Facebook admits defeat

I don't see Facebook going away. It remains the people directory of choice by a pretty substantial margin and the longer that people have invested their time and energy into it, the less likely it will be for them to remove their page. It's just not going to be a preferred way for people to communicate with their closest circle of friends.

Here's a piece that was on NPR yesterday about a woman's study of kids' online habits.

http://www.npr.org/2014/02/25/282359480/social-media-researcher-gets-how-teenagers-use-the-internet

The author uses the phrase "context collapse" for the problem Facebook faces as a social media platform. People are increasingly less interested in communicating with their entire sphere of "friends" (classmates, relatives, parents, friends who share different interests); there's a migration to more personalized channels for social communication.

I doubt think people are leaving Facebook so much as engaging with it less frequently over time.

 

Hmmmmm, an e-mail address you never activated or used never got an e-mail? Interesting concept.

 

Facebook will end someday, but right now it is moving from college kids to educational portals and the way that adults communicate.

It's still years away from crapping out.

 

And the company they bought is going to launch free voice calling through the app. Already has free texting and more than 485 million members and growing at a faster clip than Facebook did in its prime. Hmmmm.... so Facebook owns a company that can bring free calling and free texting to a cell phone. Can you see where this is headed? Facebook could be in line to change the cell-phone game if they can get their hands on a subset of people that will exclusively use Facebook/What's App to call and text for free instead of spending $60 per month with Verizon or ATT.

If everyone had What's App, there would be no reason to text or call. And if there is no reason to text or call you wouldn't have to pay $40 a month or more for cell phone minutes. Of course, cell phone providers like ATT are already rolling texting and minutes into the base fee. You are required to get texting now for $20 or so, even if you don't use it. But what if an outlier like T-Mobile or a newcomer changed that and offered a $50 unlimited plan where your calls go through What's App and texts too? You just pay for the data.

This could happen.

 

It is the trailer park of conversation.

 

The trailer park of conversation are the comments on news articles and YouTube videos.

 

Please dude, it's like an Oprah hour most days.
Everyone has their problems, but on Facebook it's all anyone seems to want to talk about.

 

That's a tough one... If they're not putting out an actual product, it's hard to lump them with IBM and Apple... Google maybe...

 

You are using a very dated notion of a "product."

Instagram is a product. What's App is a product.

When I compare Facebook to IBM and Apple, what I mean is that it will likely not be confined to a signature single product, but rather morph into a general tech/computing company that is constantly changing what it actually does.

 

I always thought everyone on Facebook was trying to make themselves seem perfect.

 

Except the part about sending it through WhatsApp, that's already happening.

 

That's what happens a year after stock craters under $20.
More time and care is being invested per unit of intellectual content.
Zuck knows how vapid and stale his original model has become.