ignore the news
feed. There are dozens of other reasons to use facebook.

------
roryliam
Facebook isn't dying but I think it is easier to leave than it once was. The
pull of Facebook is weaker with the proliferation and growth of more niche
social networks - or networks such as Twitter where users can carve their own
niches - and other methods of discovery of content (the article mentions
Reddit and StumbleUpon).

The common complaint that Facebook is full of advertising, apps and ranty,
passive aggressive status updates is justified. It is possible that people
will grow tired of having their friendships and other social interactions
mediated through Facebook without major changes in usage habits (maybe
something more intimate and limited like Path) and the way that Facebook goes
about making money.

While I agree that Facebook makes it easier to keep in touch with friends -
possibly due to the critical mass rather than anything inherent in the
service, - I do not think this is necessarily a good thing. It is often
passive (stalking) rather than active. I deleted my Facebook account last
weekend and I already feel as if I have an obligation to actively pursue
friendships if I want them to continue.

------
kylek
facebook started dieing after my mom added me as a friend

~~~
Falling3
Great point. Of course Facebook is dying, though probably not in the way the
author intended. Since I signed up in my college days, I've seen way more
negatives added than positives and the last two years has been largely
downhill.

Most of the people I know don't actually want to be on Facebook, but it
certainly is difficult to avoid.

I don't think Facebook is near the cliff right now, but it's headed towards it
and accelerating.

------
bluetidepro
I know the author mentions "Ok, I admit: The question that serves as the
headline for this post seems on the surface a bit absurd, if not downright
crazy." at the beginning but still, I don't think he really gives much valid
evidence to what his underlying point is. No offense to him, but I don't give
really give much credit to his case just because of how his two children (16
year old son and 13 year old daughter) use Facebook. Esp when he says himself,
they are just 2 users of the ~1 billion...

------
jbigelow76
My Facebook account is pretty much in zombie mode now. I'll give it a quick
scan every couple days to see if my friends posted anything of interest but I
don't post anything.

Mostly it's there so my parents don't start wondering if they need to "get on
that twitter thing" and to see what I've been up to.

------
autophil
Is Facebook dying? Yes, because lately, everyone has been asking "is Facebook
dying?". It's a self-fulfilling prophesy.

However, I also say yes because many people I know have abandoned their
accounts or use their accounts reluctantly nowadays.

So yes, Facebook will continue to bleed users and die.

------
smashing
I get that the overwhelming majority of Hacker News supports Barack Obama and
feels the need to be very vocal in their support of him online. I understand
that every two to four years their is a lot of online discussion about how
evil Republicans are and how they hold us back in every way. I understand that
acknowledging this as politics and not as the absolute truth to the way things
have to be is very unpopular online, even on this site which is supposed to be
relatively free of politics. But why do I always feel left out? I don't want
to participate in the months of hate-Hate-HATE to whatever Republican
candidate happens to be in the running for office. I personally don't think
Romney is all that bad, and I don't think that Obama is all that good. I like
technical things, not political things.

------
rlu
I feel like on a normal day, my Facebook news feed is filled with more
positive posts than negative ones. I don't see people whine that often.

This shouldn't be surprising - don't people want to put their best foot
forward on facebook? Sure, whining is fun some of the time (yay validation!
everyone like and comment and agree with me!!) but a lot of the time you want
to _not_ sound whiny.

I would also hesitate jumping to conclusions based on the experiences of a
seemingly antisocial 16 year old (not quite her words, but she seemed to imply
it) and a 13 year old who started using Facebook when she was ELEVEN?

I would not be surprised if kids in that age range whine more than kids in
mine (18-24)

------
dumb_dumb
Not sure about the headline but it makes sense what his kids are doing. Reddit
and Tumblr allow much more freedom and do not try so blatently hard to profit
from traffic.

Facebook is dying a slow death for what it was once used for: fun. They have
too much cash on hand to disappear any time soon. But users will grow tired of
Facebook as a pleasurable diversion. Because Facebook will keep trying harder
and harder to make money. Because the traffic will gradually slow down. When
you make all your money from display ads, and the traffic begins to slow, you
get desperate. Slowly, Facebook is inching toward this inevitability.

------
GeneralMaximus
Facebook is not dying. I feel it's going from being a fad to a utility. I've
noticed that people I know are posting fewer status updates with every passing
year, but they still heavily use Facebook for chat, event invitations, photos
and groups. For a lot of people, Facebook seems to be becoming less of a
pastime and more of a _tool_ for communicating with friends and family.

I dislike Facebook as much as the next hacker, but I don't think Facebook is
going anywhere anytime soon. It'll just become less interesting as a
communication medium. After all, nobody is excited about the telephone any
more.

------
jksmith
If I really cared about this stuff, I'd love to respond to yet another request
to get on Facebook by saying that I only do Myspace. I think I just felt a
trend-setter gasm there.

Facebook is not even cool anymore, and in five years time will be seen as one
of the dumbest IPO's in history. How did these greyhairs who invested in this
crap make their money in the first place?

Tesla, yes. SpaceX, yes. Facebook? Are you fucking kidding me?

------
vividmind
I had a chance to work directly with Facebook API and in terms of
documentation, bugs, overall robustness I can tell that it's pretty crappy.
Takes a lot of effort to do simple stuff and things are often not working.
That definitely doesn't look as a good trend.

Twitter API looked a lot more solid to me.

Anyways, just my 2 cents from a dev POV...

------
taylodl
Better question: are all social networking sites doomed to be fads and thus
doomed to die? The answer leads to paradoxical results. If we answer 'yes'
then no one will create another Facebook and thus Facebook will survive. If we
answer 'no' then a competitor will emerge and thus increasing the chance that
Facebook dies.

------
unreal37
Americans spend 7 hours per month on Facebook, on average. It's not dying any
more than "TV" is dying.

------
PaulHoule
I haven't used FB in the last few months except to log into other sites.

I haven't used Twitter much either, since the U.I. has gotten so slow for me
I'd need to carve out a 10 minute block of time to wait for it to load.

------
mykosmos
The social approach is biased because one not necessarily likes what his
friends like. People tend to be friend with people who have different
hobbies/interests.

------
abc_lisper
Not sure if it is dying, but it is very much a product that can be killed by
negative press. Just negative press. May be Murdoch can pull some strings
there.

------
derwiki
tl;dr another reporter has deciding that since Facebook is waning in his
household, it everyone else will probably start hating it.

I'm not convinced this article provides any value, except as Yet Another
thread where people can weigh in on "why I don't use Facebook anymore" or "why
you're all wrong, Facebook is fine."

------
lukethomas
My 13 year old sister doesn't even have a Facebook account - but she uses
Instagram like there's no tomorrow.

~~~
johnrydell
Exactly the same in my town. My 13 year old daughter and all of her friends
are Instagram users. I'm not sure if they are rebelling against Facebook but
they love texting and Instagram. While I like emailing and FB. Generational
differences...

------
VeejayRampay
Let us hope so.

------
duked
I was tired of slashdot obvious advertising with
itworld/networkworld/junkworld.com ... only to find the same links here :(

