
Facebook hype will fade - sdizdar
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/07/rushkoff.facebook.myspace/index.html?hpt=T2
======
klochner
facebook growth went something like this:

    
    
      college --> high school --> young adults --> everyone
    

Trendy stuff generally follows the same cascade, more or less, where you don't
see college students emulating the dress habits of the elderly.

facebook's biggest potential for failure is in not capturing the next
generation of young users. The young users pick up some other social network,
everyone else follows suit, and facebook withers, slowly starting to resemble
an '85 buick.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
I got my Facebook account in 2005 when I was a college freshman. At first it
was amazing, then they opened it up to high schoolers which was okay, but not
really what _I_ wanted from Facebook. Then they added things like the Friend
Feed which bombarded you with "Your friend [name you know] just added [someone
you don't know or care about}." Which was okay, but then they opened the gates
and suddenly all your coworkers and anyone you've ever talked to for more than
3 minutes is now adding you.

I think for me, the longer I've had my Facebook, the less useful it has gotten
and the less time I've actually spent on it. It's like talking in a room with
everyone you've ever met listening in. It's unnatural. I think Facebook's
market will eventually fragment-- LinkedIn being the first chink in FB's
armor, I imagine the next will be a college exclusive network like how
Facebook got started.

~~~
zacharycohn
I had the exact same experience as well, and then I discovered the "hide"
button. I developed some rules and then spent about 20 minutes every day for a
week hiding people who didn't fall within those. Examples of my rules were:

1) If I don't remember who you are, hide. 2) If I knew you in
elementary/middle/high school/college and I don't think I'll ever see or speak
to you again, hide. (This would cover people who don't share any of my
interests, etc). 3) If you spam my newsfeed with "Farmville/Which Twilight
character are you/I have a secret to tell you" sort of apps, hide. 4) If we
have nothing in common, and I don't think anything you're going to say in the
future is going to be interesting/have a real impact on me, hide.

There may be one or two more, but those were the core ones. After applying
these rules, I found Facebook was SO much nicer and more fun to use, and there
was none of the social stigma of "unfriending" people.

~~~
brianpan
The hide is useful, but the unnatural part is the "everyone you ever met
listening". The great thing about Facebook when I started was it was like
blogs or photo sharing, except that everyone was a trusted, real-life friend.
Facebook was like sharing photos, jokes, and stories with your circle of
friends.

Now that everyone and (and every company) are on facebook, I'm more
comfortable back on a blog, where there isn't the illusion of anything but
talking to the internet.

~~~
FreeKill
You can still do that now. You just need to make groups of your different
friend groups (family, real life friends, high school friends, work friends,
etc) and share what you want with those groups only, depending on what it is.

~~~
zacharycohn
This takes way too much work. As someone who was using Facebook for several
years before friend-groups, it was going to be an unreasonable time-sink to
sort all those people after the fact.

Someone using facebook AFTER the were introduced definitely should use them.

------
jdp23
"This week's news that Goldman Sachs has chosen to invest in Facebook while
entreating others to do the same should inspire about as much confidence as
their investment in mortgage securities did in 2008."

Well said.

Sounds like a bubble to me.

~~~
retube
Except of course, GS aren't investing in Facebook. They're backing out their
stake to other investors via this SPV they've set up. I doubt they care what
happens to facebook stock: there's huge demand at this valuation and all they
care about is answering that.

~~~
beoba
"Goldman will be creating a “special purpose vehicle” to sell the stock to its
wealthy clients and then will charge them a 4 percent initial fee plus 5
percent of any profits."

Heads we win, tails you lose. I'm just waiting until they start dividing up
the stock into tranches.

(from <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2071267> )

------
kprobst
"We will move on, just as we did from the chat rooms of AOL, without even
looking back. When the place is as ethereal as a website, our allegiance is
much more abstract than it is to a local pub or gym."

I disagree with this, simply because grandma wasn't on any AOL chat rooms, but
she _is_ on Facebook. The only reason I'm on FB is because Aunt Tilly and
Uncle Bob and grandma are also on there, and I can connect with them that way,
and know what's happening in their lives in real time, instead of seeing them
once a year at Christmas.

Grandma isn't going to sign up for IM or get a blog. She's on Facebook.

That's the difference between FB and everything else that came before it. The
thing creates its own gravity field that attracts everyone, and as long as
everyone I care about is on Facebook, so will I. Even though I really hate the
thing.

That's the genius of FB, I think. Hate it or love it.

~~~
cookiecaper
This isn't really unique to Facebook. It's called lock-in and it's the desire
of every service provider and software maker; they want you to be held hostage
to their network, so that even if you want to leave, you can't without
potentially serious ramifications (like losing contact with your grandma, or
losing access to your documents).

Facebook has reached a level that had never been reached by any social network
before it. Did your grandma use MySpace or LiveJournal? Once something crosses
the threshold of youth and tech-savvy and "regular people" or even old people
start using it, you have a much less transient userbase. Look at Microsoft --
the young and tech-savvy are happy to use Apple products over MS, but MS is
king and will remain king at least until anyone born before 1975 is well into
retirement. Once these things reach a certain level, they become generational
standards, and then only minimal effort is needed on the part of the vendor.

I know old people that still use AOL. Most old people never would have left
AOL in the first place if they'd come up with something sensible for
broadband. Perhaps Facebook will come upon a stumbling block that's similarly
fatal, but I wouldn't necessarily _expect_ that, at least not within a
reasonable timeframe.

~~~
samtp
It's not really 'lock-in' unless the potential switching costs are too great
to overcome. If another social network could set up your friend network with
minimal effort (and are better than Facebook), they will win. No one has long
term contracts to use Facebook or pay a monetary penalty (like a cell phone).
So if someone can re-create your social graph with you putting in less effort
than you normally put into facebook, they will win.

~~~
rsepassi
Switching costs are absolutely the thing to focus on here, but limiting the
switching costs to a replication of the social graph may be understating the
true cost. Think of all the photos, and to a lesser extent, wall posts. I
would imagine a lot of the time that's spent on Facebook is just browsing
through photos (and again, to a lesser extent, people's wall posts). Much of
it probably is just new photos, so obviously those don't need to be replicated
since if you port the social graph over, people will start posting photos on
the new site and people will just look at those, but a ton of the viewing is
probably of legacy photos. That is, some of the viewing is seeing what's
happening with your friends (the party last night) but a ton of it is just
checking people out (facebook stalking). How can I stalk somebody without
seeing all their past photos/videos/notes/posts/etc.?

~~~
wisty
Everyone has a facebook account. If they want to look at old photos, they will
look on facebook. Just like you used to be able to look at old blog posts on
Geocities. People will post new photos and their favorite old photos on the
next facebook, and stop looking at the old site. The old content sounds like a
big deal if you are a geek who is worried about vendor lock-in, but I doubt
that real people will really care.

It's activity that matters, not membership. If facebook stops talking about
activity, and only talks about membership, that's when you know there's a
problem.

~~~
cookiecaper
Do you know how many times I've had to show my mom how to upload something to
Facebook? A lot of times. Facebook upload support is baked into her photo
manager (Shotwell), and it's as easy as clicking "Publish", and she still
usually can't figure it out.

Do you really think that many FB users are going to know how to move "their
favorite old photos" from Facebook? Unless the next product includes an
automatic importer, which Facebook would attempt to destroy as quickly as
possible, and it would devolve into an arms race/lawsuits (as scraping
Facebook has for people with much more innocent intentions), then I don't
think that many FB users will be interested in coming over.

------
pharrington
A bubble created around a legitimate service does not itself kill the service;
the service becoming obsolete _does._

The author seems to completely miss this. AOL didn't die because it was bought
by TW, it died because broadband became commonplace and people realized there
was much more to the internet than AOL's walled garden. Myspace died because
it was the last vestige of the "personal homepage" style internet and never
ran with its burgeoning use as a network for musicians.

Facebook will fade when the next major gap in social connections+communication
is filled. Simply saying "something more popular than Facebook will happen"
seems a horribly obvious and empty statement. Now talking about what we still
need or might discover with connections would prove insightful, but of course
no one's going to blog about that until it's launched.

------
ibejoeb
"...the merger turned out to be a disaster: AOL's revenue stream was reduced
to a trickle as net users ventured out onto the Web directly."

So facebook will fail when people venture out and socialize in real life?

Seriously, though, I get the point generally, but I don't think it's quite the
same. AOL and MySpace were assimilated and stifled by their parents' ways of
doing things, whereas Facebook will likely continue to do things its own way.
This is a company that is able to convince its investors that it knows best,
and I don't think things will change with the Goldman investment.

I don't know if Facebook will be on top in 10 years, but I don't think this is
the beginning of the end.

~~~
sskates
I agree.

The author's main points seem to be that: 1\. Facebook has similarities to
AOL, and AOL's bubble burst 2\. There was a bubble in the late '90s therefore
there must be a bubble now 3\. Goldman is investing in Facebook, Goldman
invested in other bubbles, therefore the investment must be bad 4\. Social is
a fad

Nothing on why Facebook specifically is doing a bad job and why someone else
is positioned to upset them. Not much evidence at all if you ask me. You could
write the article with 90% of the content the same and replace "Facebook" with
"Google" or "Apple" or "Microsoft"

~~~
patrickk
Authors main point:

 _"Yet social media is itself as temporary as any social gathering, nightclub
or party. It's the people that matter, not the venue."_

All the other stuff in the article is an attempt to back this argument up
(AOL/TW merger stuff, Goldman deal a symptom of cashing-out mentality, MySpace
collapse as a precedent.)

------
malloreon
I don't understand the comparisons of FB to AOL, besides their seemingly
common goal to sandbox the internet.

People who use AOL who discovered "the real" internet had no reason to go
back. Everything they wanted was just as available + more. There's no friction
to switching, beyond learning how to use a search engine.

Facebook has billions of photos, posts, comments, friend requests, updates,
registrations through connect, all being added to the site every day. The
longer someone uses it, the higher the cost to stop using it, or switch to
another.

That's why FB has the staying power AOL did not.

------
michaelchisari
I agree that popularity of social networks is faddish, and that Facebook will
follow that rise and fall pattern, however...

I think that an open, distributed social networking protocol is a game
changer. If there exists the ability to move between social networks while
maintaining your social graph, that makes the way that social networks rise
and fall very different than when sites hold your social graph hostage if you
try to leave.

~~~
glhaynes
It continues to be hard for me to envision what that would really _look like_
in practice. I don't mean from a network typology standpoint; I mean how would
it look in my browser?

~~~
michaelchisari
Here is my Appleseed friends list:

[http://developer.appleseedproject.org/profile/michael.chisar...](http://developer.appleseedproject.org/profile/michael.chisari/friends/)

Keep in mind, this is beta software in active development, so you'll notice a
few bugs here and there (and the live server is missing a major update I'm
running locally).

~~~
glhaynes
Thanks! I'm interested specifically in the day-to-day usage: the situations of
signing up, finding/adding my friends, posting statuses, reading and
commenting on other peoples', sharing media like photos, etc etc.

So to start with a simple one: how does one add somebody else? Can you just
search by name? I'm just having a bit of difficulty imagining how that sort of
thing would work well in a truly distributed, federated way. But I haven't
done much thought on it so I'm interested to hear.

~~~
michaelchisari
If you'd like, you can get an Appleseed invite. Send an email to
invite@appleseedproject.org and I'll send you one back right away (this is
open to anyone, by the way). You can sign up for the main beta test site
(currently around 500 users).

Searching is being worked on, that's coming in the next update, but yes, you
just search by name (or other attributes). Distributed search is difficult,
but only on the backend, on the frontend, it's similar to what you're used to.
Only caveat is that it is not exactly real-time, and is more like a P2P search
than a google search.

Once you find someone you're looking for, you identify yourself to their site
by remotely logging in. This is as simple as giving your ID, which looks like
an email address ( _username@domain_ ). Then you click "Add as friend", and
they're sent a friend request. When they approve it, you are mutual friends.

You can post stuff to your "page" (what appleseed calls your wall), and an
update will be sent to your friends list. You upload a photo, and an update
shows up in your friends lists newsfeeds. They click on the thumbnail and it
takes them to your photo album on your home node, etc.

Some other distributed social networking sites are breaking from convention in
a lot of ways, but Appleseed's goal is to try and make it work as much like
the current systems people are used to as possible. Certain growing pains are
inevitable, but so far it's pretty similar after the first couple minutes.

~~~
glhaynes
Perfect, thanks! I wish you guys luck.

------
aridiculous
I don't necessarily agree the article but I'd be interested in hearing
opinions on the interesting point the author presents near the end of the
article: That social networking sites are like physical social spaces that
will rise and fall in popularity.

~~~
nostromo
My personal experience is exactly that. My parents, a grandparent, nieces,
nephews, coworkers, bosses, college friends, and everyone in between are now
in my network. My status updates are now a megaphone to everyone I've ever had
any relationship with and more frighteningly, anyone I ever will have a
relationship with in the future.

This kind of assemblage is perfect for weddings and funerals, and that's it.
For daily living, it's just too much. If my Facebook friends all went to a
building every day to hang out, I wouldn't go there. And I don't find myself
using FB nearly as much now as I once did for this very reason. There's too
many things to consider when posting even the simplest thing (will I offend my
second aunt, will some future boss not like this political view, what if I run
for political office in my 50s and find out I friended someone who ended up
doing x, etc., etc.)

~~~
yeahsure
+1 I stop sharing my opinion with my network because of this same problem (I
have clients, close relatives, extended family, etc.). What if I post
something that a client finds offensive and leads to business problems that
otherwise wouldn't have existed? What if I post something serious for my
clients and some jackass high-school friend leaves an embarrassing comment on
my status?

Initially, I had to block the ability for people to tag me in photos because I
was being used to spam other people's walls, then I had to block other people
from posting on my wall, because they would post "funny" stuff that wasn't
good for my business-contacts to see. Finally, I started using lists, but
having different "personas" for each list was just too much. As a result, I'm
slowly letting my profile fade away.

------
imkevingao
Facebook needs to generate more revenue or if they go public, their stocks are
going to tank like crazy after the speculation fades. Facebook's P/E ratio is
out of proportion. Doesn't matter how many users Facebook have, if the company
doesn't generate the proportional profits to match its valuation, then the
company is going to go through some tough phases.

Many people are looking at the Facebook stocks like it's a Pablo Picasso
painting, and with users twice as the population of United States, it's bound
to be valuable. However, in the economy of supply and demand, the bubble will
pop if it decides to go public. Unless Facebook can think new ways to earn
more money.

But that's hard, because Facebook users hate changes. They aren't exactly
Obama fans.

------
gaiusparx
Facebook is definitely waning among my friends, but strong areas remains:

1\. Social graph. Many are not active Facebook users but are keeping the
accounts cos all their contacts are there. Facebook has actually helped people
found their long loss friends and classmates.

2\. Sharing links, picture and video. Facebook is replacing email as a means
to share interesting contents. One friend actually visits Facebook just to
read those contents posted by friends instead of going to the source such as
YouTube. "It is easier". Twitter is an obvious alternative.

3\. Facebook is the new Flickr.

4\. Games. Hopefully when people think of FarmVille or CityVille they think of
Zynga and not Facebook. Zynga should seriously break loose of this eco, build
its own currency/credit system and focus on iOS/Android platforms.

5\. All-in-one ness. Grandmas and aunties love this. Contacts, photos, video,
links, cute apps are all-in-one. But this will mean less and less, as this
group of not savvy web users will decrease with time.

------
adamokane
It will take more than something "cool" to knock off Facebook - 600m users
isn't fad-ish. A competitor has to have a MUCH better product and be very
cool. It could happen, but Facebook is much more in the driver's seat than
MySpace or Friendster ever were.

------
kevin_morrill
Best quote of the article, "Yet social media is itself as temporary as any
social gathering, nightclub or party. It's the people that matter, not the
venue."

They cost to run the site compared to how much they're making does not work.
Their only hope is to run _really_ fast and create a better advertising story.
Otherwise, they need to get acquired by MS, Google or Apple and become an
augment to a business that actually generates profit. Problem is their market
cap is so huge that's becoming nearly impossible.

------
winternett
All social media sites these days are bound for backlash because of the sins
of their fathers, Thats why its so hard to get a great idea to catch on,
people are growing skeptical about social media's benefits in a sea of high
priced commercial promotion.

People make sites like facebook popular, commercial entities buy in and then
corner the initial value that these sites created. All of the marketing
potential individual users had in the initial stages vanishes once commercial
ads and user tracking appear, and once a value is placed on a site. Myspace
still gets great hits, but mostly from spammers and bots, which makes it value
worth less than the computers its hosted on. Its their own damn fault. Tom
played the game right when he sold early I tell you.

These social media sites aren't doing anything substantial in order to help
productivity nor promotion for individual users. They have features that
encourage users to spam each other, which make their added peers end up
blocking each other because of incessant tagging and messages to user inboxes
that require tedious manual deletion, etc [all tactics to generate empty
clicks]...

These social media sites all make the same mistakes in not emphasizing their
talented users, and helping to build followings, while promoting businesses
and services that are reliable and relevant to their own users. I'm a firm
believer in a future of micro-social sites that focus on specific user
communities rather than trying to warehouse everyone into a huge template.
Facebook, as it is really doesn't provide much in terms of letting "like minds
come together". There should be no reason why I can't communicate [through a
social media buffer of course] with Jay Z about rapping, or Kanye about being
a douchebag, or ask the real Ivanka Trump out on a date, and they all should
be able to block me if they get pissed off in the process, thats what happens
on Twitter, and thats why this year Twitter will capture a large percentage of
Facebook's user shares, because its much more fulfilling than fake user
profiles [for the moment]

American Idol has made a lot more people "famous" than Facebook, yet there are
many more musicians and artists on Facebook, how is this possible? I see that
as a problem. YouTube has been the only consistently unobtrusive and highly
functional/useful social media tool that has survived. They do have user
profiles, they host content, allow comments, sharing and communication, and do
it all pretty much in an amazing and unobtrusive way. YouTube also allows its
users to cross-share content on sites completely unrelated to itself, a major
hosting expense, but really solid in terms of usefulness to site users, no
idiotic "like" button required. Based on this, the concept of YouTube,
perhaps, should be used as a key "roadmap" to social media success in the
future.

Instead of working on promoting normal users you don't know, most social media
sites are geared towards the "celebrity machine", for celebrities that are
already popular. Promoting the same stuff that's on TV, and the radio, because
someone paid for the ad space. Following this "celebrity machine" is a losing
battle because it has to put on a new expensive outfit every time its
launched, and it fails once people uncover its motives, or once innovation
can't disguise it.

Facebook makes it appear to users that the only method to generate 5,000
followers requires landing a major record or movie deal, so much for being a
talented musician. Programming and monetizing is only a tiny part of creating
a successful social media site, this is why most get it wrong. If you want 4
years of profit, who cares, make the next big social media warehouse, if you
want a lifetime of success, think carefully of the benefits your site can
provide to the average joe, and make sure you keep that in your mantra for as
long as your site lives. The motives have to be clear cut, highly functional,
and it must offer fair and equal promotion for all of its users while limiting
spamming and upholding privacy, otherwise it will stay the game of rise and
downfall. There's a reason why YouTube has been a great site all of these
years, it sticks to its user base and keeps them content.

------
zinssmeister
I see so many people compare facebook to (late '90s) AOL these days. But the
two never had much in common with each other. I think if facebook continues to
bring out innovative ways/products/features that connect people with each
other it will continue to be successful. Will it one day fade away? Probably.
As do most huge dotcoms. But some even stay relevant for well over a decade
(ebay, match, expedia, google). Most of them get a bit smaller and cruise
along.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
Your profile and buddy list on AOL were probably pretty similar to your
Facebook friends. I think they have a lot in common.

~~~
kin
Originally, but AOL never expanded on it. A profile was like a text box and
that's it. As for AIM, everyone I know that used to use it still do. I don't
think that's changed very much other than that people now use web based
clients to chat on AIM.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
Really? I only know a fraction of people who still use AIM, most just use the
Facebook chat. It guessing it must be a generational thing? I'm 23, how about
you?

~~~
kin
Same age. It's probably just the people I know. I grew up in the San Gabriel
Valley amongst 90% Asians and the non-tech savvy subset of those I know all
use the same AIM screen names but through different interfaces. The tech-savvy
subset use multi-clients like Pidgin, Digsby, etc. I personally use Gchat and
no one I know uses FB as their main chat client, only for a quick message if
two people are coincidentally on FB.

------
ruedaminute
I have no real use for facebook anymore. Honestly, I think most people right
now just go there for lack of something to procrastinate with. Twitter is much
better for that anyway. Trying to get all my fb friends to jump ship with me.
<http://blog.ruedaminute.com/2011/01/dear-facebook-friends/> Honestly, the
more people on Twitter, the better for the internet IMHO.

------
robryan
Facebook has the advantage of being built into way more mobile devices than
anything before it ever was. Many phones now come with a facebook icon on the
main page when you first turn it on.

Also the amount of free advertising it gets from companies using it's logo
everywhere with add us on facebook and have your say on facebook, how many
other companies get their logo and a call to action to use there service for
free on TV every day around the world?

------
projectileboy
There are at least a few important differences that the author ignored:

* Not many "trends" have had 500 million followers.

* The other companies mentioned actually ceded control in some fashion; Facebook is simply taking investment dollars.

* The other companies mentioned didn't have Mark Zuckerberg at the helm. Only a crank wouldn't acknowledge that Zuckerberg's leadership has been masterful.

------
ojbyrne
When you have so much traffic, it's easy to find other avenues for product
changes. You can move into new niches. You gain flexibility.

But when you also have a high valuation, and have been taking money off the
table, those choices become limited to those that are perceived as the highest
growth. You lose flexibility.

Frugality is good, at all levels.

------
podperson
The thing which amazes me about Facebook is how perplexing the basic UI is and
remains. My wife will tell me "hey someone has made a comment on your wall you
HAVE to reply to it" and it will take me five minutes to figure out where this
comment is buried. Oh it's not under "status" it's under "profile". WTF?

------
krosaen
related from 2007: "How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook"
[http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/webdev/showArti...](http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/webdev/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204203573)

It certainly hasn't, but can facebook be the first social network to somehow
help people maintain their different personas and keep their social circles
unentangled when appropriate? Over the summer I facebook updated something
about hacking on my front porch, and my wife's aunt commented asking how I got
sick. Stuff like that isn't creepy, it's just awkward, and keeps me coming
back here and to friendfeed or to reddit or wherever the community feels right
for having a discussion.

------
Hominem
Agree, Just wonder if all these people were incredibly good at cashing in at
the top or the overwhelming tidal wave of news stories about them cashing in
is what caused their decline

------
wilschroter
Isn't it safe to just say that every technology fades with time? The only
constant in our industry is that we will all become less relevant in time.

------
jdbeast00
most of the complaints here could be solved by facebook implementing (better)
disjoint friend networks. I would imagine they are working on this. I
currently have draconian privacy in place to prevent most of my friends from
seeing status updates. Once this becomes easier wont these issues go away?

------
chopsueyar
Read his books, _Exit Strategy_ and also _Ecstasy Club_ , good scifi.

------
ryanwaggoner
Stupid title. Doesn't hype always fade, by definition?

------
mrleinad
Hypes will fade. By definition.

------
mnml_
TheFacebook hype died in Nov. 2007 when they introduced advertisement.

------
whenisall
Some people will get a lot of money in shares. The difficult question is when
to buy and when to sell. The hype will fade and shares will fall down very
quickly but to win in this game you have to determine when it will happen. I
don't know when, but I think that the fall down will be the extraordinarily
stiff, in one day or two a complete collapse. Wait and see.

------
fkeidkwdq
Comparing Google with Facebook. I was using google since it was pretty
unknown, I think it is still, after all these years, a good tool for
searching. I will never use facebook, I think local solutions for meeting
people will emerge soon and they will be much more appealing and useful.

Facebook only can exists if it can find a way to be a local tool.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
I've never _met_ anyone on Facebook, they're all people I knew somehow
previous to our _friending_.

~~~
jupiterj
Interesting. I would like to know if the majority of people use Facebook like
you (with people they knew previously) or they use it to get new connections.
How can I get this information? Any poll published somewhere?

~~~
ladon86
I think I can say pretty confidently and without providing any data that most
people use Facebook to connect with people they know from real life.

I believe that adding a complete stranger is seen as a bit creepy. Maybe the
new Groups feature (like the hacker news group) will change that, but that's
only a recent addition.

~~~
hucker
Maybe for our generation it is, but I can confidently say that this has
changed amongst high school students and other youngsters. For them (at least
the ones I have contact with), facebook is a tool for meeting new people.
Hell, even a few people I know professionally has met their SO on facebook.

------
popschedule
in the future your time will fade

------
thefox
Facebook sucks!

------
dmvaldman
I don't know how people can seriously believe facebook is a bunch of hype. Or
even that it's at the top of its success, as this article claims.

The $50 billion valuation, yeah there's some hype there. But whether Facebook
will one day surpass such an evaluation is I believe a strong reality.

I'm just amazed at how well-run a company Facebook is. I'm in awe of how it is
in a constant state of evolution and constantly being tinkered with. Usually
when companies get big you see them play the game more conservatively.
Facebook is exciting because it doesn't do this. I see so much room for
Facebook to grow and surpass my expectations for it, as it has time and time
again.

------
Synthetase
I really think he doesn't know what he's talking about. Let's look at his
qualifications. He's a professor of "Media Studies" at the New School. I think
he's going to be taking everything with a lot of lit crit palavering.

Myspace to Facebook is a shallow analogy. If we would like to make an analogy
with that analogy it would be like comparing Yahoo and Google. Facebook has
far exceeded the market penetration of MySpace. Facebook has one of the best
engineering teams around while MySpace attempted to some sort of media company
(failing miserably at that). Facebook has a fairly credible revenue stream
while we are never sure if MySpace every developed that.

~~~
michaelchisari
_we are never sure if MySpace every developed that._

Myspace revenues are estimated at $385 million. Facebook's are estimated at
$1.6 billion.

That puts myspace revenues at 24% of Facebook's.

Myspace has 66m users. Facebook has 500m users.

That puts Myspace's userbase at 13% of Facebook's.

In actuality, that means Myspace has found a way to generate more revenue on a
per-user basis than Facebook. I'd say that's pretty credible.

