Reasons to think that, in terms of influence if not wealth, Facebook has peaked

I’m no fan of Facebook, but I don’t agree with the premise of the article. The power of Facebook lies in its network effect: something on the order of 2 billion have active Facebook accounts. Whether or not people are spending more or less time on the platform doesn’t matter as much as people seem to think it does. What matters is the fact that they can associate web browsing actions (pages visited etc) with your Facebook account. Just having a Facebook account that you “don’t use” allows a massive amount of value (from an advertisers perspective) to be unlocked.<p>In my opinion no other network is going to be able to compete with the number of users on facebooks platform, and any that do, Facebook will buy or copy (Instagram and Snapchat respectively). Even if you don’t actively look at anything on Facebook, or even log in, the fact that you have a Facebook account allows advertisers to track and target you with ads on all sorts of platforms and websites that are available to Facebook advertisers through the audience network (ad placements on millions of websites and mobile apps). The crucial moat that Facebook has is simply the massive nimber of registered users (that correspond to people’s real identity) on the platform combined with sophisticated tools to reach those users both on and off Facebook.<p>I’d love to hear an opposing argument, but the way I see it Facebook is here to stay and will only get bigger and more profitable in the foreseeable future.

Facebook is just getting started. Imagine you have a dataset that can identify over a billion people around the world simply by looking at their face. When you walk into McDonalds, cameras analyze you and the people you enter with. Oh, there&#x27;s John Smith and his friend Tom. He loves the McFlurry. Instantly the digital menus rearrange to feature a large McFlurry, animating and advertising a deal on the largest size. Facebook is just beginning to monetize the value of what they have created.

I&#x27;m not sure if this article can support a substantive discussion or not, but thought it might be worth the trick of taking a more complex phrase for the title in the hope of stimulating more substantive responses. HN threads are often like those psych tests that measure complexity of response by time delay.<p>It&#x27;s a bit weird, but there&#x27;s some reason to believe that just the small tax it imposes on the brain to parse a complex title may slow it down enough to discourage pure reflex in reaction. Reflective, not reflexive, reactions are what we&#x27;re going for here.

They&#x27;re influencing the internet in more ways than just social stuff, though. From a technology perspective, Facebook is doing solid work. And it looks like they&#x27;re continuing the trend - rather than being at the end of it.<p>Facebook&#x27;s open source footprint is quite influential. Namely, React + Redux + Reselect are pretty sweet. React-Native. Haven&#x27;t used it, but hhvm.<p>And I haven&#x27;t heard of this one before, but it looks cool: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;facebook&#x2F;prepack" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;facebook&#x2F;prepack</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;facebook" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;facebook</a><p>That&#x27;s a nice portfolio.

Without going to deeply into the content of the article, just because a company has “peaked” doesn’t mean it’s “failing”. IBM peaked decades ago, but still has a somewhat successful business. Microsoft peaked in terms of influence probably a decade ago, but is still important. I doubt that Facebook will go the way of MySpace or Yahoo anytime soon.

Almost nobody talks about lack of trust, yes there are words about fake news and formal reassurances from FB staff that they will investigate, fix and so on. But trust was already undermined, you just can&#x27;t restore it to previous level.<p>People were reading news in FB feed and didn&#x27;t even think it can be fake, now they read and go &quot;outside&quot; for fact checking. Not a good sign for social network which wants you to be engaged all the time.

Facebook just needs to lose its &quot;evil&quot; image. I could throw out ideas but let&#x27;s face it everyone does that and I have zero experience running a social network. Right now the biggest obstacle facing Facebook is that people are starting to think that using Facebook is bad for you and bad for society. Facebook cannot survive in such a climate indefinitely. If it&#x27;s true, make it false. If it&#x27;s false, prove it.

In a math sense, the signal to noise ratio on FB became much higher over the last decade. At inception, it was a focused way to directly communicate with a close college circle. Now its effectively as open as Myspace, bombards you with ads, and as with all wide networks, the discourse has dropped to meme &#x2F; quiz bot level (Which annoying social media app represents you?!)

I deleted my Facebook account two years ago (Valentine&#x27;s day 2016). Before doing so I reached out to my close&#x2F;medium ties and exchanged numbers, encouraging them to check out Signal as a way to contact me. Some of them demurred (nothing to hide) but pretty much everyone adopted Signal after the election, heh.<p>I don&#x27;t have a huge amount of &quot;friends&quot; now, but I have a small group of people I text or call occasionally. I feel happier and more connected than I did using Facebook.

Hey guys, don&#x27;t believe in doomsayers.<p>Market (aggregate opinion of investors) is often smarter than each individual.<p>The market assigns a fairly healthy P&#x2F;E ratio to FB. Similar to that of Google. Both better than that of AAPL.<p>All in all, I&#x27;d ignore this dude&#x27;s predictions. Facebook has a bunch of smart people. Market is factoring in plenty of growth into FB&#x27;s stock. Given market&#x27;s expectations, I&#x27;d bet this guy is wrong.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nasdaq.com&#x2F;symbol&#x2F;fb&#x2F;pe-ratio" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nasdaq.com&#x2F;symbol&#x2F;fb&#x2F;pe-ratio</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nasdaq.com&#x2F;symbol&#x2F;goog&#x2F;pe-ratio" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nasdaq.com&#x2F;symbol&#x2F;goog&#x2F;pe-ratio</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nasdaq.com&#x2F;symbol&#x2F;aapl&#x2F;pe-ratio" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nasdaq.com&#x2F;symbol&#x2F;aapl&#x2F;pe-ratio</a><p>(2018 was a special year due to a one-time write-off, check out 2019 and beyond)

I mean Facebook has arguably reached all the audience it could reach.<p>The only way they could keep growing is the increase time spent on their platform. That said Id conjecture the optimization towards short term reward cycles (more clickbaity articles being recommended, etc.) loses customer loyalty over the long run

social media has peaked? which sites are still growing in westernized countries?

This may be true for Facebook in the US and other developed countries.<p>Facebook is still making inroads in countries that are just getting connectivity (like Myanmar).<p>Revenues will come from developed countries though so I&#x27;m not sure if Facebook can sustain its business off developing countries.

Anecdotally, I&#x27;m one of the people who walked away from Facebook this year, due to exhaustion, disinterest, disgust, protest, or other (negative) reasons. I don&#x27;t miss it and won&#x27;t be going back.<p>Amusingly, after about a week, Facebook started emailing me to try to entice me to come back. So I logged back in to disable those emails.

What are the masses switching to?

Are we talking about facebook.com the website, or Facebook the company ?

I stopped looking often at Facebook. I don&#x27;t like their upgrade and more people are posting stupid things on the network. To be honest I don&#x27;t care about it anymore. Instagram, whatsapp and Snapchat have taken over most of Facebook imho.

I like the irony :D<p>&quot;Eight reasons Facebook has peaked&quot;<p>&quot;please follow me on Twitter or Facebook&quot;

Firstly, when did prediction and conjecture become news? Would be great if the news industry stuck to actual news.<p>Secondly, lets hope so and lets hope that will finally put an end to the crazy amount of hit pieces by the media on facebook and social media. Has anyone older ever witnessed anything like this before? The media, both in the US and the UK, has been obsessed with facebook and social media for past year. It&#x27;s like someone declared war on facebook&#x2F;social media and ordered the entire industry to attack them. The only thing I can compare it to is north korea&#x27;s media&#x27;s rabid attacks on SK, US and Japan.<p>Anyone else &quot;entertained&#x2F;exasperated&quot; by the media blitz against facebook.