The "next facebook" has to come along eventually. I don't know how it'll distinguish itself from old-facebook, nor how it'll get traction to start with, but I'm sure it'll all seem obvious in retrospect. On the other hand the chances of any individual facebook-replacement taking off are fairly small.

If I were rich I'd set up a YC-equivalent in which I'd sling $30K at anyone who claims to be building the "next facebook". Think you can do it? Think you've got a new approach to the problem? Great, here's $30K, I'll take six percent, see you when you get your first hundred thousand users! One of 'em has to pay off eventually.

Are you sure about that? It could take a long time.

Would you have bet on Apple if you were trying to find the next Microsoft? (Would you even consider Apple the next Microsoft?)

What about Google? I don't think there is a "next Google".

Will there be success after Facebook? Of course, but I don't think it will look like Facebook. So I don't think looking for "the next Facebook" is the right course of action.

Apple and Google are interesting comparisons. Some significant part of Apple's success lies in becoming identified with "cool": its products are stylish and fashionable in addition to being useful. Google's success, on the other hand, rests very little on that; it started out as pure utility (search), something people used not because they had lots of friends using it or because it was "cool" to use it, but because they tried it and it got them the results they wanted. And even if Google has become known recently as something of a "cool" company, I don't think that its individual products are identified as "cool" in the same way Apple's are.

So it may be worth asking: is Facebook more like Google, or more like Apple? Or in other words: would Facebook survive a demotion from "cool, trendy place to be" to "utility?" Is such a "demotion" happening as we speak?

Actually I'd say facebook is nothing like Apple or Google, which is why it's vulnerable. While both Apple and Google benefit from some network effects, both of 'em have a huge technical lead over the competition in their areas of expertise. Facebook, though, is all about network effects, so they're much more susceptible to being overtaken by the next big thing.

i agree, we need something better, more specific. an example being google, a general web search engine and stackoverflow, a general development search engine. both can be used together to complement each other.