

Facebook will disappear in three years - kemoly
http://www.acercandonaciones.com/en/news/facebook-desaparecera-en-tres-anos.html

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px1999
I'll be honest, a couple of years ago, I believed something similar, but for
different reasons:

* Friendships change over time, no social network (Facebook included) could crack that.

* "The youth" don't want to be on the same social network as their parents.

* Timeline spam from games was going to kill the network.

* People were uber concerned about privacy and would flock to a more privacy-aware alternative, particularly with employers starting to check up on employees.

* Someone was bound to go and take away Facebook's golden goose - image hosting.

* Mobile monetization was going to be a massive problem for them.

I had other reasons, but I was young(er) and naive(r). They dealt with those
threats - by introducing features, having critical mass, changing their
partnerships, reassuring users, opening their wallet, and figuring out how to
do mobile well respectively.

Yes, free (as in GNU) software is always a threat to people trying to profit
from software, but it's no more serious to Facebook in the medium term than
any of the above. People are lazy, there's a lot of inertia behind Facebook at
this stage, and setting up your own social network-type stuff on your own
server is (and always will be) seen as "too hard" for most people.

I highly doubt that they'll be unseated for quite a while (even under the
glacially crushing weight of OSS) so long as they keep making the good calls
that they've been making over the past few years.

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joeldidit
I think Facebook will disappear, but it may take a bit longer than 3 years.
Also, they won't completely disappear, they just won't be as used as they are
today.

I think a lot of people are getting bored and frustrated with the service, but
they have a lot of history on the site, and they don't have a better
alternative to turn to. This causes the wrong form of user "loyalty:" they are
trapped.

It's hard to imagine a better service coming along, but they can eventually be
outdone on the mobile front or their own internal inertia (which it seems they
are fighting) will prevent them from being able to compete.

Change happens fast. Something will show up overnight, then BOOM.. the end.

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s3r3nity
Didn't this article topic come up a few years ago?

Weren't people saying there was a limit on the number of people you could get
into a single social network (like 250k or something like that?) and would
never surpass Myspace?

Weren't people saying that Facebook wouldn't figure out mobile monetization?

These types of bold predictions, without really any data or strong evidence,
are meaningless and should be down-voted by a tech community that makes
changes in the world through science and fact.

Plus, consistently rooting for failure of the thousands of people that work
there isn't really cool to begin with.

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hkmurakami
So the guy also predicts the death of Microsoft, whose OS and productivity
software is used by _governments_ worldwide. If there was ever a slow moving
body, it is government. If there ever was a body that could be lobbied against
even good decisions, it is government.

Nope, don't see MSFT "dying" anytime soon, even if they don't grow by much or
even start shrinking slowly.

~~~
brownbat
Surface revenue just in:
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/30/microsoft_surface_sa...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/30/microsoft_surface_sales_disaster/)

But you're still right... they get 1,000 bad decisions before they dent their
cushion of money.

Facebook, though, I'm less sure. Cringely has been calling it "the new AOL"
for years, since its product seems to be a limited subset of what "Internet"
provides.

But then again, he's predicted that long enough to look suspicious. A bit like
one of my favorite bits from Lenny Bruce - "I know marijuana will be legal
someday because all of the lawyers I know smoke it." He may be right, but all
those lawyers are probably retired.

Cringely put peak-Facebook at 2014, can't wait to find out if he's right.

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nextw33k
I recently read someone make an comparison between the introduction of the
telephone and the introduction of social networks. How people had a miss-trust
of telephones because they would take away privacy.

Obviously what is needed with social networks is inter network communication.
Otherwise we risk creating a monopoly.

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GnwbZHiU
"Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to www.acercandonaciones.com"

The site disappear already

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jotm
So, a fully profitable and easily pivotable company with a few hundred million
users will disappear because people can/will switch to their own small
servers?

Please, Yahoo and freaking Ask.com (who even uses it?) are still around, and
Facebook is way ahead of those two...

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lkbm
> Happened to MySpace and I know that will happen again

One data point doesn't really establish an unavoidable trend.

~~~
marcosdumay
Also happened with Orkut.

Of course, that doesn't mean it's unavoidable either.

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hkmurakami
_" Traduction by Google Translator"_

uhhh, seriously? I'm quite literally at a loss for words here.

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opinali
No excuse to post utter junk like this article; flagged.

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bleakcabal
I predict Hacker News will disappear in three years !

~~~
nextw33k
If it did I would be very happy. That would mean I would have found a news
source even better than this one.

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MrMan
QED

