As the article stated, it's difficult to overcome the "grandma factor" -- once something becomes so pervasive as to be near-universal, even among persons unlikely to be clued in, its cool factor is diminished if not completely obliterated.<p>Some groups actively crave differentiation, and teenagers seeking to assert their independence are prominent among them. It can be difficult to express and explore in the way teenagers seek when you know all your grandparents, great grandparents, uncles, aunts, great uncles, great aunts, cousins, second cousins, etc. will be reading, as they surely will when you post on Facebook.
Facebooks is priced at 240X Price to Earnings. If they start losing users or even stop growing its hard to imagine how that PE ratio continues to makes any sense. Even with an increase in mobile revenue its still less then desktop revenue and users are certainly flocking to mobile too which is a double wammy. So facebook has to transition to making more money per user if its user base stops growing. Otherwise you're going to have people really questioning the price of the stock which could end up effecting the whole industry.
At the peak of the CB "bubble" around 1978, roughly 10% of all cars had a CB radio installed in them as a lower bound, although claims were it was higher, like 15% to 20%.<p>That percentage has dropped somewhat since then...<p>There is no particular reason to assume the peaking and decline of a socializing technology must result in its similar competitors growth in a nearly identical field. It could be home video conferencing or terminals built into vehicle seatbacks or far more likely, something we can't imagine at this time.<p>And no, for you youngsters, the smartphone was not the social technology replacement for CB, for basically all of the 80s and a substantial part of the 90s average people simply completely stopped technologically socializing in their cars. I see no reason to prevent future people from simply not socializing via handheld devices.<p>That doesn't mean the death of the industry, truck drivers still have CBs, but your grandpa probably does not (not since Carter was president, anyway)<p>The industry can only make money on the up slope, but investors and innovators can make money on both up and down slopes. Might be time to start thinking of money making schemes for the down slope.
Teens are attracted to Twitter, Instagram and Vine. They like these mini social network where they could gain followers by posing interesting tweets or photos or videos.<p>Youtube's top celerity usually started their channels when they were teen (high school, freshman). Certainly getting your channel popular now is harder, so the best way to get attention is either by posting photos or posting a 6-second videos.<p>Vine and Instavideos took the spike. Kids are spending more time watching videos and looking at photos than reading statuses.<p>Ironically, IMO, Vine and instavideos took off partly because people could publish to FB and Twitter. I spend most of my FB time either reading memes or vine videos. i don't pay much attention to status anymore.
> However, teenagers have made it clear with their quick adoption of social networks such as Instagram and Snapchat they want to share everything and with as many people as possible.<p>Alternative explanation - teens want to share ephemerally and with a certain degree of anonymity. They don't want their parents looking over their shoulder at their friends or conversations, and seek to avoid entanglement with sections of their social network that are going to bully them or have a significantly lasting effect tied to a persistent searchable identity.
As more teenagers gravitate toward online social networks (if not Facebook, then Instagram, etc.), I'm concerned that not enough of them will feel lonely.<p>I recently watched a Louis C.K. interview about young people and technology, which struck a chord with me. I agree that adolescents benefit from a sense of boredom and isolation because it encourages them to cultivate stronger in-person social networks:<p><a href="http://teamcoco.com/video/louis-ck-springsteen-cell-phone" rel="nofollow">http://teamcoco.com/video/louis-ck-springsteen-cell-phone</a>
Didn't Zuck say recently that the actual numbers weren't concerning, and that they're aware they are past the "cool" stage and instead want to move on to become the social fabric of the Internet, much like a utility.
I don't even think that the reason is "Facebook isn't cool anymore". Facebook is just annoying at this point. When Facebook was for your friends from college and/or high school, things were great. You could post embarrassing things that people did, inside jokes, whatever. Now your mom is on Facebook. your grandma is on Facebook, and so is your boss. Yes you can stop them from seeing everything you post or everything your friends post, but no one knows that. There's probably a 50/50 chance that if I were to post something funny and slightly embarrassing on a friends wall, BAM, there's their grandma who is a tad bit confused. Then of course your friends grow up and all they post is baby pictures.<p>Teenagers, who are looking to keep things private between them and their friends, can't have their mom popping up on their Facebook pages all the time.
MySpace is laughing ... not maliciously but because they now understand that teens are a migratory species. You can't expect them to stay anywhere.
There are really two hypotheses:<p>1) _Teenagers in general_ do not use Facebook (which does _not_ rule out that they will become avid Facebook users once they grow out of their teenage years)<p>2) _Today's teenagers_ disinterest in Facebook is fundamentally different than it was for teenagers' of several years ago (which would suggest they'll never get attached to Facebook the way previous teenagers once did, and therefore never become avid Facebook users).<p>The 10-K report suggests #2 ("younger users were less engaged with the social network than previously") but my hunch is that it's more like #1 (I argued this here: <a href="http://whoo.ps/2013/03/04/teens-go-where-identity-isnt" rel="nofollow">http://whoo.ps/2013/03/04/teens-go-where-identity-isnt</a>).<p>Teenagers now have more social networking options (Instagram, Snapchat, etc.) to choose from than previous generations of teenagers - which explains why today's teenagers are less engaged with Facebook than previously - but that doesn't mean they won't want/need the kind of canonical identity that Facebook provides (once that awkward, impressionable teenager actually grows into an adult with a firmer identify).
For those referring to the social utility of Facebook, I recommend hiding your news feed. The newsfeed is not a social utility, whereas messages, profiles, looking up mutual friends, etc. IS a social utility. Here's how to hide your newsfeed without affecting your experience on the rest of the site:<p><a href="https://medium.com/productivity-efficiency/631ed8f466e1" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/productivity-efficiency/631ed8f466e1</a><p>Basically, this trick uses a Chrome extension that hides the newsfeed using custom CSS.
I suppose the coming months/years will be when we see whether Facebook becomes the "backbone of the social Internet" or just another MySpace. I honestly don't know where the smart money is here-- it's an exciting time!
This inevitability is an assumption of Facebook's strategy (see Zuckerberg's Letter), and the reason they bought Instagram.<p>My suspicion is that teenagers will engage Facebook as they become adults and the social pressures shift.
Aren't Instagram and Snapchat completely different products? Of course, these compete on the 'share of time' of the users, in which case everything teens do is competing with Facebook.
They've been losing teens for a while now, and once you start losing teens, a so-called "social networking" website is dead, it doesn't know it yet because the agony may take a while.<p>Due to its unusual size for facebook it might take a longer while, but it's on the path to irrelevance that many others have walked before: friendster, myspace, msn, etc.<p>it's funy that the 10-13 years demographics adoption will make or kill an online website.
As a teenager, Twitter is what everyone is using currently. Don't complicate it, teens just want to be on what their friends are on, and their parents are not on.<p>Twitter just fits the need.