3 Reasons Why Facebook Will Die Soon
It’s just a matter of time before Facebook’s honeymoon is over. Although, it seems that social network juggernaut is indestructible, I don’t think the fairytale will last for too much longer. Here is why it fails:
1. Too much clutter — what turned me on Facebook from the beginning was the simple, clean user interface which Myspace drastically lacked. This has all changed since mid 2007 when they launched the Facebook platform allowing 3rd party apps on the site. Great idea at the time, but now the site has become a cluster f**k of useless widgets that, for the most part, don’t provide much value and are quickly forgotten. This will come back to haunt them.
On the part of Facebook, I think this was a strategic mistake. Instead of throwing up all of these apps in a 3rd party free-for-all (there are currently 22,408 apps), they should have considered a more regulated, phased approach. For example, wait until the lifecycle of one app is coming to an end, before you introduce another one. This way users are not inundated with all the garbage and that squeaky clean UI can be maintained.
Moreover, I can see things only getting worse as the need for advertising dollars prevail and Facebook slowly becomes a virtual billboard with more ads — this why most people (like myself) jumped the MySpace ship.
2. The ‘cool’ factor is long gone — when your uncle has a profile and is facebooking, you know the cool kids are not going to stay for long. This is a natural occurrence and we’ve seen it many times. Case in point = friendster. Friendster started off as social network for a lot people in the ‘in’ crowd and soon became overcrowded by the mainstream masses. When this happened the cool kids left the party and the rest soon followed. This is how fads are started, and this is how they die. Cool kids find something that quickly becomes popular, the masses follow, the cool kids leave, the masses follow.
3. Too many social networks, not enough time — more and more niche social networks are popping up and users will eventually spend more time on sites that focus more directly around their interests than large, general social networks. I think the MySpaces and Facebooks serve as great learning tools for the masses to understand how to use social networks. But eventually FB and MS will lose their appeal and only serve as gateways letting users find niche social networks that are more in line with their specific interests with more meaningful interactions (and they won’t have to get poked or bitten by a vampire).
There is a slew of other reasons that also indicate that Facebook could be toast soon. $15 Billion, ha… I wouldn’t hold my breath.
9 Comments to “3 Reasons Why Facebook Will Die Soon”
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Although I agree with all of these points, facebook is just beginning to roll out into global markets and still has a lot of the world to conquer…
Hi Douglas1 – if they can successfully overcome the language/translation barriers for their framework, yes, there is still plenty of room for growth. However, when the decline starts at home (U.S. market is 40% of their user base) it might be too late to recover and hold onto their $15B valuation.
One thing I totally agree with is the applications. I think that Facebook should have some guts and erase all the applications and then start making developers apply to be able to put applications onto the platform. The problem is that whether Facebook users want it or not Facebook is turning into a worldwide network and long gone is the time when you could post pictures from a party or have a bunch of silly apps on your profile and not have strangers see it. We’re entering a time when everything is a lot more transparent even if you are on a smaller niche network.
I will disagree with you though that Facebook is going to disappear I just think that it is going to be seen as a tool more than a fad. The problem with your assumption that niche sites are going to takeover is that you are assuming people join social networks to actually network or to meet new people. I totally disagree. Although SoberCircle is a good idea, for me personally I don’t really want to meet a ton of other people who like basketball or who own their own companies. I have enough to do without trying to validate myself by becoming online buddies with people I don’t know and I think that is why Facebook has had so much success. They realized that for the most part people wanted to be able to keep in touch with old friends and quickly show who they are to their new friends (who they met the old fashioned way). I think that is why so many people are adding it because it connects people everywhere independent of what you like, where you live, etc. And the groups allow those who want to meet people online to do so. Just my opinion though.
I don’t think people necessarily join social networks ‘to meet people’. What drives people to join and participate is 1) everyone else is doing it 2)the SN provides some utility or value for the user.
Facebook is great for keeping up with friends and organizing parties, but it doesn’t provide an environment that enables like-minded people to interact and network. A one-size-fits-all SN will never work and it’s just a matter of time FB users start to break away.
Another factor (I didn’t mention in the post) that will eat away at Facebook, is the growth of self-built social networks. For example, at Ning there are already 230,000 user-created SNs and the user base is growing at 1M people a day…
Hi Bob
As per my recent rant about Facebook (which you were kind enough to read and comment on) I closed my account a few days back. Basically, I’d had enough. I’ve been trying to eliminate a lot of the clutter in my life and each and every time I logged on to Facebook – which was becoming more and more of a rarity – I was becoming increasingly annoyed, mostly with the neverending application requests.
However, I agree with Douglas that it’s going to get bigger and bigger. It’s unstoppable. In fact, I half-suspect Facebook might actually end up being a bigger threat to global harmony than Skynet.
I don’t expect my absence to make much of a different, but darn if it doesn’t feel gooood…
Cheers,
Sheamus
it’s not dying anytime soon, maybe after you retire that first email account thats been spammed to death and decide to let the account expire. As far as time goes, people will spend their time online as much as they want — share their info with as many as they want. Social networks allowing applications to be built ontop has attempted to allow the next stage of development to occur on their platform instead of leaving them in the dust for the next thing, cross-social-platform web-apps are just around the corner.. Like you have hotmail and I use yahoo, its just email, just social networks, just you and your interests connecting to others — I have some comments on facebook[link], but after using it for a while its really one of the simplest apps to share pictures, and doesn’t that say a 1000 words?
You’re right, the fad will fade and for the reasons you give. I’ll add what has killed it for me over time. Two things: the more “friends” you add, the less you can say without wishing you didn’t or the less authentic you can be (most of these people aren’t really friends!); also most of the growth recently has been the older crowd and they’re loving it right now because they’re catching up with old friends – once they catch up with enough, it gets downright boring.
facebook is run by the biggest n rudest faggs in the world, n they don’t give a bloody shit about their customers. sorry to say that my account was disabled twice without any reason, n the only way for them to learn their lesson is to be overcome by another new social networking website. let’s just hope that happens. facebook is useful, but it doesn’t help when these faggs arbitrarily disables u for fun n never respond to emails–if they do, it’s the automated response, n their tone is extremely rude. like when they emailed me bak, if the biach was in front of me i woulda knocked every single one of his teeth out. no kidding.
Although I am indifferent about Facebook, I would have to agree with you. I believe that Facebook’s popularity will die soon. I give it about 1-2 more years. Because the internet is rapidly changing, I’m pretty sure that there will be some new website that will become the new Myspace/Facebook.
I mean look at Myspace. It peaked around 05-07 and now it’s not as popular. Sure there’s a lot users, but you recognize people around you not using myspace. Facebook became more popular around the late ‘07..early ‘08 and is currently still popular. But I feel that it is at its peak. That’s why I believe that Facebook will die within 1-2 years.