
When will we stop using Facebook? - thepinchandzoom
http://www.thepinchandzoom.com/blog/2015/5/14/facebook-stop
======
junto
I stopped two years ago. As far as I am aware I'm not missing much.

I did have a lot of old friends on FB, but I didn't stay in contact with them
in real life. I was just lazily snooping on their lives, without giving
anything in return.

To be completely honest, I don't have space or time for them in my real life.
It isn't because I didn't like them anymore, it was simply that I didn't have
the time or energy to stay in proper contact. I had also moved away.

I had the realisation that some people are supposed to drift apart. The people
who are important to you will remain in contact with, and it doesn't need
Facebook spying on that friendship to enable it to keep functioning.

~~~
sveme
I stopped at about the same time as you, but I actually returned a couple of
months ago. Without friending anyone. And the reason? I use Facebook as a very
simple way to get news about really minor things of importance to me:

\+ my climbing gym has some new routes!

\+ a new video by K.I.Z, yeah!

\+ oh, demonstration against some Nazis demonstrating in my neighbourhood,
should definitely go there

\+ Someone's looking for a climbing partner next weekend, finally heading out
to the rocks again!

So likes have become a poor-man's subscription to an RSS feed and groups have
become an easy to follow replacement of forums. The key in these cases is the
newsfeed, which is okay for having an overview of important stuff (and without
friends is not crowded with inane stuff).

I repeatedly have idle thoughts about a startup idea, combining Facebook with
github's business model: Any entity such as users, companies, organizations
get a page where they can post arbitrary stuff like on their current facebook
profile. Users can subscribe and get an overview on their newsfeed. So far,
just like Facebook but without the social crap. Financing is not done through
targeted ads but by requiring companies to pay for the service - something
like 500 subscribers are free, 1000 - 10 $/months etc. Quite rough around the
edges, the idea, but I personally would like such a service. Anyone interested
in working on that with me?

~~~
Xeoncross
So, like twitter with more media and text options?

~~~
sveme
Yes, somewhat. Anything shareable. The major point would be the github-like
financing model: It's not the individual users that pay for the service by
enabling targeted ads but companies that want to get in contact with potential
customers on _their_ page. It seems like a minor difference but would have
quite strong effects on user privacy - there would not be a need for ever more
tracking of every online activity.

~~~
nosuchthing
Ello recently tried this, and they're still making good progress

------
acheron
Is it time yet to repost this classic article?

"Will MySpace ever lose its monopoly?"

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/feb/08/business.c...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/feb/08/business.comment)

Key quote: _MySpace is well on the way to becoming what economists call a
"natural monopoly". Users have invested so much social capital in putting up
data about themselves it is not worth their changing sites, especially since
every new user that MySpace attracts adds to its value as a network of
interacting people._

~~~
mawburn
Facebook has something MySpace never achieved and something that could easily
set it's place firmly where it's at, given they don't make any major changes
to mess it up: _The Geriatric Crowd_.

If I'm not mistaken, this is the first time in history that anyone in the tech
industry captured this crowd in a major way. Those in my family over 70, on
both sides, can barely make a phone call on a cell phone and don't even really
know what texting is... but they sure know how to use Facebook. That's how
they see their grandbabbies, of course they know how.

~~~
nilkn
I know this is going to be morbid, but the problem with the geriatric crowd
when it comes to technology is that they have a tendency to die. The current
geriatric generation is using Facebook to some degree (though in the case of
my family no one over 70 uses it). What about the next generation of old
people? Facebook will have to keep recapturing this market. This is very
problematic because the older generation only interested in family photos
really couldn't care less about the service itself; they're going to use
whatever their kids and grandkids use, so long as it's not too complex (and
with each generation the maximum technological complexity for the geriatric
crowd will go up quite a lot).

The other problem with having family on a social media is that this
immediately limits what people can safely use the service for, which leads to
an inevitable but slow exodus of users and their content. Facebook is the
family friendly zone for sharing photos and short notes, and it's increasingly
_only_ that and nothing else. You have Instagram for stuff you don't want your
family to see. You have tumblr for stuff you don't even want many of your
friends to see. And then there are the messaging apps. FB still performs very
well in this arena, but it's clearly struggling against the likes of Snapchat,
and I expect in 5-10 years Snapchat itself will be struggling against another
newcomer with FB messenger a distant memory.

~~~
mawburn
> _I know this is going to be morbid, but the problem with the geriatric crowd
> when it comes to technology is that they have a tendency to die._

I actually thought about that too... but if you think about it relatively, the
expected lifespan of someone who's 70 in 2015 (10-20yrs) is nearly an eternity
in technology.

And those who are in that age group currently are very reluctant to change.
It's just part of getting old. I can't see new generations of older people
being much different. Maybe more accepting of change, but not actively seeking
it like someone in their 20's.

> _Facebook is the family friendly zone for sharing photos and short notes,
> and it 's increasingly only that and nothing else._

I don't see this as a bad thing, but as a huge positive. Look at movies. There
has even been a push in the decade or so to PG-13 everything to make more
money.

But unlike movies, where they destroy stories in the name of making them
Family Friendly, you can just move your non-family friendly content somewhere
else. Which is personally exactly what I do.

------
ajkjk
I hate Facebook, but I don't plan to stop using it anytime soon. Well - I
don't hate everything about it, but I hate everything they're trying to do, so
I agree with this article. But "hate"ing a company is odd, so I guess I really
mean "I want to have nothing to do with".

I'll switch when there's a dominating replacement. All I want, for the rest of
my life, is:

\- a way to see updates from friends and acquaintances and people I've fallen
out of contact with, and post mine for them.

\- a way to search for and 'add' people I meet.

\- a way to chat with those people (including in groups)

\- all of those things, without social baggage that constrains it to 'only
teenagers' or 'only colleagues and classmates' etc.

\- and in a network that contains most people I meet, or doesn't have social
baggage that prevents most people from being willing to join it.

To me it's an enriched version of what I get by having lots of contacts in my
phone or email address book: exactly a list of people, plus the additional
fact that I feel physically _near_ them in some sense (and I think this is a
concrete emotional thing. My family and friends don't feel too far away when I
get to see snippets of their life streamed into mine).

Everything else - groups, events, pokes, company pages, apps, games, friend
suggestions, wall posts, public about-me sections, places, reviews, ads,
etc... I don't care about any of it. Maybe something that trims off all this
fat would be innocuous enough to actually find adoption. I could see it living
in some peer-to-peer structure too, but it has to still be absolutely trivial
for anyone to join.

~~~
higherpurpose
In other words - the Internet. You _don 't need_ to do all those things in a
single place, or even in multiple places, but all owned by the same company.

The fact that people want to use Instagram, Vine, Snapchat and Whatsapp is
proof many people don't want a single service for everything. It's just
unfortunate that Facebook happens to have acquired many of those.

~~~
rimantas

      > In other words - the Internet.
    

Can you explain a bit more, because it sounds really strange.

~~~
pjc50
It's a series of tubes that let you communicate information, but that's not
important right now.

------
ctdonath
I've been on various social media for about 30 years, starting with dial-up
BBSes and Usenet (when small enough you could read _every_ message posted).

Time and again, I've seen sites appear, grow, become definitively dominant,
taper off, and largely disappear (never quite _dying_ outright but gone from
"everyone's on it!" to "who? what?"). High-profile lifespan is vaguely around
7 years. I've no question Facebook will do the same, already peaked and
declining as the article notes, suffering from too many people, too much
content, and not enough signal to retain users against the oppressive &
discouraging noise. "Oh, but FB is different! _Everyone_ is on it, even my
grandmother!" many will declare; yes, and odds are your grandmother can tell
of her days when CompuServe and AOL were _the_ place to be (to the point of
AOL having so much money they bought Time-Warner because they didn't know what
else to do with all that cash), yet here she is on Facebook because that's
what her grandkids use, but she's thinking of moving on more to
Twitter/Instagram/whatever because those kids just don't post much on FB
anymore.

~~~
geoelectric
I don't disagree, but the definition of "everybody" has gotten bigger and that
counts too.

AOL may have been the place to be in the 90s, but it was still a sharp subset
of my friends and acquaintances that were there, vs. the almost complete set
on Facebook. And USENET/dialup/etc were even more selective. It's only been
very recently (relatively speaking) that a majority of people were online at
all, never mind aligned on a particular site.

I think you probably should compare more to something like AOL Instant
Messenger, which had much closer to a 1:1 usage ratio of online computer users
to software users (at least in the US market). The only real reason they went
away was because social networks like Facebook are much more cross-connected
and oriented towards group communication. The tagging features are huge, for
example, since they potentially engage a lot of people at once. Ditto
resharing, etc.

So the IM paradigm in general got consumed by larger social media--it wasn't a
problem with AOLIM itself. But that sort of obsolescence is a vulnerability of
a system that only does one thing. Facebook would probably mutate in the same
situation, not die off.

The other factor is smartphones: a much larger number of people are online all
the time now. If MySpace had their rise in the smartphone era, I'm sure they
would have been much harder to displace. The fact that Facebook's opening
their doors to the general public corresponded roughly with the release of the
iPhone and subsequent rise of the smartphone was a huge bump for them.

Upshot is that a vastly larger percentage of a vastly larger number of
customers are aligned on Facebook compared to older social media, and Facebook
itself, as a platform, is relatively resilient to the changing needs of the
customer. In an industry where both the customer acquisition and customer
retention metric is "how many of your friends use it," I think Facebook will
prove to be much harder to displace.

~~~
ctdonath
I've seen way too many "too big to fail" services fail, to believe Facebook is
that much harder to displace.

BTW: IBM just announced it's offering Apple computers to its employees.

~~~
geoelectric
We'll see, of course, but I tend to think that the self-reinforcing nature of
social media has different market characteristics than, say, mainframes.
Unfortunately, the most obvious comparison--telephone networks--hasn't been a
free market for a long time.

Though to that point, interoperability between social networks would certainly
be a nail in Facebook's coffin. As soon as the service commoditizes to a
simple portal all bets are off.

------
wwweston
Don't know if this will be popular here, but... I like Facebook. I like seeing
people's pictures and updates. I like serendipitous moments where someone
announces they're in town and I get a chance to see people I haven't seen in
years. I like keeping track of social events with it. I like reading a lot of
their articles. I like the conversations I get in (even some of the
arguments). I think it complements and enhances my social life. I try not to
let it replace it.

Sure, some of the acquaintances are obnoxious on FB. The mechanisms for
focusing on what I like vs what I don't seem to work well enough.

I don't like the surveillance. I try to minimize it in a number of ways. I'm
sure my measures have limited effectiveness and I'm leaking details about my
whereabouts, reading habits, and other preferences anyway. If FB was the only
place I was doing that -- if I wouldn't have to essentially give up
mobile/internet communications to truly solve that problem -- I might think
harder about whether the value I get out of FB was something I could trade for
privacy.

~~~
tim333
Probably uncool but I like facebook too. Maybe I should have a more happening
social life but in the absence of that it's not a bad way to keep up with
people. I'm not even especially bothered about the privacy / surveillance
stuff. I don't post anything I'd be particularly worried about being public
and I'm not to fussed about the add tracking thing effecting which ads uBlock
ends up blocking or that I don't read. I just scrolled through the last 35
posts in the main feed and couldn't find anything obviously sponsored. If
there's one thing that bugs me it's not having much control over the
filtering. On the phone I only tend to get quite a small subset of my friends
posts.

------
pjc50
I really should flesh out my "why you can't have a good distributed social
network" post some time.

What does FB provide that you don't get with a combination of
email/USENET/blogs/chat? Branding, janitors, and indexing.

Branding is useful because these things are so scale-driven that you want to
be on the one that everyone else is using. It's easier for the uninvolved to
figure this out if it's the one with huge advertising billboards.

Janitors are a necessity. Some are human, some automatic. People want spam to
be fought, and they want abuse to be removed.

Between those two is the "nudging" of people into how to use Facebook. Why
should you post life updates? Because it's the "done thing".

Indexing is useful because it enables you to find people you want to get in
contact with using their human-recognisable name. (Facebook occasionally
undermines this by refusing to accept names that people are known by)

Both of these are ongoing effort that has to be paid for if it is to scale and
be done properly. Hence all the underhand cash-extraction processes.

~~~
tim333
> Why should you post life updates? Because it's the "done thing".

No - it's because you've done something you think your friends would be
interested in and it's a lot easier to take a photo and click 'post to
Facebook' than to write to 30 people.

That's really the fundamental function of Facebook and any successor will
probably succeed by doing it better in some way. eg. Snapchat enabling you to
send naughty pics without them being archived on the web for the rest of your
life and so on.

~~~
pmlnr
> eg. Snapchat enabling you to send naughty pics without them being archived
> on the web for the rest of your life

You should read more.
[http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/Snapchat_admits_deleted...](http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/Snapchat_admits_deleted_photos_arent_really_delete_16643.aspx)

~~~
im3w1l
I thought it was common knowledge on HN, that DRM, of which forced deletion is
a special case, is fundamentally flawed.

------
mironathetin
I read facebooks terms and conditions before I created my account (you can
guess, I am over 50). After that, I never thought about joining. Tried to
discourage our kids, too (no success - they are under 50 ;o).

~~~
mironathetin
I am impressed this got upvoted. A couple of years ago, telling everybody I am
not on facebook and have never been for such uncool reasons, would have
drowned like a lead-duck.

------
zz_m00
I have never used facebook and never will. The only real reason is because I
have no interest in the type of community it promotes. The communities on
facebook usually seem like a popularity contest.

I've recently stopped using reddit for the same reason and I'm now using HN as
my main/only source of social media.

~~~
Svenstaro
Reddit is a gold mine for niche stuff. Don't stop using it for r/funny,
r/politics, r/whatever. Those are shitholes. The small subreddits is what
Reddit all about for me nowadays. The big subreddits are breeding grounds for
young Redditors and to fend off those we don't want in smaller subreddits.

------
yuvadam
Yes, we've passed Peak Facebook, but that's just because it has been distilled
and pornographized to the point of desensitization. Pure capitalism at its
finest.

What will set the trend for the future is our understanding of how digital
slavery works. We can be entering one of the darkest eras of modern history,
or one of the most liberating. The choice is up to us, human beings, whether
we sell ourselves to whoever is better at manipulating our emotions and
thoughts, or whether we choose the free and open path that liberates us from
digital tyranny.

~~~
eggie
You remind me of digital tools that are just coming into existence.
Distributed autonomous corporations could organize most of the digital
communication functions that the social media bubble is currently exploring.
So, ethereum, Turing complete blockchains, oracles and decentralized decision
making. Consensus over conceit.

------
iamthepieman
I stopped using facebook in 2013 when I quit my part time job as a fitness
instructor. The studio I worked for used it extensively to communicate with
clients and post daily workouts and nutrition tips so after a month of holding
out (had already deleted my account once in 2010) I signed back up (which was
a hassle enough as it was, they already knew I had used that email and asked
if I wanted to reactivate my old account even though I had explicitly deleted
it).

It was useful but I pretty much only used it in my role as a fitness coach and
when I quit that job I deleted all posts, photos and details, changed my
primary email to nonsense and changed my password to something I would never
remember before going through the two-week "cool-off" period they force on you
to delete your account.

------
acomjean
I help run an open studios event in Massachusetts. We in the last couple years
have recently started using more social media.

Facebook has been useful for us. It drives a lot of traffic to our site and
presumably some of those people come to our event (we made an official
facebook event so that we don't have a bunch of unofficial ones).

Oddly its a difficult way to communicate with members and build community.
Facebook also requires payment to guarantee showing up in feeds now, for a
non-profit its not worth it. A fair number of our younger and older artists
just aren't on it (myself included). We're finding email is the best way to
communicate whats going on with our members.

Facebook works best if Everyone is on it. Once fewer people aren't on it
becomes less useful. I think thats its staying power currently. Its actually
amazing that it runs at its scale. Myspace was popular, but it didn't have the
nearly the volume of users as facebook (plus facebook is better at sharing
photos, seemingly its reason for existing). If your not on it and your friends
use it as an organizing tool, it can be a little isolating (Don't be that
guy/gal who they have to go out of the way to invite to things...), but with
more people not on it email seems to be returning as an organizing tool.

------
pbhjpbhj
See also
[http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=friendsreunited](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=friendsreunited)
(in UK) or Digg or MySpace ...

FriendsReunited was /the/ social network [amongst a certain demographic at
least] in the UK before anyone knew the term social network. They established
a massive userbase including paid for users but Facebook came along and
destroyed them, particularly because FR did the paid for communications like
LinkedIn do.

------
UUMMUU
I'm sorry but this article reads like a narcissistic wet dream. The author
continues to quote himself and even misquotes himself several times (look up
"facebook has tried tried to remedy" and "facebook has tried to repair"). The
rest of the article slams Facebook for its success and tries to say users
don't want to use Facebook. I personally love what Facebook developers are
doing in terms of React and Jest. In terms of Facebook's core product, I use
it for easy social login and have unfollowed anyone who posts things I don't
agree with so my "feed" is pretty well curated. Myspace sank because a better
product came out. When someone comes out and does Social better than Facebook,
Facebook will fall but until then: if you don't like it, good news, you don't
have to use it.

~~~
jhildings
>I use it for easy social login and have unfollowed anyone who posts things I
don't agree with so my "feed" is pretty well curated.

Isn't that a very very bad decision ?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble)

~~~
UUMMUU
I would hesitate to say it's very, very bad. I don't filter people on Facebook
only because I disagree with them; I filter people on Facebook because, at one
point, I really enjoyed the company of that person and their current tirade of
hating (the police/minorities/the west/the east/obama/republicans/etc) stands
to slightly jade our friendship. Anyone who can actively filter ALL opinions
they disagree with is either delusional, locked in a cabin in the woods or
much more active at filtering than I am.

------
mrweasel
>Facebook is an insanely rich company to the tune of $192 billion as of
September 2014

That's not exactly being rich, those aren't billions that Facebook can go
spend in the same way as Apple can spend their cash reserves. The $192
billions is the evaluation of Facebook, not the money Facebook has available
to spend.

Profits are what makes companies rich, not that Facebook is doing to badly in
that department.

~~~
Kurtz79
Facebook is not a startup, it's a publicly traded company, meaning that its
value is given by the numer of shares in the market times the stock price
(which by this date is more than 226bn).

If we are talking about liquid cash, FB is sitting on 12 bn, which is not so
far than AAPL 33 bn.

~~~
testrun
Apple cash reserve is $194 Billion
([http://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/2015/04/27/194b-apple-
ca...](http://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/2015/04/27/194b-apple-cash-pile-
hits-record/)).

~~~
robinson7d
That article actually confirms the 33B "liquid cash" quoted in your parent.
The other ~160B is "long-term investments".

~~~
rtpg
last I looked at apple's financial statement,s that other 160 is in pretty
liquid assets, in that if Apple wanted to spend 190 billion tomorrow, it
basically could

------
krisdol
I used to actively post on facebook a lot through college and a bit later
(joined when I started college, the year before facebook opened itself up to
non-college accounts). For the last 2-3 years its been an idle account. Used
to make several updates a week, now I make 2-3 updates a year. I removed the
app a long time ago from my phone because of privacy reasons.

I've noticed I get bombarded with far more notifications as an inactive user
than I was when I was active. I get emailed notifications far more frequently
when I used to never have them emailed.

A friend posted on your wall? Notification. Someone liked a post on your wall?
Notification. A friend is having a birthday? Notification. A friend's birthday
is coming up? Notification. Invited to an event? Event coming up? Event
tonight? Notification. Someone with no connections in common commented on a
post you've never read on a large public group that you have never contributed
to? Notification. Someone completely unrelated to you LIKED a post you've
never viewed on the same large group? Notification.

Facebook gets desperate when a user starts churning, but holy crap I just _do
not_ care. The only reason I keep this account is because of close family on
the network. I could divide my friends list by 40 and I don't think I'd miss
any of the lost content.

All the stream ever shows is shared posts from Buzzfeed-clones. It's not
interesting. It's a feed of spam with a very, very rare text post or
meaningful photo.

------
oldpond
Not soon enough. My son lost out on a job opportunity because of a photo of
him published in fb when he was in grade 9. It's just a massive invasion of
privacy, and for what? The "make a buck off the internet" guys hit the jackpot
with that one.

------
zamalek
I wonder if the current "depression" is merely the tech savvy market. I find
that many authors make the mistake of assuming that the average Joe thinks the
same way that they (and their peers) do.

In the past 2-3 months I have heard two less savvy people recite the "it's not
an official relationship until it's Facebook official" social norm, which
inclines me to believe that Facebook is still firmly entrenched in the way
people interact with each other: even if they never visit the site it needs to
be there so that they can turn their significant other into that all important
profile trophy/achievement.

I had this exact conversation with some coworkers (3 of us) and all of us
found out that all of us only have our profiles because our significant others
demand it. We never visit the site or use the site but have to exist there
because of the people around us who do use it. My S/O can't have me as a
partner, my sister can't tag me in a picture etc. People are worried that if
there is no "paper trail" on Facebook, other people will think that they are
an imposter.

Therefore I'm not inclined to agree that the current trend is a long term
trend. There are many other websites that provide exactly the same features of
Facebook, if not more. Facebook is a part of culture now. It's a verb. It
probably has a good few decades of life left in it.

Finally "search query frequency" is the poster child of "correlation does not
imply causation." E.g. People might not be searching for Facebook because
everyone already knows what it is and what the address is. It's like ranking
Google's health on how often people search for Google.

------
frik
What will be the next big thing in social networks? What are your thoughts?

Local neighbors network? No-interface social networks? Peer-to-peer? Anonymous
social networks? Video based (YouTube/Twitch)? Messanger-only? No central
news-feed?

~~~
lmedinas
Unfortunately, in my opinion, Facebook is here to stay.

Reasons: \- Local/OSS/decentralized social networks will not work for the
common population because their friends and updates will not be there.

\- Video based is already a success, see Twitch, but people sometimes prefer
text and likes.

\- Messenger only is also a success, see Whatsapp/FB messenger, but some
people have the need to expose themselves to people outside their groups.

\- Pinterest, Instagram and Google+ have their own public which mostly likely
are also in FB. They use it for difference purposes.

\- Twitter, well this one it's difficult. First of all most of the
communication is public and some users are not interested in that. Also
there's a lot of self promotion messages which does not mean it will engage
users to communicate. Finally Twitter tries to reinvent itself and the
features are not consistent. i.e. For several weeks they enabled translations
and after it was disabled. Twitter might have a chance to engage more people
with Tvshows, movies, music and personalities.

Facebook after all is the social network which is easier to get started, makes
a balance between public and private/groups, lot's of features available
(games, messenger, groups etc...) and families and friends in the same feed. I
guess it's pretty hard to beat that currently for other social networks.

~~~
Heliosmaster
I agree with you that probably FB will stay longer than everyone thinks. At
least the messaging part. What I think it's the biggest factor that will give
it inertia, it's the userbase.

It has slowly become the centralized place for connecting with people,
especially when not considering the minority of very tech-savy people.

I am at a party and I met somebody I want to hang out with? He/she's probably
on facebook then we'll communicate on that. Wanna look up for my old class-
mates? Let's search for them on facebook.

The timeline will be empty/boring/spam, but the messaging app will be full.

~~~
lmedinas
That's the point, FB is people personal ID in the Internet (I guess Google+
was suppose to have this task), and this is the reason why we have so many
apps working with FB which is the central point for everything - login,
pictures, address, tlf number etc...

------
dade_
So the bad news is that it is difficult to stop using Facebook. They let me
export my data, but not birthdays of my friends list. I had to break the list
down into family, friends, actual friends, then check each of their pages to
update my address book. I had to disconnect the few apps that were attached
which was easy for me as I avoided facebooks apps like the plague, but imagine
losing all of your farm animals or whatever it is that people use the games
for. Now that SMS is free and my carrier provides me a softphone for my PC and
tablet for free, I have reverted to SMS (disabling iMessage is a PITA). Events
I handle with my calendar app / email invites which hasn't been ideal, but
since some of my friends refuse to use Facebook, it never was either.

Anyway, just some of my experience so far. At least they allow me to export my
data, unlike Yelp bookmarks. I kept my usage of Facebook extremely light, but
this has taken a lot of my spare time. Few people will go through this effort.

Before you start using a SaaS solution, figure out how you can stop using it.

~~~
reitoei
> it is difficult to stop using Facebook

It's really not. All the saving of contacts, birthdays etc. that you talk
about here... If you give a crap about any of these people, you will already
have that information in another medium. The Facebook logins? Only one I had
to change manually was Spotify, everything else I was able to switch to
Google.

It's seriously easy. Just stop using it.

------
prof_hobart
"based this prediction on the number of times Facebook is typed into Google as
a search term".

If that's their only set of data, then I'm guessing this is equally likely to
indicate that Google is losing users, or at least losing users trying to
access common sites, at a pretty steep rate.

------
sirwitti
Did I get that correctly, that the hypothesis of facebook loosing 80% of its
users (in the next years) is based on a link between google searches and
facebook use?

What if people google facebook less than a while ago because they already know
what it is and have remembered the domain name?

~~~
a1k0n
Or, more likely, they just use the mobile app.

~~~
jay-saint
I was just going to point out the mobile app factor. Looking only at Google
does not count search on App stores. It also does not take into account that
over half a billion people are mobile only users. Source Q414 earnings slide
deck. [http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-
NJ5DZ/3515235624...](http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-
NJ5DZ/3515235624x0x805520/2D74EDCA-E02A-420B-A262-BC096264BB93/FB_Q414EarningsSlides20150128.pdf)

------
kriro
Most people are already happily migrating to IM platforms where they can
contact people more directly and form relevant ad hoc groups. Facebook was
smart enough to recognize that and buy one of them.

I'd be interested in seeing action metrics over time for FB. My gut feeling is
that people use it more passively these days (I do, it's mostly a fancy
contact book for me). Every now and then I catch myself posting stuff for
reasons of "look isn't this great...please like it" but for the most part my
FB use is fairly passive these days.

I also feel like I should just delete my FB account for various reasons every
now and then but usually talk myself out of it.

------
hellbanTHIS
About the Coke analogy: everybody loves Coke A Cola, Santa Claus, polar bears,
summertime, Perfect harmony, cans with your name on it, it's the greatest
brand name in the world.

Facebook is creepy, most people hate it and hate themselves for using it.
Everybody knows somebody who lost friends because of it, or who broke up or
got divorced. It's supposedly cited in one out of seven divorce cases. In
terms of branding it's pretty toxic.

I don't know how long it will be around, probably for a while (if you run
Facebook and Snapchat through Google trends Snapchat barely registers) but
brand loyalty isn't going to keep it afloat.

------
paulpauper
The methodology and reasoning behind this study is dubious at best.

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=myspace%2C%20facebook...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=myspace%2C%20facebook%2C%20instagram%2C%20uber&date=1%2F2010%2061m&cmpt=q&tz=)

If google trends is of any predictive value, Uber and Instagram should not
exist (or at least be worse than myspace). The keyword 'snapchat' also shows
near zero volume.

~~~
andrewstuart2
There are so many more reasons for declining search volume. It could just be
that your users are starting to type terms directly into the address bar.

Or that browsers have gotten smart enough that they're autocompleting
facebook.com instead of just letting you search for facebook.

I do love a good Google trends "research" dive but I'd hardly consider it good
enough to cite for a scholarly paper. There aren't even real numbers, just
relative search volumes.

------
joshstrange
I still have FB but I never use it unless I'm tagged or messaged on it. I use
it primarily as a massive rolodex but I never read my news feed except for on
accident if I log in to read a message or notification. I tweet some and those
are auto-pushed to FB so it kind of looks like I'm active (that was not the
goal, just a side-effect). I've got way too many friends that use FB to plan
events and the like to leave it anytime soon.

I don't hold it against you if you don't have a FB but I'm also not going to
feel back if you miss out on an event because you were harder to reach. I find
the vast majority of FB-Defectors to be insufferable to listen to when they
talk about how they aren't on FB (seriously, they fucking talk about FB MORE
than the people ON FB!) and when they whine about a group of us talking on FB
(therefore leaving them out) I just ignore them. I don't like FB and the reach
it has into our lives but I'm not about to cut off my nose to spite my face by
deleting my FB. There are plenty of ways to use FB without letting it use you
IMHO and people who just flat out quit are too lazy to do so (Sign up for an
account, don't add any info, turn off all location stuff, block the FB widget
so it can't track you one sites, etc...).

What I really want is identity provider and FB gives that to me today (along
with "first party" chat, messaging, photos, etc). Ideally I would have
something like OAuth (but not OAuth) and all my friends could pick a messaging
platform that supported it but right now nothing like that exists and/or the
UI/UX is so terrible I'd never get my friends to switch.

------
higherpurpose
That's quite a disappointing future the author is painting there. The best I
can hope for is that future "hot startups" will prefer to sell themselves to
_any_ other company but Facebook when Facebook comes knocking on their door
with a bag of cash. Otherwise I'll continue to express my distaste for such an
acquisition, just like I did with Oculus and Whatsapp and will try avoiding
them in the future. Vote with your wallet as they say.

~~~
eggie
Is that because you dislike facebook, or this kind of acquisition pattern?

------
snarfy
The only thing Facebook was ever good for was finding those old friends. Now
that you found them, now what? Do you need Facebook? The easy way out is to
message all of them saying you are quitting Facebook and ask them for their
email address. That's all you ever needed, but there was no index/search
engine for it until Facebook. And once you have that part of the index you
care about, you'll never need it again.

~~~
perfTerm
Hmmm... And I did this (had fb for a few years, deleted for a few, had for a
semester abroad, deleted as soon as I had my first steady girlfriend, broke up
and now about three and a half years later I'm back on). The problem I found
was, as soon as I deleted my fb no one had my e-mail as it was deleted with it
my account and messages.

I'm not the biggest fan of facebook obviously, but when I wqs studying abroad
in France it really was a handy way to connect with people when I didn't have
a cellphone. Now, after deleting for such a long period, I don't have any
connection to my old friends which is a shame.

There's the argument that if people wanted to talk to you they'd make it
happen but then there's the argument that if you're on facebook people are
more likely to talk to you because of the convenience. No one wants to lose
touch, and facebook provides and easy way to make sure that (had I not
deleted) when I wanted to go back to Europe I'd have easy access for
communication lines to the individuals I might want to visit.

Everything is double edged and while I've enjoyed my time off of facebook (why
does everyone have to hate on the poorest in America? I will never understand.
If the people on welfare were actual leechers maybe they'd own a portion of
the country, anyways I digress).

That being said, it's a total privacy invasion, and the people I apparently
know don't critically think too often unfortunately even as I try to gently
prod, and yet, it has allowed me to find events I might not have gone too, and
friends I may not have seen.

I hate to do this to hackernews where the discussion is the key reason I come
here... but I did not read the article. Sorry!

------
danschumann
This may seem crazy, but I think the reason use facebook is psychological and
to some extent, it's a rationalization of gov'ment spying. "if someone else is
going to know everything about me, it might as well be my friends(as well as
the NSA)". I think once we end NSA spying, people will value their privacy
more, and thus not need social crutches.

------
swah
My experience: the platform is amazing, but too addictive and the format does
not permit in-depth discussion. Most of the good content on the web still
resides on old forums.

Less and less people can write with the energy of Erik Naggum. Its not
rewarded. Searching that great article from 6 months ago is a PITA. Almost no
one reads longform articles anymore. Thanks Obama.

------
frandroid
> It used to be the place where you tried to sell all your unwanted stuff, but
> now now people are using Craig's List or Gumtree.

Dude.

------
dataker
Facebook has too many elements of "poisonous Internet": ignorant rants, memes,
political correctness, exaggerated display of public affection,...

Gradually, users find other websites to channel their interests and avoid
biases, like Reddit, Pinterest, HN,...

It's a serious falacy to assume one will always need a network filled with
friends and family.

~~~
aaron-lebo
The same problems you list with Facebook exist on Reddit, too. Reddit is an
echo chamber.

One of the great things about family (if you have a good one) is you have to
put up with them no matter how much you disagree on the little things.
Interest sites like Reddit let people form into their own ignorant cliques
without serious personal effort.

It seems to be a fundamental problem of humanity.

------
Snhr
I keep thinking about deleting my facebook but a few days ago I went back a
few years to figure out what I needed to do to drag myself out of a horrible
depression I've put myself in the past few years and I found the exact thing I
needed and all I could think was, I could never delete this if it was this
important to me. I feel chained to the website in a way, I've had it for 6
years and quite a bit of important social interactions are hidden in between
things that don't matter that I might never find again and completely forget
that part of my life.

Is there any way I can separate myself from the website without losing these
things that I might need later in life at some point? I'm really wanting to
just delete it but the history makes it important to me.

------
tempodox
_When will we stop using Facebook?_

We? I never became a user. Apart from that: Our children will, at the latest.
For our children's generation, FB already is the pinnacle of boredom and
stuffiness. Whatever is cool about “where our parents humiliate themselves
publicly”?

------
rayiner
ITT: people with no kids. Facebook is indispensable for sharing baby pictures
with extended family.

~~~
throwaway12309
I have a 3 year old and he has no photo (that I know of) in facebook. Both me
and my wife don't post anything online (also don't have FB) and if I find any
family member/friend posting a picture of my son online, they will have
picture taking permissions revoked. Also, there are a lot of people like us
where I live.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
What's your aim in doing this? For what reason?

Surely your family and acquaintances and people in the street are free -
depending where you live (?) - to take pictures. So you're going to have to
police all of those images in perpetuity to prevent images from appearing
online. The likelihood is that when they're a teenager they'll put their lives
online themselves in some way ... so?

If your child goes on a playdate or attends a nursery or goes to a public
location then there's a good chance (at least in the UK) that they'll appear
on Facebook no matter how many "I do not consent for my child to appear in
photographs" statements you sign. Once they appear in the background of images
then in the not too distant future face recognition is likely to be good
enough to trawl the net for images of them. I think what you'll find is that
the images are all one's you haven't curated whereas if you were adding your
own images (no matter if it's only a few) then you at least have some control
over the general presentation of images.

~~~
throwaway12309
Aim/Reason: I don't really trust facebook/google, but more importantly, if he
decides when he is 14-15 to put his photos online, it will be his decision.
Also, growing up, baby/young pictures were usually something would use to make
fun of each other.

As for the other people taking photos, sure, if he is in the background there
is not much we can do, but other places (nursery or school or even playdates)
can't by law do that and to be fair, those places we tend to hand pick them
and they do share this with us.

------
rm_-rf_slash
My best friendships are maintained by calling by phone or Skype, calling
regularly when it comes to closer friends. I keep in touch with important
people in my life using technology available to my parents when they were my
age, and I feel more satisfied for it.

------
coreymaass
When Facebook first launched dedicated apps for groups and messages, I was
confused. But now I only have those installed, and not the primary app. I've
also bookmarked both the messages page and the groups main page (which
actually took some searching). I get a lot of groups, and there are some
people I'm only able to talk with via Facebook messages.

Malls are ubiquitous in much of the US, and people use them differently. Some
people wander, some people run in to the one store they need and leave. Some
people hang out at the food court. I view Facebook the same way - as they
continue to build out features, different people will choose to use the bits
and pieces that work for them.

------
thebouv
My wife cut off FB 2 years ago but I still use it mostly like a forum. Locally
we have a group of 50ish gamers (Warhammer, 40k, Warmachine, etc) and this is
the primary way games / tournaments / campaigns are set up. Even a trading
area since gamer nerds are apt to constantly buy and trade their toys.

What's funny is we've had to convince our younger members to even sign up so
we could communicate with them. Anyone younger than 20 in our group didn't
usually have an FB account.

We've tried running traditional forums for the local group but it has never
worked. FB is the only way to do it for now.

~~~
hellbanTHIS
Sounds like a job for Slack.

~~~
thebouv
Same issue we had trying to get people to forums. Signing up is hard to do no
matter how easy you make it. Including if it allows for Facebook sign-ons.

They're already ON Facebook. It's on their phone. They don't have to do
anything.

Trust me, I -want- an updated platform to use, but the rest of the gamer
community here just doesn't seem to want to migrate.

------
dimino
I dislike posts about Facebook's usage, if for no other reason than how many
people tend to come out and say "I don't use it and I can't imagine why anyone
would".

That statement is just so intellectually dishonest, it completely ruins the
entire conversation. Pretending like there's no value in what Facebook offers
ignores billions of dollars and billions of users who _do_ find value. Now I'm
not one for an ad populum, but when we define usefulness as "provides value to
others", how _can 't_ Facebook be considered useful?

------
rollthehard6
Story today on the BBC, from analysis of 500 word stories written by UK kids
between 5 and 13 for a competition 'Words including email, mobile and Facebook
are in decline, it said.'

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-
arts-32902170](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-32902170)

(Interesting that mobile is declining, suggests the distinction is lost in a
world of tablet, laptop and phone use where desktops are a thing of the past
domestically)

~~~
shawabawa3
> (Interesting that mobile is declining, suggests the distinction is lost in a
> world of tablet, laptop and phone use where desktops are a thing of the past
> domestically)

I would say that mobile is declining because land lines basically don't exist
anymore, so we can just say phone instead of mobile phone.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>land lines basically don't exist anymore //

Everyone I know has access to a landline (UK).

True the only reason I have a landline really is that you can't get a
broadband internet connection on its own that's cheaper than phone +
broadband.

------
jalayir
I use it for:

\- Informing old friends about so-called "Life Events" \- not by actually
posting, but by private messages

\- Private groups of separate friend circles, mostly for sharing cool
news/websites or music

\- My facebook newsfeed mostly constitutes local news, international
editorial/opinion pieces and lots of pictures of nature stuff which I like.
I've unfollowed most people so I don't get their posts.

I don't have a one-stop shop for all the above except facebook, so I think
I'll definitely be using it for a while.

------
PSeitz
No need to Google for it, because everybody has it in his bookmarks.

~~~
fwn
I also found this graph to be a bad start. I mean, search queries? If
facebook.com isn't bookmarked it's still presented as suggestion right after
"f" is typed in close to any facebook users omnibox. The only reason I ever
search for facebook is because I accidently mistyped it.

------
qq66
Keeping in touch with friends, family, and acquaintances is a core need for a
large fraction of humans.

Facebook, like everything, will disappear some day, but it will be because
people decide to start using some other way of keeping in touch -- not because
they decide that they're bored of keeping in touch. Many people just stop
using Facebook, don't replace it with anything else, and are happy with that
decision -- but that will not be the norm.

------
norea-armozel
Unfortunately, I keep using Facebook to keep in contact with my family (this
includes part of my extended family whom I haven't seen since childhood). I'm
not sure it has much value since we rarely communicate through Facebook as we
all have each other's phone numbers and other contact information. I'm hoping
eventually my family will get off Facebook and maybe onto a more viable
platform to maintain contact.

------
hellbanner
Who's we, white man?

FB is superb for organizing events with people. IMHO that's its strongest
offering. But I'd rather just use webapps, word of mouth and email.

------
vvpan
Email is so far the best social network that I know.

------
flaburgan
When we will start using
[https://diasporafoundation.org](https://diasporafoundation.org)

~~~
madez
Maybe when it leaves being an alpha.

------
ianstallings
Facebook has long said they want to be the glue of the Internet, the guys that
tie it all together. And they're winning at this through their login feature,
their messaging, their ad platform, and their commenting features. I don't
know if in the future people will still visit FB like they do today, but I
doubt they are truly going away anytime soon.

------
guilamu
Never used it. Still don't get the point.

~~~
ams6110
Nicely put. I never saw what it would do for me that I wasn't already doing
with email. Never signed up.

------
ThomPete
They will stop when a better perceived alternative is out there. Until then FB
is solving socializing pretty well.

------
PaulHoule
I stopped using it a long time ago. For a while I mostly used Facebook connect
to log into other web sites but I don't even do that anymore.

Other people are still engaged; my NEET friends will come over and look at
Facebook for hours and even people I know with jobs find it compelling but I
don't.

------
waspleg
Never started. [http://seapegasus.org/wp-
content/uploads/seapegasus.org/2011...](http://seapegasus.org/wp-
content/uploads/seapegasus.org/2011/09/funny-facebook-fails-oinkonomics.jpg)

------
vjvj
For those using fb mostly as a directory/contacts books, I highly recommend FB
Purity.

In fact I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet.

It lets you filter out certain posts or in my case, put in a bit of custom CSS
to never show the news feed => no distractions when I go onto fb chat.

~~~
KnightHawk3
There is also Messenger.com which would appear to do what you want.

------
evc123
I think Facebook has staying power because they're the first social network to
have made serious AI/ML investments. They'll be able to project user's likes
back at them better than anyone else.

------
csense
I was early to join Facebook and early to leave. It's been well over half a
decade since I've used Facebook.

Nothing I have heard about them since I quit has made me regret my decision to
leave.

------
ttty
Isn't that correlated with mobile devices being more popular?

------
pyabo
I thought that the article was worth it but it is completely stupid. The
reason of MySpace curb is because Facebook started, they aren't two
independent events.

------
stkni
The linked article quotes some research which is highly dubious. Using Google
trends data [1] for anything other than the start of an analysis seems a
little dangerous.

Facebook won the social network land-grab and it will be difficult for anyone
to assail their stronghold. I hope someone does, but it's probably going to
take a lot of money and time.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/27/google-
flu...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/27/google-flu-trends-
predicting-flu)

------
xasos
> losing 80% of its peak user base

I'm assuming this is just for the main FB platform? They still have access to
many users through messenger and FB login.

------
harryf
> Facebook has been haemorrhaging interest from fresh faced teenagers for a
> while. In the US, the percentage of teens between 13 to 17 using Facebook
> fell to 88% in 2014. - See more at:
> [http://www.thepinchandzoom.com/blog/2015/5/14/facebook-
> stop#...](http://www.thepinchandzoom.com/blog/2015/5/14/facebook-
> stop#sthash.HEYdWxIy.dpuf)

And? They own Instragram and WhatsApp which, apart from SnapChat, makes up
50%+ of what teens are doing on their phones

------
hellbanner
Does anyone use XML or JSON feeds connecting to multiple apps to manage
events, news updates etc? Curious about your setup.

------
xacaxulu
Not a moment too soon. I've been free from the USG's best tracking program for
5 years. Never looked back.

------
uint32
When will social networks be federated?

------
barlescabbage
reminds me of this article I loved about how Facebook is the new myspace

[https://medium.com/@nickgrosvenor/facebook-is-
myspace-7559ff...](https://medium.com/@nickgrosvenor/facebook-is-
myspace-7559ff9b9f8f)

------
return0
Well, as developers, we reached peak facebook (usefulness as a plaform for
apps) years ago.

------
k__
I use it mostly as a replacement for ICQ and MSN and to gather some photos
after events.

------
known
When a major security flaw in FB exposes all your private data to the world;

------
chilicuil
I just keep my account to sign-up easily to other webpages.

------
wyclif
Piece needs an editorial once-over badly. Some of the pull quotes don't even
match up to the same body text. Is it too much to ask for people to run
spellcheck as a bare minimum of due diligence?

------
MindTooth
Been without for about four months. Burden lifted.

------
jkot
Never? I am not even registered yet.

------
mrtree
I don't have fb and I don't miss it. Soon many more will join the trend and
nurture their real friendships instead...

------
RUG3Y
I haven't read the article yet, but I stopped using Facebook a couple of years
ago and it was the best decision.

------
adrianlmm
I don't see my self stop using Facebook any time soon, I find it very useful.

------
senthil_rajasek
I quit facebook 2 years ago. When I greet people that I haven't seen in a
while they are surprised by how genuine I feel.

~~~
bleep
Tell me about it! It's great being able to ask what they've been up to, and
actually mean it!

------
onewaystreet
Facebook is already two years ahead of the analysis in this article. They spun
off messenger and groups into their own apps because they saw the monolithic
approach was no longer working.

