Well, people's engagement with facebook has certainly declined from its peak years ago.<p>However, all your "friends" are on it. Nobody wants to go back through that process on an upstart network. Nobody has the energy or motivation.<p>There's plenty of room for new entrants that take slices of your friends and optimize that experience. For example, another network for just your family... offering a close, intimate experience, one you feel comfortable sharing all your baby pics on, etc. Another network for professional (sorry, LinkedIn already there). Another for your classmates. All sitting under the facebook umbrella that has your entire social graph.<p>But one thing that's clear about facebook is they are not at all focused on improving the user experience any longer. They are not unveiling new features that improve <i>user</i> experience. They are fully engaged with improving the <i>advertiser</i> experience. Maximizing the value of the data they have on you. Maximizing ad revenue. These aren't bad things and are obviously necessary, but when a company seems 100% focused on the revenue rather than the <i>user</i>, I think that signals the start of a decline.
This comment caught my eye: "...I have learned that most content inside of Facebook is real crap. 'Ouch, I broke my toe' is one of the more interesting posts." This and other anecdotal evidence suggests Facebook is slowly turning into an online <i>public square</i> -- a place where it's in one's best interest never to do, say, or share anything private of real significance, because sooner or later the whole town will find out about it.
Facebook is going to forge a new path to irrelevance, not take the same path as MySpace. People will stop using Facebook because (1) they outgrow it, (2) they get tired of it, or (3) it lost its usefulness.<p>I don't believe another app will take its place. Rather, I think an existing app/platform is already Facebook's biggest competitor. And it's one you've been using for 30 years. Email.
I've simply stopped logging in to Facebook - since around last Christmas.
I don't miss it at all.
It was neat to catch up with childhood friends and old Army buddies however, there are other ways to keep in touch without feeding the data-dredge.
No. That said, they do seem to be either making mistakes or getting their eye off the target.<p>The publicly admitted target is to provide social networking for people. The obvious business target is to make money. But they have to make money while not annoying their users. We know their users are not their customers, because the users do not pay to use the service. The customers are the advertisers. Thus the balance between making sure the advertisers get their wares in front of as many eyeballs as possible while annoying the minimum number of users. And it seems to me that they have this balance wrong at this point. This will happen and if they are monitoring carefully, they'll tune the balance and people will be happy.<p>The longer-term challenge is that nothing lasts for ever (thanks 2nd law of thermodynamics). Facebook do not need to turn into MySpace to no longer be the top dog. Google wants the top position in the social networking space and they have lots of money to spend their way into it. Or Facebook can drop the ball and get their balance of advertising to their users wrong (see above). Or a new service could come along that finds a way to survive without being beholden to advertisers. (Open-source projects to the rescue?) Or, people could just get fed-up of all the mindless banter on Facebook and decide that they have more important things to do. Or, new networks will arise that actually interoperate, so you can connect to someone on another network. My prediction is that some of all of these will take place.<p>I have no preference. I am a pastor, so I go where the people are (people business after all) and right now, the people are on Facebook. If MySpace successfully restarts, I'll go there as well.
For those who scale down how they use it (make profile private, engage only w/ real-world friends, post some pictures) Facebook can be rewarding and useful. It's when you follow Facebook's own druthers to have a public profile and connect with everyone under the sun (and like every product under the sun) that Facebook suddenly becomes shit.
I stopped abusing Facebook about a year ago, and really haven't missed it at all.<p>The reason I stopped using is because I realised that quantity of posts was increasing while the quality was decreasing. My news feed just to be app activity, ads, and other chaff I am not interested in - not just my friends, but also friends of friends.
"Facebook is the next MySpace"
How many comments have said that?
But it is not. While certainly more bloated than it used to be it is still relatively fast to load and find stuff unlike Friendster and then MySpace (how did they make the same mistake?)<p>Why it will not go they way of MySpace is because no matter if you don't use facebook...you use facebook whenever you go to a ton of other sites. Its hard NOT to use fb.<p>So I say this...<p>Facebook is the new Ticketmaster.<p>If you want to go to a big concert or other big event, well you have to use Ticketmaster...at least almost have to just like facebook.
Until Facebook starts letting people make their profiles have white text on a yellow background with autoplaying music, I'm not too worried about it going anywhere.<p>If I deleted my Facebook, I would be cut off socially from so many people. My core group of friends would still be in contact with me, but the hundreds of friends and acquaintances I've made throughout the years would get lost to time.<p>Even with the people I see every day, the ease of collaboration with events and groups on Facebook makes it more than worth it to have it.<p>If you hate the newsfeed, then don't look at it. If you're upset that not all of the people that "like" your page don't see your band's post, you're part of the problem.
I do know about "mess" and problems with reaching fans of the page (wich arouse from the fact that people "like" too many pages in fact) but still Facebook remains more than a site - it's rather a social phenomena.
And that's why I don't see the way any competitor come on its place. Although competiton is always for good, of course.
Someone mentioned that any question asked in a headline has an answer: "no".<p>Thus, I propose the headline should read "Will Facebook Avoid MySpace's fate?"
if facebook is myspace and google+ is dead on arrival, what tool a normal person have to share photos and stories with his close friends and family? there is still a need for this kind of tool.
Facebook has been faking it for at least a year. By faking it I mean not growing under their own power. Now "Fakebook" either has to buy users (like the Instagram deal) or its growth is due to mostly fake users with fake likes giving fake metrics.<p>People are leaving Fakebook now. Not in droves (yet), but the opinion leaders within groups and families are. The ones that are informed are. And the rest will follow once there is another massive invasion of their privacy.<p>To those reading this who still use their Facebook account, try going without it for a month. See if you don't feel better. I know I did.
Well this guy clearly has questionable sense.<p>Myspace absolutely had a use. It just wasn't generic/clean enough for a mass audience. And as for his criticisms about Facebook. I personally have never experienced any of them.<p>Meanwhile the only 'mess' I see around is the Google+ feed. It's nothing but a geeky, low-brow clone of Reddit.