
Facebook's fail is going to be epic - nickb
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/21/fb_nielsen_fall/
======
mechanical_fish
One wonders whether the stable number of Facebook users is approximately equal
to the number of high school and college students.

The hypothesis that high schoolers with Facebook profiles will continue to use
them throughout life is only now being put to the test. And here's the thing:
In high school, many people really care to know exactly what each of their
classmates is doing and who they are dating. Sometimes that continues through
college. But eventually people grow older, and they escape the social fishtank
that is school, and they go out into the world... and, what do you know,
eventually you stop hanging around with all of your school friends. You make a
big show of keeping up with all of them for a while... but eventually it
tapers down to sending Christmas cards now and then. You visit every few
years. And you certainly don't visit them all.

I'm not saying that you'll ever stop using social networks. But there are a
lot of social networks now. They're not that hard to develop, and they're just
going to keep getting easier. And the result may well be that different people
will gravitate to different ones as they go through life.

Facebook's counterargument is that they are going to be the generic platform
on which all future special-purpose social nets will be based. But Facebook
wasn't designed as a generic platform. It was designed as a social network for
college students. And I'm not sure that opening the user base and tacking on a
thousand third-party apps has really changed that. It's hard to take a tool
that was carefully optimized for one task and repurpose it for N other
tasks... especially when there are a thousand competitors with similar
technology, and the lock-in isn't that strong.

~~~
xirium
This would be circumstancial evidence for school being a popularity contest (
<http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html> ).

~~~
mechanical_fish
Well, that argument feels very circular to me, since I had PG's essay firmly
in mind when composing my words about Facebook. :)

But PG's essay is mostly about high school and earlier, as I recall. Facebook
was originally designed for college students. So I wouldn't want to suggest
that the app was built around the kind of warped prison-yard junior-high-
school culture described in the essay. The situation is not _that_ bad:
Facebook _is_ an app for adults, and it remains relevant for adults. But it is
primarily an app for _young_ adults, of a certain age and social position.

------
pg
Judging from the eager way in which people are seizing on this tiny bit of
evidence, it seems like a lot of people _want_ FB to fail. And when you want
something to be true you should be especially skeptical of evidence for it.

Sites have flat spots. I would be careful before counting those guys out.

~~~
aston
You think people want Facebook to fail? My impression is the opposite.

Seems like everyone with money invested in web 2.0 really wants them to
succeed. Your argument works equally well there. Don't be so sure of
Facebook's infallibility, either.

Basically, everybody just chill out.

~~~
ldambra
True. If Facebook fails then it's all the "web 2.0" world that will be
affected, I hear a lot of people talking of another bubble about web 2.0. Some
want their convinctions vindicated, others want to save their start up and
money.

My bet is that the truth is in the middle as usual, just like when the first
bubble bursted, it was a godsend who cleaned up all the mess produced by the
basical non-understanding of the internet.

------
BrandonM
In w3m:

    
    
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      Please keep it real with
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      Facebook (C) 2008
    

Hacker News, on the other hand, is quite usable:

    
    
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      [grayarrow] Facebook's fail is going to be epic (theregister.co.uk)
                  48 points by nickb 1 day ago | 68 comments
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        [grayarrow] 14 points by pg 18 hours ago | link
       ¢            *Judging from the eager way in which people are seizing on
                    this tiny bit of evidence, it seems like a lot of people
                    want FB to fail. And when you want something to be true you
      *             should be especially skeptical of evidence for it.
    
                    Sites have flat spots. I would be careful before counting
                    those guys out.
    
       ¢           nreply
    

Facebook has already failed ;).

/sarcasm (just in case)

------
henning
At least we know now that memcached really, really works.

~~~
mrtron
But but but its beta.

My next app I am going to put in 'zeta' for the duration of it's lifespan, to
show that its super-duper mature.

~~~
staunch
memcached is not in beta and hasn't been for a very long time as far as I
know. Maybe you're thinking of memcachedb?

------
pchristensen
Is it that big of a fail if it stabilizes with 50 million users? The real
question is if they can find a way to monetize that (like AdWords did for
Google) before they run out of cash.

~~~
hobbs
Considering that Facebook has been "valued" at $15 billion, yes, 50 million
users is a failure. That would mean that they'd have to justify why each and
every user is worth $300. A good percentage may be worth close to that much,
but certainly not every one.

~~~
nextmoveone
Well, technically if you want to use that model, then if each user spends $25
a month on products/services they find on facebook, then after a
year(collectively) each user will have at least spent, $15 billion, which I
think is worth...well... $15 billion.

~~~
hobbs
True, if TiVo or a cable company had 50 million subscribers, then yeah, it
could be worth $15 billion. I don't see a $25/mo product from Facebook,
though.

Not to mention that we don't know what percentage of the 50 million are
active, participating users.

------
hobbs
Most commentators thought Zuckerberg was an idiot to turn down the $1 billion
offer. My guess is that they can't wait to have their opinion vindicated.

Personally, I've yet to find a reason to even visit Facebook. I still have
plenty of old friends - don't need any replacements yet, nor a different way
to keep in touch with them.

~~~
jmtulloss
Facebook is less about making new friends as it is about communicating. I know
you mention that you don't need any new ways, and I used to agree with you,
but the plethora of options it provides for pinging your friends makes it
quick, easy, and fun to keep in touch with far more people than you would
otherwise. I'm not saying it deserves the hype it's gotten, but I definitely
think it has some value.

------
daniel-cussen
The Register's fall is going to go unnoticed.

------
DaniFong
I wonder if it crosses the mind of anyone else that Microsoft is using its
billions as weapons. Facebook is a massively successful site. But by investing
in a small stake of a company at some huge, overestimate of a valuation,
Microsoft is shuttering the valuation of Facebook, and pretty well all of
social networking.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
If that were true, then Facebook would have declined letting MS have a stake.

Rather than stunting social networking, it seems MS is just trying to get in
the game, since their home-grown efforts to date have been lackluster.

~~~
DaniFong
It might actually be an advantage to facebook to see the social networking
investment market turn sour temporarily, to keep out big VC funded marketing
campaigns that you have to do _something_ to compete with.

Besides, typically, if someone is going to give you money at an absurd
valuation, unless the terms are particularly onerous, it makes sense to take
it.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
Is Facebook worried more about competitors or sustainable revenues?

I don't have any friends there, so this is just speculation, but if I had to
guess, I'd pick the latter.

You're right about accepting large valuation investments.

By the same token, it's hard to imagine the investor rooting for the company
to fail, after having taken a stake (unless, of course, MS really has a
Facebook killer waiting in the wings).

~~~
pchristensen
Revenues, revenues, REVENUES!! They've created wealth (something people want)
but if they can't monetize it, they will fail as a company. Right now people
are actively saying they want Facebook instead of its competitors by _using_
it. Their competitors now are the Internet giants - Yahoo, Amazon, eBay,
Google. Their size and valuation has put them in that category (not a niche
startup) so now they need to find a way to earn billions to stay there.

------
tlrobinson
_A total of 400,000 seem to have become bored with the social network and
didn't bother to return._

I guess I'm not the only one...

~~~
joe24pack
I became so bored with Facebook before I joined, that I never actually joined.

------
johnrob
I don't know... we could simply be entering the trough phase of the hype
cycle. What might follow is a wave of more interesting apps that bring traffic
back in full force. Time will tell.

------
simianstyle
Well from my experience dealing with facebook's salespeople - it costs
approximately $160,000 to have a facebook.com/mybusinessname page made for
your company. So long as companies believe the social-media hype enough,
facebook will be making money from at least that (and you'd be surprised at
the companies that have already signed up).

Let's not forget the $1,000,000 initial retainer to do any kind of partnership
with them (i.e., Beacon).

~~~
rms
plus the sponsoring of free gifts... I would be surprised if a round of free
gifts was as cheap as one million.

------
tx
Well... FaceBook has attracted quite a lot of money and a very serious number
of smart folks who aren't sitting idle as we speak. They must be working on
something: generating ideas, bouncing them off each other, coding, etc.

Articles like this one tend to neglect the fact that armies of smart people
concentrated in one place worth not less (perhaps more) than previous
achievements, be it user accounts, traffic or revenue.

------
xirium
Some people keep using FaceBook because it doesn't easily let you delete your
account and your peers have an expectation that your account should be
current. In the long term this may work against FaceBook. The popularity of a
social network site evaporates when the proportion of inactive web pages hits
a threshold. A similar phenomen occurs in online games. The online worlds
expand with the number of users but then interaction becomes very sparse when
the number of users declines. This creates a downward spiral of decline.
Anyhow, if FaceBook can reduce the prominance of dormant accounts and rely on
peer pressure then an active user base can be maintained. However, social
network sites don't have natural monopolies because sooner or later, you'll
encounter a stage five clinger.

------
jdueck
Many of the people I know are withdrawing their profiles from Facebook. Not
deleting them, but removing 80% of the information.

Facebook is a LOUSY ad platform because users are interested in interacting
with friends, not watching ads.

The subject is bang-on: Facebook's fall will be EPIC

------
amohr
The thing here is - for every social app, people are going to ask a) is it
worth my effort to join this social network? or b) can this leverage my
existing social network? And so, facebook, being the largest 2.0 social
network becomes a cornerstone of the next generation of social apps.

I see it like the free-rider problem: facebook is like roads or plumbing or
some other infrastructure, everybody profits from having one central
established social network, but the reason it is in that position is because
it's free. The hard part is just like paying for roads - you have to find a
way of getting people to pay for it without diminishing its appeal

------
Spyckie
I bet you Facebook has some statistical models that estimate when their user
base will stop growing/start shrinking, so they probably knew at least a month
ago that this would happen.

------
mynameishere
What would happen if they just said, "Okay, no more access to your site unless
you pay 12 dollars a year". Or...no more than 50 page views a day without a
subscription, or similar.

Would it be a total collapse? If advertising isn't working, well...

~~~
batasrki
I think that would be a total collapse. Well, maybe not total, but there would
be a flood of people leaving the service, for sure. I, for one, would not pay
a cent to access Facebook. I just may copy down information for the people
that I've gotten into touch with over Facebook and deactivate my account.

As for page views option, that wouldn't work either. I, personally, don't do
more than 10 page views a day and most of my friends are the same. I suspect
many people just check their profile, answer wall posts or messages, look at
some apps and log out. There is not much there that can hold your attention.

All Facebook can really do now is pray that people still find it interesting.
I think the Beacon was their attempt at monetizing the interest. That got shut
down, so they're SOL.

~~~
mynameishere
* I suspect many people just check their profile,...*

I suspect many people spend hours and hours on it. These are the ones who
should, perhaps, be urged to pay. The light users are more likely to leave on
any harassment.

------
wallflower
How many of you haters have a facebook account?

~~~
breily
I only still have one because they won't let me delete it.

------
run4yourlives
Not epic, just predictable.

~~~
nickb
Epic, in current internet meme speak, means great or huge. When they say that
they're worth $15B and the reality strikes and they lose $10B off that
valuation, the fall will be huge (especially to investors).

~~~
run4yourlives
I don't see the reality of the old adage "A fool and his money are soon
parted" as being epic though.

Bigger fools is all. I won't lament their loss.

~~~
bayareaguy
Having used Facebook exactly once to get at the thrift documentation, I won't
miss it. However if it sinks it could take a good chunk of social-network
investor confidence wiith it.

That said I think there are plenty of things Facebook could do to stave off a
total collapse. Based on the success of the scrabble application, if I were
them I'd make a big effort to become more integral to the online gaming
community.

~~~
iamdave
Part of me wants to be quick on the jump here and say Facebook can salvage the
scraps by getting rid of the applications, but that'd be fallacy in it's
highest regard. Applications for me are less about how annoying some of them
can be, and how poorly they're implemented.

Those that require you to send invites to friends before you can make use of
it, or simply requiring you to add the application just to see how someone has
ranked you compared to the rest of your friends should get a slap on the
wrist. It kills usability, and it hurts. I'll never use these apps, I'm just
curious to see what my friend is trying to tell me.

Then again, at the same time you have applications that say you have a message
waiting for you, when it's really nothing more than an invitation from someone
else. Borderline Spam Marketing from your friends. And when your friends Spam
you, what asylum is left?

