Hypothesis: Facebook is at it's peak, and can't go much farther into our online lives without completely overwhelming us with stuff. Hence, it's going to retreat-- at least a bit-- from the center of online social life for many.
So, when some guy named Jason Kincaid at Techcrunch says that Facebook is poised ot gobble up whole sectors of other interesting successful online social competitors, I say pffffft. (Watch Out Foursquare, Facebook is Poised To Dominate Geo).
Facebook currently is:
* a way to connect and communicate with old friends.
* a place to share stuff (namely photos) with said friends
* a way to promote yourself
* a place to waste time reading about your friends
* a place to play games/ take quizzes
Are you bored yet? What's the next big thing? Oh, I guess I'll just add another app to my iphone...
This is not to say that Facebook is going to go away, or become marginal. It's just saying that facebook the company is doing a whole lot of things these days. It does some things very well. But we're full, and with each new thing Facebook becomes more of a messy portal.
We're ready for something new. And we've got so many choices.
You may be right, especially when you're looking at it from the mobile perspective. In theory, a stream of your friends' activity is endlessly interesting. In practice... I'd like to see metrics on actual usage lifecycles. I'm still very active, but I also perceive that some people lost their taste for it.
ReplyDeleteThe one real asset FB has is that they got people to build out their social graphs. That data is valuable, but it's not gold. It's more like oxygen. And air is still free.
I agree there are limits to Facebook but not in the way you mean.
ReplyDeleteFacebook is just a broker for content between you, your friends, and other third parties and applications. So there isn't any reason why Facebook couldn't consume every single moment online.
The only limit is how much stuff that these relationships can produce that's valuable to you, and how rewarding Facebook can make that experience.
The risks I see for Facebook:
- their own stupidity; so far they haven't made a lot of really bad mistakes
- fatigue setting with activity streams and filtering models being unable to cope with increased usage. FB's activity streams are not reliable for important info
- an even *more* open platform coming along
Not sure I agree with this. Facebook is trying a bunch of different things around the volume of information that's coming at you to make it digestible. That's the biggest threat they have in terms of user fatigue.
ReplyDeleteThey also have a pretty good social graph and they know it -- if they keep users generally ok with it, there are tons of ways they can use that information to expand into geo/location, mobile, payment, retail, events, etc.
We've moved from the early years of the Internet where no one you knew cared about your identity online to a one dominated by search/Google where anonyimity was super important to one where everyone now knows who you are. Identity is hugely important now because information will come to you -- and search becomes more and more tiring.
i agree that fb is becoming cluttered with too many things - and playing games is not the main activity for me or most of my friends.
ReplyDeletemaybe there's an opportunity for vertical social networks/sites dedicated to subjects that are part of users' interests? i am thinking about not only ning, but other platforms that allow people to gather around their core interests (and meet other people with similar interests), not only gossiping around what their current contacts are doing