
Prediction: Facebook will be the largest social network in the world - farmer
http://www.paulallen.net/2007/05/25/prediction-facebook-will-be-the-largest-social-network-in-the-world/
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schoudha
At first I was like "Paul Allen loves facebook this much? Damn" Then I
realized it wasn't Paul Allen from MS and classified this as more hype.

Social Networks are still very young, Facebook is promising but the game isn't
won yet.

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dpapathanasiou
He had some interesting things to say, but he could do with a few less quotes
like this: _"This announcement was at least an 8.0 on the Richter scale."_

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Tichy
"Facebook has 24 million active users (meaning theyve used the site in the
last 30 daysI like how they arent overstating numbers like SecondLife) and
50% of them login each day. Mark says the next most active social network is
not more than 15%."

However, the internet has several billion users, and 90% of them log on every
day (I made those numbers up, but you get the idea). So where is the
difference to Facebook? Just because somebody is using Facebook doesn't
guarantee that they are using your Facebook plugin. And once there are as many
plugins as there are services on the internet as a whole, I don't see an
additional advantage for Facebook...

Just playing devils advocate, it just seems to me some people are being
blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes. Sure, it would be nice to write a
plugin that every facebook users uses, but in general it won't be so easy.

There is probably a bonus for being an early starter now, though.

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comatose_kid
If you look at it just in terms of # of users, of course facebook's offering
suffers. But that isn't a great comparison - it's like comparing the # of
viewers for The Office (awesome show btw) to the total viewers of all TV
channels in existence.

I think the real win is that their api allows your app to take advantage of
the connections between facebook's users.

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nanijoe
Social Networks are like nightclubs, the flavor of the day seems like it will
rule forever UNTIL the next hot one comes along 2 years later. Social Networks
are not new (geocities, tripod anyone?) . Facebook is going to be hot until
this crop of college students graduate, get real jobs and move on to other
things.

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comatose_kid
I believe that Mark mentioned (during his keynote speech) that over half of
their user base is over 25 yrs old now.

Facebook will probably be hot until something an order of magnitude better
comes along, and even then many people will not want to switch (inertia). Add
to this the open approach (API + site integration), and it isn't too far a
stretch to see them becoming the standard social operating system.

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steve
Well it's a little late for this prediction to very visionary..

