
Can Anything Stop The Facebook Juggernaut? - danparsonson
http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/25/facebook-juggernaut/
======
lkrubner
Articles like this define corporate or national peaks.

In 1986 IBM recorded the largest profit ever recorded by any corporation in
the the history of the world. Nothing would ever be able to compete with IBM.
The media was in a swoon about how amazing IBM was. But IBM was already losing
ground in the PC market, and they were losing ground in electronics to the
Japanese. In 1993 IBM was struggling to avoid bankruptcy.

Circa 1991/1992 there were articles about how Japan was taking over the world
and nothing could ever compete with them because they were relentless. But the
early 90s marked the beginning of global retreat for many Japanese companies
(with a few exceptions, like Toyota).

In the late 90s nothing could stop Microsoft, yet the late 90s marked the
beginning of the era when Microsoft's momentum began to fade.

Somewhere around 2006/2007 Google was the most perfect collection of human
beings that had ever thought to work together and nothing anywhere, ever,
would ever be able to even conceive of an idea that could compete with Google.

In 2010 Facebook is an unstoppable juggernaut and nothing will ever be able to
match the unbelievable genius that runs this organization.

In 2014 MingaMingaYXZ corp is run not by mortals like you and me, but by
people so inhumanly smart they must really be gods that have temporarily taken
human form.

Then in 2016 we will be told that MingaMingaYXZ secretly had problem abc the
whole entire time, and so they never really had what they needed to compete
against ZunkZunk corp.

Around that time, the media will tell us that ZunkZunk corp is, of course, run
by people of such incomparable brilliance that aliens from the future travel
back in time to beg for advice to deal with the problems they face a million
years from now.

~~~
michaelchisari
You need to post this to a blog so I can link to it every time someone tells
me that nothing can stand up to Facebook.

~~~
lkrubner
Thanks, that is a good idea. I posted it to my blog:

[http://www.smashcompany.com/business/excessive-praise-
marks-...](http://www.smashcompany.com/business/excessive-praise-marks-
corporate-peaks)

------
gallerytungsten
Can Anything Stop Facebook? Absolutely.

Facebook is the new AOL. A "training wheels" site for the rest of the
internet.

The cycle of new sites taking market share away from the leaders will be a
regular ongoing event, much like the boom-and-bust cycle in silicon; and like
the weather.

As interoperability increases, as it has been doing with emulation layers,
virtual machines and dual-booting, new sites will offer "translation stages"
to help everyone keep possession of their data.

This day is here already, with "inter-CRM" transfer sites. The scrapers and
data-porting sites will stay on the attack; each new market leader will have
to win on their merits, rather than according to their walls.

Walls, dang. That went out with East Germany, one would hope.

Here's to a better future, to all 450,000 of my best friends.

~~~
parenthesis
Facebook _can_ be seen as the new AOL.

    
    
      "Hey, there's this thing I can use on my computer to keep in touch with friends,
      events/celebrities/companies of interest to me, and where I can play games …"
    
      "Oh, yeah, I've got that too; you mean the internet, right?"
    
      "Duh, I mean Facebook!"
    

However, I think there's a proper place, and need for something like Facebook.

Going to a blog, or a company's website, or a forum, or whatever, is like
reading a particular magazine, or going into a particular shop, or going to
your usual club, or whatever. You know exactly what you want, and you go do
it.

Going to Facebook is like walking along the corridor, or street, or hanging
out in the staff room, or town square. You randomly bump into friends, co-
workers, acquaintances, and just say hi, or exchange gossip, or recommend to
each other whom to talk to too, what events to attend, where to shop, what was
on TV last night, the weather … . And then you go back to doing proper,
specific stuff.

Facebook doesn't hold a huge appeal for me personally, since I don't do much
of the real world things it provides the online equivalent of. But for most
people, doing those things, whether on or offline, is an essential sauce to
their lives.

------
lukev
Facebook could very well be dead in just a couple years.

Social networking is very trend-driven. If something new and exciting comes
along, or even if cultural views shift and facebook is no longer considered
cool, it could die almost overnight. Of course, due to it's huge user base, it
would take a while to die (like myspace).

------
cletus
It's one of the fallacies of human psychology that people, particularly young
people, have a false sense of urgency.

10-15 years ago Microsoft was an unstoppable behemoth. Many--me included--had
a hard time seeing how they wouldn't completely dominate the computing
landscape.

Since then Microsoft is still a behemoth but this is largely based on inertia.

I don't fear Facebook becoming or owning the Web. In time there will be a new
meme that will unseat Facebook.

This inevitable decline is also part of the human condition. Facebook is still
in this nascent period of growth. At some point they'll become so large that
there really is nowhere to go. So then instead of playing an offensive game,
they'll play a defensive one. Every new idea will be a threat to their turf.
It happened to Microsoft. It'll happen to them.

Microsoft, as it exists now, is a vehicle for selling Windows and Office
licenses. Nothing else matters. Look at the disastrous Kin. You take the
successful Sidekick (which MS bought) and then spend two years rewriting the
OS to be some flavour of Windows. And it dies.

Look at Sony. The PS3 is/was a weapon in the next-gen optical format wars.
This delayed its launch giving the Xbox360 a huge first-mover advantage. The
cost of the Blu-ray drive gave the Xbox360 a price advantage.

I call this the _advantage of singularity of purpose_. The more you try and
do, the greater disadvantage you're at. It's why small startups can succeed
against behemoths. It's not just that they're more agile. It's that startups
don't (generally) have conflicting goals (eg Microsoft's phone division wants
to make great phones but Microsoft wants to sell Windows licenses).

Facebook is already showing signs of defensiveness typical of behemoths. Just
look at their reaction to Twitter and them co-opting basically everything else
anyone else does (eg Places a la Foursquare).

Foursquare may well be dominant for the next year. It's valuation in that time
may go 5x or even 10x its alleged $35 billion valuation. But something will
unseat it eventually. Even the Roman Empire died eventually.

One of the biggest use cases for Facebook seems to be for games and this is
where I think they're weakest. It's something for which your social graph has
very little meaning most of the time. I've played 1-2 of these games and
typically you find a bunch of random people to neighbour/ally/etc with rather
than people you know.

What value does this have being inside the Facebook ecosystem? None other than
possibly discovery.

One thing worth noting is that valuation really means anything but. Valuation
in the classic sense means the ability to generate income. Valuation in terms
of the stockmarket, VCs and investors is something else entirely. It's nothing
more than an opinion or expectation on _future value_.

Google makes more money than ever yet it's value peaked in 2007. At that time
the sky was the limit (or so it seemed). Now? It's not seen as being as sexy
as it once was.

One last thing: the social space is (clearly) "hot" at the moment. In my
opinion I think there is a definite "social bubble" that will at some point
burst. A lot of importance is placed on the "social graph". This is
particularly true when it comes to the (currently unrealized) future of
"social search".

Personally I don't think this idea has nearly as much potential as some seem
to think it does. Some think that Facebook's ownership of the social graph
will eventually give it a competitive advantage against the likes of Google. I
disagree. What's made search successful is scale. What's the advantage of
limiting that to the people you know rather than everyone in the world?

Anyway, Facebook will eventually be another Yahoo.

~~~
jacques_chester
> Even the Roman Empire died eventually.

The Roman Empire last the better part of a thousand years.

In popular history folk ask "how did it fail?"

In professional circles they ask "how the heck did it last so long?"

~~~
joegaudet
While I am no history scholar (most of my info comes from reading the Wiki and
watching the history channel) I think the 1000 year thing is a bit of an
overstatement. The western roman empire (The part that actually had rome in
it) only lasted ~450 years (fell in 476), and really it reached it's peak long
before that.

As I understand it the Rome that tends to captivate people's imaginations is
the era between Julius Ceasar (Rome the TV show) and Marcus Aurelius
(Gladiator). Lasted about 150 years.

Rome didn't really fall, it more so decayed slowly over a long period of time,
which I think is probably more suited to the point of this article with
regards to LJ, and a future vision of Facebook.

~~~
zipdog
I'm a part-time history scholar but Rome is not my focus. However I'd throw
the following dates into the mix:

264 BC (start of the Punic Wars) Roman Republic controls the Italian peninsula
(as far north as Pisa) and is militarily aggressive

146 BC: Roman Republic dominates the Italian peninsula, has subdued the Greek
mainland and razed Carthage

44-15 BC the transition from Republic to Empire

476 AD Western Roman Empire collapses.

1025 AD Eastern/Greek/Byzantine Empire is still a significant power

1204 AD Sack of Constantinople

It's hard to say exactly how long they were a power. Behaviorally, they were a
strong, aggressive power for 250 years before becoming an Empire. And they
were a significant power for 1000 years after losing Rome. So for over 1500
years they were an important state in the Mediterranean. You've got a good
point that major events we think of when we say Roman Empire occur in a fairly
short span, but I think it's quite accurate to say "The Roman Empire last[ed]
the better part of a thousand years"

So I think it's fair to say the Roman Empire lasted 1000 years.

------
groaner
If William Gibson calls Facebook a mall, I suppose Neal Stephenson would call
Facebook a Burbclave [1].

[1]
[http://books.google.com/books?id=RMd3GpIFxcUC&pg=PA191](http://books.google.com/books?id=RMd3GpIFxcUC&pg=PA191)

------
ImperatorLunae
Apocalyptic articles like these only continue to be published because people
read them; they rarely reflect anything real except a linear projection of
current trends.

Take, for example,
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/poll/2008...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/poll/2008/nov/06/uselections2008-republicans)
[http://www.noozhawk.com/mark_shields/article/1109_mark_shiel...](http://www.noozhawk.com/mark_shields/article/1109_mark_shields_the_republican_party_is_dead/)

These predictions have clearly proven false; they are mere protractions of two
recent events glued together.

------
vl
_I dislike Facebook because they’re mediocre._

Quote of the day - I never could clearly express what exactly I dislike about
Facebook. It's just not joy to use. UI is mediocre, functionality is mediocre,
even API is mediocre.

------
philwelch
It's interesting how this Facebook backlash is so similar to the Google
backlash, around the time Gmail came out. Back then people was terrified, not
only that Google was an unstoppable juggernaut, but also that Google was a
privacy threat.

Companies aren't armies and the internet isn't a battlefield. Facebook
provides some services which you may find useful, just like Google or Amazon.
You have alternatives and you have the freedom not to use a given company's
services. It's really nothing more elaborate or sinister than that.

~~~
joe_the_user
Well, it's similar in that both are backlashes but...

I've never been bothered by Google because Google's business model is clearly
leveraging the open Internet. I've been disturbed by Facebook for as long it
has been on the horizon because it has had the opposite incentives to its
business model...

~~~
philwelch
As I said, both are backlashes fueled by overhyped fears of the company's
power and disrespect for privacy. All analogies break down somewhere, and you
are correct in the fact that Google is a search engine (plus ancillary
services) and Facebook is a social network.

------
Kilimanjaro
Time.

People get bored. People grow up. People move on.

~~~
tomjen3
My mom is on Facebook (sorry, not a joke) but even if her age was the limit,
that still means that Facebook will be relevant for 20+ years.

So I doubt that is what is going to kill Facebook.

~~~
hugh3
I think the fact that "my parents are on facebook" might be what kills
facebook. Thankfully mine aren't, but I know some of my friends do have
parents who are their friends on facebook, and I have to watch my mouth
accordingly. (Luckily my own wall is still a haven for all sorts of filth
which will never be shared with my relatives or workmates.)

If you've ever seen lamebook.com, a fairly high proportion of the entries
involve inappropriate comments by young folks being intercepted by aged
relatives. Sure, you can block certain things from certain people, but those
controls are pretty unwieldy. Eventually the young folks will have to find
somewhere to hang out _without_ their parents.

~~~
tiles
Yet this fear is largely self-imposed. My parents have Facebooks, and I
encourage their use of it for socializing. I, however, am not friends with
them. They're not upset by this. Yet many of my (IRL) friends are friends with
their parents, and have similar complaints.

Perhaps the future of Facebook is not the expansion of your social graph, but
the isolation of your social graphs. Perhaps that will be what kills the
behemoth Facebook, the same ease of use, but with better controls over what
persona you represent to what people.

~~~
tomjen3
Thats kind of what frid.ge is, isn't it?

------
bcrawl
Simple. Apple will unseat Facebook. Just the number of people working with
Apple devices is mind boggling and Google comes way second with Android
devices.

Just like everything, Steve Jobs will redefine how social networking should be
done and people will agree. Steve is definitely itching to making strategic
partnerships and spend some of that 50+ billion cash reserve.

------
dirtyaura
Facebook doesn't have ambitious projects? Wtf?

Facebook's instant personalization is the most interesting piece of web
infrastructure since, well, advent of the web itself. It's scary too, but big,
fundamental improvements usually are.

If they succeed, Facebook will become something much more important than a
giant walled garden. Walled gardens wither eventually, but being a critical
piece of web infra, that's something huge.

~~~
exit
> _Facebook's instant personalization is the most interesting piece of web
> infrastructure since, well, advent of the web itself._

i haven't had a single instant personalization "moment" since it launched.
mostly i'm just reminded to log out of facebook when i see my name on some
random website.

~~~
sahaj
you may want to look into facebook disconnect.

[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ejpepffjfmamnamb...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ejpepffjfmamnambagiibghpglaidiec)

