A couple things. Facebook has adapted quickly to threats. Facebook v. Myspace - facebook offered a cleaner look compared to the ugly looking, individualizing, music playing profiles Facebook v. Twitter - Twitter threatened to kill Facebook. Facebook simply adopted and now its more Twitter-like, allowing people to post their thoughts. It has created a more attention-w**** atmosphere but the Facebook culture remains. Hotmail gave email accounts... you can still email people that have a college email, or a company email. Hotmail offered a service to people and I could contact those people with my corporation's email. It didn't matter if you're on hotmail or not. Facebook, on the other hand, requires people to be on facebook in order to get its benefit. Being on twitter, or myspace, doesn't allow someone to message or friend someone on facebook. That being said, there may be some revolutionary technology that Facebook won't be able to replicate. Sort of like Google's search engine that people are unable to copy. However, Facebook has been able to adapt to its threats by constantly adapting and swallowing its competitor's advantage (Twitter). As far as the privacy issue, Facebook gives all sorts of privacy capabilities for the user to choose. I can allow the whole world to see my profile, or mutual friends, or only my friends and... I can even block out EVERYONE trying to search for me. I did this when I got my job. I didn't want my employer seeing that I'm on facebook. Thus, I only stayed in contact with my current friends. Facebook did have a problem with privacy, but like I said, they have constantly adapted it to fit the concerns of its users. Facebook adapts, adapts, and adapts. Only something that can't be copied will defeat it.
I agree. Look how Google and Amazon have died off. I mean, everything must die... right? The difference between MySpace and Facebook is that MySpace (and Friendster) were first generation ideas. Just as Yahoo was with search. Those companies pioneered the ideas, but they didn't perfect them. Then the Googles and Facebooks were able to see all the problems and start from scratch with a much more polished product. Something better can always come along - there's no doubt about that. But at some point, companies achieve critical mass that's very difficult to unlodge. Facebook now has the same core advantages Google has - a sophisticated and easy-to-use product, lots of money and institutional support, and the simple law of numbers. With Facebook, most people's friends are on it. If you join something for the sole purpose of interacting with lots of people, you're going to go to the site where lots of people are. A startup has huge obstacles overcoming that today. It's many orders of magnitude more difficult to unseat Facebook, Google, and Amazon than it was to unseat MySpace, Yahoo, and the various low-end ecommerce sites that originally cropped up.
Am I the only one that still uses tons of Yahoo! products? I prefer Google for search, but Yahoo has a lot of original content that is quite solid. I've also stuck with their e-mail.
I really only use it for Flickr, but I was using flickr before they got bought out by Yahoo. Fantasy football I still do on Yahoo, best hands down. Yahoo sports coverage has been very great the past few years, I find myself going there for news, and following some of the writers on twitter.
Yahoo Finance and Sports are both great. I think they really need to evolve into an entirely content-based company instead of trying to be a bad search portal.
I play games on facebook.. and talk to my relatives that live far away... other than that I don't do much on it. Though some of my local friends/family use it to plan get togethers.
MySpace died because it stayed the same. Facebook is always changing which keeps it fresh. Some people like that. Some people don't, but it's always changing and it's always in the news when it does. And press is always good for your product and facebook is going to be around for awhile.
Can't see Facebook dying. It's too popular nowadays. Even if something better comes out, it's going to be hard especially for people with 700 friends to migrate somewhere else and have to add all their friends again.
The crazy thing to me about Facebook and Twitter is all the free advertising they get. It's almost as if they're a public utility like a phone number. Every one of these television shows and websites that gives out their Facebook and Twitter addresses, that's just free advertising. It's amazing how they've been able to intertwine themselves into the marketplace. That's genius.
It's going to die eventually... thats what I'm saying.... LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE DIED... so will FaceBook...
I graduated HS in 1980 and by far the greatest percentage of my 200 FB friends are people I went to HS with and of those the huge percentage are people I lost touch with over the years. It's cool to see what people are doing with their lives, what their kids look like, etc.
Not anytime soon, cowboy. Myspace had like a good three year run. Facebook is going strong just like google.
Hotmail is dead? I still prefer to use hotmail, mostly because how in sync it is with my msn live accounts is also in sync with windows live/gaming account. I have a gmail but still prefer hotmail overall, but maybe it's just because I'm used to it. This is also the difference between MySpace and Facebook. If you're 35 and was on MySpace even during it's hey-day, you're an anomaly don't really advertise it. But even people in the corporate world with a family have a facebook accounts. A good percentage of people on my friends list are people from work (which is making me think twice about perhaps having a separate account but that's another story) and grown ups tend to get in a pattern and are very lazy to get out of it.
Well, certainly, 5000 years from now, Facebook will be gone. So you're correct. But your original post said it would die "pretty soon".
It's not exactly an unreasonable comparison, especially when looking at business models and market philosophy. They follow a lot of the same ideas and strategies. Beyond that, if you look at site traffic: http://www.hitwise.com/us/datacenter/main/dashboard-10133.html Google and Facebook are a distant #1 and #2 over everyone else.
I'm comparing it in terms of being a bigger business... Google is a global phenomenon that earns BILLIONS of dollars as opposed to Facebook which I don't think is even in the billions yet. By website traffic, I can see how Facebook would be number 2... the majority of people nowadays are either on a social networking website, buying something, or searching. All I'm trying to say is... people get sick of things... eventually Facebook is going to die because of that, I mean that's how I see it.
