Is Mark Zuckerberg the Next Steve Case? 470
theodp writes "With all signs for Facebook pointing up, author Douglas Rushkoff goes contra, arguing that Facebook hype will fade. 'Appearances can be deceiving,' says Rushkoff. 'In fact, as I read the situation, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of Facebook. These aren't the symptoms of a company that is winning, but one that is cashing out.' Rushkoff, who made a similar argument about AOL eleven years ago in a quashed NY Times op-ed, reminds us that AOL was also once considered ubiquitous and invincible, and former AOL CEO Steve Case was deemed no less a genius than Mark Zuckerberg. 'So it's not that MySpace lost and Facebook won,' concludes Rushkoff. 'It's that MySpace won first, and Facebook won next. They'll go down in the same order.'"
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
So if the Facebook hype is fading and FB already cashing in, what is the competitor and why did their user base just go from 500 million people to 600 million people? Facebook is stronger than ever, and I don't see why they have to keep increasing their user base to remain profitable. Google don't need to attract new users to their search engine all the time in order to stay profitable, since it's ad driven, not driven by signups.
Until there is a good competitor to Facebook, Facebook has absolutely no problems, and its future isn't even dim.
Wishing won't make it so. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that when AOL was deluging the world with free installation CDs, it was clear that most of AOL's users would migrate to The Real Internet as soon as they got a clue. I don't see a successor to Facebook on the horizon just yet. Not that it can't happen.
He has a point in that in there are some unknown quantities in Facebook's revenue model. We don't know how valuable all the information they've collected on users will turn out to be in terms of actually increasing the effectiveness of advertising. We know that it is desireable to marketers at the moment, but marketing trends change.
Can't wait (Score:4, Insightful)
stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
AOL died because it was impossible for them to transition from dialup to broadband. While they could easily serve the entire country with dialup, it was impossible for them to do the same with broadband because broadband access is controlled by an oligopoly of companies who knew it was in their interest to keep tight control.
AOL died when the open access rules died.
There is no parallel to facebook because there is no oligopoly who can keep facebook from upgrading their website.
Actually, that may turn out to be the dumbest thing I've ever written. The lack of net neutrality rules could kill facebook just like the lack of open access rules killed aol.
Even if that doesn't happen, I would not eagerly invest in facebook. Of course, I said the same thing about Google when they IPO'd, so what do I know?
Facebook doesn't fill a necessary role (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dead on. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why did those users need a web based so called "social network" to communicate in the first place? Before FB, they had email, forums, IRC, IMs, why did they need a web based communicaiton tool? Once they were all over those web based networks, why did every 2-3 years one network win over the users of a former network-de-jour? Because every one was purely technically "better" than all the former ones? Dream on.
I think this "ease of use" premise with regard to socal networks way always false, I think what always drove people to new means of communication was the quest for other new people. Communities of any kind, be it RL cliques, IRC channels or social networks, tend to dry up with regard to interesting new content once there is no influx of new blood. Then users one by one, beginning with the influentiel trend setters, like queen bees, tend to wander around in search for a more interesting, cool new beehive. If, no, _when_ they find one, all the lower status worker bees will naturally follow, since the value of the old place drops significantly without the social leaders. People, especially the more easily bored social leaders, are somehow in an eternal quest for change. They tend to easily be bored in a low flox environment. The only thing FB _can_ do is prolong the time the queen bees will be interested enough to stay before their search goes on. They may hold them for 5 years but even that does not sound realistic. They will never be able to simply stop the migration, since this would mean rewiring hardwired behavioral patterns, which one tiny website, no matter how much users it by chance may have at a certain point of time, will simply not be able to do.
Re:Facebook doesn't fill a necessary role (Score:5, Insightful)
When you get down to it, there are several multi-billion dollar industries entirely based around things we don't really need, and many that have been around for a good while. Music, film, drugs, sports, perfume, computer games... In fact, in first world countries, stuff people don't need probably accounts for the majority of economic activity*. Facebook is hardly unique in that respect.
*Disclaimer: this claim is a wild guess based on no actual statistics, and what people "need" is arguable anyway.
Re:Facebook doesn't fill a necessary role (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Shallow (Score:5, Insightful)
What an idiot. He just says "MySpace falls first, Facebook falls second" without even attempting an analysis into why MySpace fell to Facebook. It's not the definitive analysis, in fact it's off-the-cuff, but here's mine:
MySpace was infantile. It encouraged aliases, whereas Facebook encouraged valid names. MySpace also had GeoCities personalization. There's nothing wrong with infantile if that's what you want your market to be. Facebook appeals to people of all ages, and that is one of the main reasons it won.
Now that Facebook has its installed base of the whole world, it's not going anywhere.
For some reason, the author of this article has AOL on the mind. He mentions "AOL chat rooms" as being in the same spectrum as MySpace and Facebook. Never mind that AOL chat rooms, by being on AOL, limited the potential audience to those on dial-up. More interesting to me is why Facebook has replaced UseNet or even the blogs that supplanted UseNet. The reason is that Facebook is people-centric while UseNet and blog are topic-centric. There is a reason why we call it "social networking". It's different.
I see Facebook as being the Microsoft Word that beat out WordPerfect, WordStar, and a host of platform-specific predecessors to those. Once Microsoft reached the installed base of the whole world, the whole world wasn't about to switch, at least not for a few decades. There was an ultimate and lasting victor in that chain of previous market failures. In the analysis of trends of word processors, it was a case of "Past Performance is No Guarantee of Future Results".
Re:Dead on. (Score:5, Insightful)
At some point, I think all social networking bullshit will inevitably be reduced to about 10% of what it currently is.
People will finally grasp what the rest of us grasped ages ago. That is, I have nothing worth saying that hundreds or thousands of people need to know about and none of them have anything worth saying that I give a damn about. We're all just a bunch of circle-jerking morons so wrapped up in ourselves and the trivial reciprocation (to ensure that those in our circle will continue to care about us, too). Eventually people will pull their heads out of their own asses and move on.
They'll return to the way things should be done. If you have something important to say and there are people in your life that are important enough to tell it to, you email them or call them. You have a direct dialogue with them, rather than this self-absorbed mass-broadcasting of everything, where those who are on the other end are merely absorbers of your greatness. And they'll contact you directly when they have something to talk about, too. Everything else doesn't need to be shared and you can have actual individual relationships and discussions with people.
It's the same way we went through the whole web thing. The first time you discovered the web, you probably spent endless hours doing random things, just because it was new and amazing. Fifteen years later, you recognize that the web is a vast wasteland of shit and you only utilize it and things on it when you have a specific objective. Random surfing is largely a thing of the past.
It also reminds me of the AOL days (during the time, I was an engineer at Netscape) in that "everyone" was amazed by it as a consumer or an investor, but everyone I knew saw it as an obsolete toy for people that hadn't yet grown out of it. And people eventually did. Just like there are countless rational people who step back and shake their heads at Facebook and the never-ending self-important social-networking habits of people . . . which we recognize as doomed to become obsolete.
Re:Dead on. (Score:0, Insightful)
> gotten me in touch with a lot of past friends.
> It is an easy way to post pictures of the family
> my kid deathly sick in the hospital
> I can also follow friends and family
You do not sound like a change leader queen bee who would ever want to change hives but more like a low-content worker bee who would just passively follow and sign up wherever another worker bees would sign up.
Re:Dead on. (Score:5, Insightful)
^ this,
Social networking has never interested me much, but during the birth of my child, my wife was in labour for nearly 15 hours. Normally, we would have had all sorts of friends and family trying to ring us or text us or whatever, just to know what was going on. Instead, I opted to tweet various status updates (which were automatically posted on facebook). This turned out to be a brilliant idea (I was just looking for something to do at the time) as people were kept up to date, nobody could complain that they weren't "told first" (something that happened when we announced our wedding) and all the messages coming through could be read at our leisure.
It was also just as easy to post up a picture mere minutes after he was born, once again everyone that WANTED to know did and those that didn't could just ignore it.
That would never work with email, or IRC or even instant messaging.
Re:Dead on. (Score:2, Insightful)
That would never work with email, or IRC or even instant messaging.
Uh...what? Your use case sounds like a perfect example of how to use a chatroom -- real time updates about a situation. That is exactly how I see LUG channels and 2600 channels being used.
Re:Dead on. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, this one is almost too easy: How can you compare aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc. to Linux users when it comes to use of technology and software tools?
Re:Dead on. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been on facebook for years. I rarely update my status or post photos now.
Your friends are boring, and so are you. So are most of my friends, but some of them (and myself) continue to kick out high-value links and status messages.
Re:If a (Score:5, Insightful)
There are people uploading their photographs to Facebook and not keeping backups, without realising that Facebook can permanently remove their ability to access them on a whim.
And there are people putting their photographs into binders and not making scans, without realizing that mother nature can permanently remove their roof and dump a bunch of water in their house on a whim. The problem here is the mentality of not making backups, not failbook.
fraud reekage (Score:4, Insightful)
The kicker is that the shares they themselves bought are unrestricted. The ones they are placing have big restrictions on selling. So now, once those restricted shares are placed they can turn around and dump the shares they bought. But those are worth quite a bit more, as they are unrestricted.
Goldman-Sax might rake in as much as a cool billion on this deal, while Facebook not only gets the cash, but they also get to enjoy this shiny new "valuation" in further deals.
What a racket.
You're a target (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, and most important to me, if I have a situation where people wants regular updates(my kid deathly sick in the hospital),
it is an easy way to send them without annoying people.
I can also follow friends and family with annoying them.
Two words: identity theft.
"Here's my last picture of grandpa Jones" means your mother's maiden name was Jones.
"Here's the family in front of our new home" means the street number appears on the photo.
And so on. I don't want to spread unnecessary data about myself and my family, that's why I don't use social networks.
Re:Dead on. (Score:5, Insightful)
People will finally grasp what the rest of us grasped ages ago. That is, I have nothing worth saying that hundreds or thousands of people need to know about and none of them have anything worth saying that I give a damn about. We're all just a bunch of circle-jerking morons so wrapped up in ourselves and the trivial reciprocation (to ensure that those in our circle will continue to care about us, too). Eventually people will pull their heads out of their own asses and move on.
I highly doubt this. I'm sure that you (and possibly everyone else on /. - and myself included) has that sort of attitude with respect to what we say, but when we come out of our caves and look at how others in society work, we still see that there are tons of people who keep spewing shit out of their mouth that they expect the whole world to be interested in (I mean, in which they expect the whole workd to be interested). Like that guy on the bus or subway that wants to talk about every damn word he reads in the paper. Or the girl waiting in line at the fast food counter talking on the top of her lungs into the phone while ordering. No - people will continue talking. There's just a small demographic (mostly on /.) that really doesn't, in fact, want to broadcast everything we know.
They'll return to the way things should be done. If you have something important to say and there are people in your life that are important enough to tell it to, you email them or call them. You have a direct dialogue with them, rather than this self-absorbed mass-broadcasting of everything, where those who are on the other end are merely absorbers of your greatness. And they'll contact you directly when they have something to talk about, too. Everything else doesn't need to be shared and you can have actual individual relationships and discussions with people.
Again, I disagree. First of all, if there's something you need to say to many people (like, It's a boy! or, I got a new job!), why would you go through the effort of telling everyone you know individually? Why wouldn't you bother letting everyone in the world know at once (keeping in mind that most people couldn't care less about their privacy or security of course)? Especially since everyone communicates through it instantly and en masse, whereas via a phone you can only have one-on-one dialogue.
For those things that you need to communicate individually, nothing will stop you from doing it, but Facebook offers a new medium for different needs. Plus the fact that you can send 'private' messages to those that you want to talk to exclusively at once, or create private groups for that matter.
It's the same way we went through the whole web thing.
Maybe the web just wasn't what a lot of people needed. A lot of people want Facebook as a medium for communication.
On the whole, I think most of this discussion is a false analogy. Facebook is different. It's something people actually want, and it's something that makes their lives easier and more enjoyable. The Web, AOL, they were all largely novelties that died down when people realized it wasn't relevant to them. Facebook is, however. And while there are few, and mostly inferior alternatives to it, it will remain large.
Of course, any sane person would have facebook blocked in their hosts file by now.
Re:Dead on. (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, what about the fact that now everybody and their bosses and their moms are friends with each other, people are censoring themselves because of fear of stigmatizing from whoever. People talk differently to their college buddies than with their parents, when it was just just your college friends with you, posting on it is like having a party in the dorms, and now posting on FB is more like giving a speech in your wedding, where everyone from your life is there. So people no longer talk freely.
Yep, it's doomed.
Re:Dead on. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is, I have nothing worth saying that hundreds or thousands of people need to know about and none of them have anything worth saying that I give a damn about.
he says as he posts to slashdot, one of the original social networking sites.
thousands are probably reading this, too.
oh, the (not irony - what's the word I'm looking for?)
Re:Dead on. (Score:5, Insightful)
Difference?
My grandma never used IRC. QED.
Re:Shallow (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just as shallow to compare a desktop software application's success to the much more transient, ephemeral, and difficult to quantify success of Facebook. Better to look at the Internet as a whole and ask a couple of simple questions.
First, name one network-wide, user-oriented application level service that was present when the commercial Internet opened for business in 1991 that is still in operation and use today.
Discounting UseNet and Email as infrastructure, the answer is likely "nothing." It's instructive to consider why. Early community plays on the Internet (The Well, The Globe, AOL, WebTV, and even MySpace) fell in succession, not because there weren't plenty of users and not because they weren't good services. They fell because, by definition, something newer and better comes along. It's the same reason we don't drive horse-drawn wagons to work. Supporting the infrastructure and feature set of an existing system means, by definition, that you will never be able to change and adopt new technologies as fast as someone else starting with a clean slate.
Second, what is so special about Facebook that it will avoid being obsolesced by the next cool fad? Answer again, "nothing".
Facebook's only advantage is the depth of its social graph. And as many posters have noted, the average Facebook user has a pretty static social graph and no need to add to it in any significant way now. Once you are fully connected, it becomes trivial to notify your graph that you are moving elsewhere, and then Metcalfe's Law kicks in. Once the infrastructure becomes distributed and you are no longer locked into a single service, people will be free to move their social graph and associated applications wherever they'd like.
Extrapolating the past lifecycles of similar, successful social sites to Facebook, it seems logical to conclude (as the author did) that Facebook's days are numbered. Maybe in the thousands, but numbered nonetheless.
Re:Dead on. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except, as I pointed out, the benefit of the social networking side is that people can ignore it if they want to. How many times have you ended up on an email list with constant emails coming through that you just don't care about?
Sure, I -COULD- have emailed every single person I happen to have on facebook (Which ranges from close family to old school friends whom I have the odd bit of banter with), but emails are a bit too linear. Even with just say 20 people replying and commenting on different things, you end up with conversations within conversations, topics jump back and forth and hundreds of emails get flung all over the place. Sure, it "works", but it's not very elegant. It's a bit like saying "people who drive cars just don't know how to ride a horse, which works just as well as a mode of transport".
Don't get me wrong, email is fantastic and I certainly use it every day (at work alone, I must get a few thousand emails a day) as an invaluable communication tool, but it is a bit "old hat", which is probably why google tried to replace it with Wave (shame it didn't take off).
With IRC or IM, you have to be there. What if you don't want to leave your computer running? What if you're not near your machine? Things like facebook happen to fill a very good niche. Sure, the "apps" are annoying as hell and it can get a bit spammy if just one or two of your friends are a bit "facebook-happy", but you can easily hide them.
I can't believe I'm on slashdot DEFENDING facebook, a site which I wouldn't necessarily miss if it died tomorrow, but while it's there and most people near and dear to me use it, I may as well make the most of it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hmm, this seems 2-dimensional (Score:5, Insightful)
This spectrum of interaction styles, including email, usenet, web forums, and facebook et al. makes me wonder if there is an underlying sociological or psychological message or two...
As a recently graying beard myself, I know I miss the days when usenet and email worked and were assumed to be the right solution. I still vaguely despise these new-fangled web forums for replacing usenet with more of a walled garden, where the forum operator can wield their little powers and also siphon ad revenue out of the cosmos. And I despise facebook et al because they go a step further, encouraging a narcissistic world view within a continuation of the web operator's unnecessary concentration of power.
But these are two different dimensions: greed drives the commercialization that works very hard to dismantle the decentralized nature of early Internet communication and replace them with walled gardens where ads and analytics can run wild---the conversion of the populace into a market/product. On the other dimension, the communication styles still range from personal 1:1 or 1:many (email, informal email lists); to celebrity-oriented broadcasts or cliques (email newsletters, blogs, conventional web columns); to topical forums (usenet before it rotted out, discussion forums like slashdot, research via search engine).
Those of us who despise the new social networking the most are often more academic- and engineering-oriented users. I think we secretly want to retain the web as a worldwide library where we can research whatever we need and possibly publish if and when we have something worth publishing. Meanwhile, we've got other users who want it to be some version of gossip circle, whether fitting the template of the town square, cafe, pub, school house, or street corner. And of course we've got greedy fuckers who don't care about any of that, really, as long as they can figure out how to exploit it---this includes the big corporations trying to control the market, the small sites living on ad revenue, the kids fantasizing about launching the next big thing, and the users hoping to get their big break and transcend to celebrity status.
Re:Dead on. (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it really social networking if most people are anonymous (either literally or using a handle). How may people make their e-mail addresses public?
This is just a giant chat group.