Is Facebook doomed? (Alternatively: Is social networking, in general, doomed?)

I will just echo what Bob Cook and Abbot said up page. My teenager rarely uses Facebook, my Mother in law however is all over it.

The novelty of reconnecting has moved on and kids don't want to be part of something uncool.

 

Going public and trying to satisfy shareholders and consumers is an extremely difficult balance in the social media space. The things you hate about Facebook are the exact things that shareholders are demanding.

 

Yeah, stockholders tend to forget what made the enterprise worth the investment. One of the weak spots of the economic system we've developed.

 

My three sons, all in their 20's, joined Facebook early, early on and now they rarely use it. I don't think Facebook is considered even remotely cool any more because it's full of old people.

It's gonna die.

 

On the other hand, while the news feed might have lost its luster, there is a lot of Facebook that Kids These Days still use. It's text and video chat functions are used quite a bit in my house among my younger set.

 

The shareholders didn't invest in Facebook because Facebook (as it was) was so successful. The shareholders invested in Facebook because there was a chance that Facebook would continue to be successful in that manner once it began trying to make money, and that continued success would enhance its money-making prospects. It appears that things haven't played out that way, of course, but it's not like Facebook's going public damaged an otherwise profitable franchise.

 

The problem for any social media company is that there is always such a user backlash when the big money comes in.

 

What still amazes me is that some people currently have aol.com email addresses. Makes me wonder if they still participate in the aol.com dedicated chat rooms.

 

Which is what I am saying. There's a million other ways stockholders are a dysfunction to the sound running of a business: insisting on a profit margin that tips the balance from a fair share to an amount that compromises the company's ability to fully do what made it a solid company in the first place; staging coups that at times have little to do with how well the company's being run, stuff like that.

 

The main thing that has driven me (and I say driven but it's more drifted) from Facebook is the abundance of updates I simply don't care about. It's why Twitter is far and away my favorite social network. I choose what I want to follow and it's all fed to me nicely and neatly with no clutter. I decide I don't like something? Unfollow, problem solved.

Facebook is structurally different in that regard because of the nature of having "friends" and the way updates are fed, along with the increasing presence of advertising.

I also feel like, as someone that likes others to hear what I have to say, Twitter is a far, far more effective medium. The people following me are generally actually interested in what I have to say. They're not getting my updates just because we met once in high school or college. That's the way it's going to have to be in the future ... user-driven and user-selected content. How Facebook finds a way to adapt to that model, I have no idea.

But if it wants to survive, it's got to find a way to at least somewhat mimic that aspect of a network like Twitter. It goes along with the "uncool" factor. I don't want to have to duck and dodge parents and aunts and uncles and wonder whether me posting something on this person's wall will be seen by their parents if I'm a young person writing a wall post.

Part of what made Facebook great early on was that it give you a glimpse into people's lives (at least speaking as a very young, early user of Facebook) that you couldn't get if they had to worry about what they were posting. The userbase has expanded so much now that it's no longer a "safe" medium for the uninhibited.

It's why networks like Twitter expanded so rapidly. It's why things like Vine and Instagram are the new frontier.

BTW, as a side note, if you're on a sports beat and not following players on Vine and Instagram, you're doing it wrong. So many insights into players / breaking news tips. Anyway, I digress.

 

I guess you can make that argument in some cases, but with Facebook it's pretty far off the mark. Facebook wasn't all that profitable a company to begin with. It offered tons of promise, sure, but that's all it offered. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, of course. Most IPOs involve companies that are long on promise and short on current profits. And the promise that Facebook offered, it rested precisely on the things that, it's turned out, seem to have turned people off.

 

In most industries, investors see profits; with social networks, they see a huge audience they believe can be converted into profits.