Re:The Fall of Facebook
by nkozyra on Thursday November 20, 2014 @02:40PM
(#8637662)
I think the fact that everyone uses Facebook but nobody's particularly fond of it points to three things:
1. Product stagnation. I think the monetization goals of Facebook are also starting to impact the usability and enjoyability of the site.
2. Brand issues. Why is Facebook not cool anymore? Is it simply due to ubiquity? Can they regain that credibility? Is the "youth market" a lost cause for them?
3. The potential for competition in the space. Building a social network seemed like a lost cause battle for many years because it is essentially "owned" by Twitter and FB - and nichely LinkedIn - (at least in the U.S.) For all its many, many (stress: many) flaws, ello showed one thing: people are clamoring for something other than Facebook. Now ello is really a bad approach at this, it feels like a weekend project rooted in one thing: to make sure it could never make money. But I get all that. Even a site with no clear or dependable direction, with atrocious design could generate a lot of interest with some false scarcity. To me that says if you can create "the next social network" and it's actually beautiful and usable and you don't position yourself on some dumb morality issue then there are people who will jump ship.
So while nobody loving Facebook and still using it might seem like all's well, to me it points to a lack of real competition and is - I'm sure - something discussed often at FB & Twitter.
1. Product stagnation. I think the monetization goals of Facebook are also starting to impact the usability and enjoyability of the site.
2. Brand issues. Why is Facebook not cool anymore? Is it simply due to ubiquity? Can they regain that credibility? Is the "youth market" a lost cause for them?
3. The potential for competition in the space. Building a social network seemed like a lost cause battle for many years because it is essentially "owned" by Twitter and FB - and nichely LinkedIn - (at least in the U.S.) For all its many, many (stress: many) flaws, ello showed one thing: people are clamoring for something other than Facebook. Now ello is really a bad approach at this, it feels like a weekend project rooted in one thing: to make sure it could never make money. But I get all that. Even a site with no clear or dependable direction, with atrocious design could generate a lot of interest with some false scarcity. To me that says if you can create "the next social network" and it's actually beautiful and usable and you don't position yourself on some dumb morality issue then there are people who will jump ship.
So while nobody loving Facebook and still using it might seem like all's well, to me it points to a lack of real competition and is - I'm sure - something discussed often at FB & Twitter.