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

MySpace reinvented itself a bit by catering to the music crowd.

 

I have college and HS aged kids, snap chat is big, twitter is on the decline and FB is something everyone has but no one uses it like they did 4 years ago. Kids go days without checking it out, except possibly FB messenger.

FB is corporate and mainstream. The only ubiquitous aspect of FB is that other sites allow you to to sign in and log on via your FB ID. As a universal Internet ID, it's tremendous, no more passwords to remember and log in IDs to recall.

As a money making device it's the equivalent of the 1st pick in the baseball draft. You are paying for prospective performance without past proven ability. 1st picks are usuaully quality but they completely fail more tha they become HOF material.

FB is nothing but a platform for others. It's privately owned public space, the cost of upkeep is greater than its revenue because its essentially free.

 

I think all technology has a short shelf life these days and CEO's of such companies better always be looking for "the new new thing " (to coin Michael Lewis phrase) if they want to remain relevant.

There are some interesting business studies to be done on companies built on a business model of giving their product away for free to the pubic and then finding ways to generate sustainable revenue.

Right now the model seems to be for owners to develop unique idea / technology and then make money off IPO or sale to other company wanting the technology.

 

Pretty good article in the New Yorker a couple issues ago, about how Facebook and the rest of the tech people in northern California are all self-involved douches.

Those guys and gals all seem to think they'll be around forever.

It is easy to think of Facebook as the flavor of the year in social media and they'll fade away when the next thing rolls around but the next thing might just be a branch of the Facebook tree. I suspect they'll come up with a way to make it tighter. Where you don't get the barrage of recipes, those drive me crazy, and the people who post the stupid meme pics of whatever.

 

That seems like a glorified Ponzi scheme to me.

 

It's value also plummeted to $35 million when News Corp. sold it a few years ago.

 

Just went to MySpace and updated my page, tried to send an update. What an abortion.

 

I don't see it that way. If someone develops proprietary technology that another
company sees as a benefit to their business model how is that a ponzi scheme?

Acquiring company is not buying based on existing revenue stream.

As far as IPO option, it's the buyer beware. You have to do your research.
When it comes to technology the advise of Warren Buffet stands-- "don't
invest in what you don't understand"

One thing to admire in a tech company like Apple has been their ability to
continually reinvent themselves to remain relevant.

 

It's not a Ponzi scheme, but more akin false hope. Venture funds and angel investors see successes and want those same returns. With rewards increasing, investors aren't doing their due diligence. A lot of bad money in the hope a next Google emerges.

Look at Digg and how far its star fell.

 

A lot of the Facebook growth was people, such as myself, who used it to reconnect with friends we hadn't seen or heard from in a long time. There was a novelty in finding out what happened to this person or that person, and it was pretty heady to get all that info quickly.

Of course, now that we know what happened -- mainly, that some of them turned into Bible or political freaks, or TMI types. I'm still somewhat active, but I've seen a falloff among many Facebook friends. Some of it is expressly because they didn't want to be harangued by spam or the junior high friend who KNOWS 9-11 WAS A FALSE FLAG OPERATION. But I think some of it is that not everyone is the sort of egocentric douche (like myself) who feels like making regular pithy updates just for the hell of it. And for that, there's Twitter, because instead of sending messages to your aunt, you're sharing them among (presumably) people with shared interests, or at least someone you've chosen (or has chosen you) as interesting.

Plus, when you get to 700 million users or whatever ridiculous number Facebook claimed, there is going to be a drop.

I don't think Facebook will effectively die off like MySpace or Friendster, but it will have to evolve in what will always be a competitive social media marketplace.

 

The advertising revenue these days is a lot different than it was for AOL back in the late 1990s. I'm guessing if AOL had found a way to monetize its site beyond the subscribers, it might still be what it was...

Facebook has been around for awhile. The only reason I can think that it would go away is if someone comes up with something better.

 

I would agree with you if it hadn't gone public. I mean, it had to eventually. But as we all know, stock price pressure tends to change a product. It's sink-or-swim at that point.