
Facebook's fail is going to be epic (2008) - heartbeats
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/21/fb_nielsen_fall/
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nmfisher
I'll be honest, I was a Facebook naysayer back in 2008 too. I thought that the
public was too fickle, and would jump to the next big thing within a few
years, and the platform would quietly die off.

Completely wrong, obviously. Coming from a position of tech savvy early
adopter, I totally underestimated:

\- the impact that mobile had on the landscape. For most of those over 30, the
internet was for work, not for "group socializing". I think mobile normalized
the practice of spending hours a day on social media for average users.

\- how "sticky" older users are. Once they're on Facebook, they stay on
Facebook.

\- Zuck's adaptability, and the difference between "Facebook the platform" and
"Facebook the company". I mean, I was partially right about the exodus to the
Next Big Thing (TM). That's exactly why Zuck just went out and just bought it
(Instagram and WhatsApp in particular).

That being said, I still think there's a coming reckoning on digital
advertising. I hear so many complaints about poor ROI, click inflation/fraud
and general dissatisfaction (e.g. Basecamp competitors bidding on the search
term "Basecamp"). I can't help but think there'll be a shift in spend towards
advertising on more "conventional" media (Spotify, Netflix, YouTube).

~~~
armitron
Facebook stock (recently sold all of it) made me a millionaire. I think FB-
the-company is a scourge and wish it good riddance but it was more than
obvious years ago that there was a lot of value there for stock speculation.

I've lost track of how many friends and family laughed at my investment and/or
advised me to dump it before "I got ruined". What I found interesting was that
a lot of these friends were tech insiders with decades of experience in the
field and ought to have known better. What I think happened was that in all
cases, their personal dislike for FB-the-company clouded their ability to
properly analyze the situation.

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alpineidyll3
The success of fang is about unlimited capital's ability to buy the
competition, rather than the sage intelligence they pretend to. They will not
fail until society gets fed up with an information oligopoly driven by
adverts. Why all these smart people feel revolutionary serving dumb ads, I
have no idea.

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syspec
Honestly if Facebook had not been so savvy and bought Instagram and WhatsApp
it is likely it would of been considered a failure already

~~~
onetimemanytime
Lotsa ifs though. A lot of smart people, including investors, were behind it,
and essentially the entire (non-China) world was using FB. With unlimited
money it's hard to bet against them, unless the government stops them from
buying competitors.

But I agree that their failure will be epic. Not sure about the time though

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bemmu
Even though I was both a user and familiar with developing on the platform, I
remember thinking it overvalued when I saw people offloading their private
shares at a 10 billion valuation. Now valued at 60 times that.

I didn’t doubt it would continue to grow in popularity, but I never expected
them to be able to monetize it as well as they’ve done.

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WheelsAtLarge
A big difference between the past social sites and Facebook is that Facebook
is now able to buy the up and coming competitors. Even in 2008 it had enough
money to absorb competitors. At this point it has even more power.
Additionally their user base is broad. Even if one sector decides to stop
using the site there's still a big base that will keep site going until it can
recover the base. Additionally, Zuckerberg is a super smart CEO and is able to
correct problems that would cause it to fail.

I think short of getting the govertments of the world to shut it down Facebook
is here to stay.

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niftich
Two months after Feb 2008 article, in April 2008, Facebook released [1]
Facebook Chat, and gradually captured the 'chat with people you know in real
life' usecase.

In April 2008, we're three months before the launch of the iOS appstore, more
than a year before iOS push notifications, and more than two years before
Android push notifications -- and three years before iMessage. For instant
messaging, most people are still using 'legacy' networks like AIM, MSN/WLM,
Yahoo Messenger; tech early adopters may be using Google Talk inside Gmail,
which stopped being invite-only just a year prior. People with phones are
using SMS, and smartphones are not too common.

With Chat, Facebook became much more than a place to post text or pictures on
one's page: it became one of the largest Instant Messaging networks overnight.

They stayed relevant during the rise of mobile apps as other players faltered,
then years later, they turned to acquisitions to buy a few networks that
presented a competitive threat.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483)

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sjg007
I know one guy who thought it’d be like yahoo and drop. I think he lost a
bunch on shorts...

That being said I never bought stock in google or facebook and clearly I
should have and even put my 401k in early growth us tech.

