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How long will Facebook last?

Probably till then end of the world, or 2038, whichever comes sooner as most people don't realise it's just a marketing tool to sell you more ****.

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot be conscious.
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commandlinegamer said:
Probably till then end of the world, or 2038, whichever comes sooner as most people don't realise it's just a marketing tool to sell you more ****.
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They catch on pretty quick. but first they fall for it for a while.

People filling out "surveys" has dropped by about seventy % recently, the scams never work for long.

Having said that, i'm sure there are still people who very excited by a mail from a deposed Nigerian prince with $ 30.000.000 to spare.
And get this: my uncle from Spain sent me a chain mail last week saying that Bill Gates would pay me $ 300 for every person I forwarded it to.

I got all nostalgic and misty-eyed, 1994 was such a great year for me.
 
It will take a while, but eventually (after the company has been public for a long time), it will start to bombard users with solicitation, advertising, user fees, etc. The parent corp. won't be able to resist tinkering, exploiting it for more revenue, etc.

Until many original users who were there in the good old days say, "You know, FB used to be all about the music. Then they sold out."

Or until the "next big thing" comes along and we start the cycle all over again.
 
It will last until about a month after I open an account there. I'm a middle aged lawyer and sort of the tipping point for things becoming uncool. I might as well own a pair of water skis, a pond, and a shark.
 
Zuckerberg allegedly has turned down enormous offers from Microsoft and others.

It would be quite funny if a year from now Facebook was mentioned in the same breath as MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice.
 
For me, Facebook will last up to the point it costs me money. I originally started on it because some people I played WoW with had and were talking about it. Now I have a whole mess of friends on it that I really don't care about, but I stay on cause of the few I actually have any interest in, plus Wheel of Fortune can be fun :P

Before you ask, I have those friends I don't care about because I rarely turn down a friend invite without a specific reason: obvious fake profile, strangers, family I've never met, people I hate, etc. Of my 40+ friends I invited maybe 6 of them, 5 of those being WoW related, everyone else are pokemon friends. You know the ones, they gotta friend'em all, everyone they went to school with, everyone they work with, everyone they filled diapers next to in daycare...

jalok
 
Eddie Dane said:
Zuckerberg allegedly has turned down enormous offers from Microsoft and others.

It would be quite funny if a year from now Facebook was mentioned in the same breath as MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice.
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I'll be surprised if Facebook's prominence has faded dramatically in one year. But not surprised if it has faded dramatically in five years.

And I can totally picture commentators in 10 years saying "remember back when all the cool kids were using the old Facebook?"
 
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It's not going away anytime soon. As others have pointed out it's become too integrated in other aspects of the internet - far more so than google ever has. An "internet directory" which allows for single sign on and integrated accounts is something companies (including google) have been trying to do for a long time. I've no idea why FB succeeded where others haven't, I suspect it's more a matter of good timing than anything else.

Replacing it with something else will require not only having something "better" but also getting all the other sites to use the something better. I'm designing a number of sites at the moment, and we're integrating them in to FB as much as we can. It's a "social hub" that makes things easier both for other internet websites as well as individuals. It's also now for example, the internets largest photo sharing site. I just uploaded nearly 500 photos to share with family and friends. The longer it lasts the more people have to lose if it goes away.

The only real question is one of profitability. Are they making enough real money to survive and continue improving? The fact Zuckerberg apparently doesn't want an IPO would indicate they are.
 
A virtual backyard fence for the women to trade gossip over. ;)
 
dasmiller said:
My guess is that Facebook will become a bit player in its own market, like AOL did. Social networking will become almost part of the operating systems, so a one-stop-social-network-shop will be no more desireable than a one-stop-computer-network-shop was ~9 years ago, when AOL flopped.
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I think it is a somewhat flawed analogy. Social networking will require some sort of basic program for it, and facebook is really good about getting built into more and more divices. So why think facebook is AOL instead of WWW?

The basic flaw is that people use facebook specifically for the content it provides, AOL became more of a gateway than a content provider thus it had more competition.
 
Suddenly said:
It will last until about a month after I open an account there. I'm a middle aged lawyer and sort of the tipping point for things becoming uncool. I might as well own a pair of water skis, a pond, and a shark.
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It does not seem to have been hurt by everyone's mother being on facebook. Hell my grandmother is on facebook(well grandfathers second wife)
 
ponderingturtle said:
I think it is a somewhat flawed analogy. Social networking will require some sort of basic program for it, and facebook is really good about getting built into more and more divices. So why think facebook is AOL instead of WWW?
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WWW is very distributed; nobody owns it or controls it. I think social networking is going to go that way.

The basic flaw is that people use facebook specifically for the content it provides, AOL became more of a gateway than a content provider thus it had more competition.
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Facebook is a place where content is collected; Facebook itself doesn't actually provide the content, so in the long run, what's keeping the content on Facebook?
 
dasmiller said:
WWW is very distributed; nobody owns it or controls it. I think social networking is going to go that way.
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And who is going to give away a multibillion dollar idea that would replace it? Why isn't it Ebay or Amazon or Craigslist?

Two of those don't generate any content on their own either, but are also fixtures of the internet and I see no reason for them not to continue to be.

As long as facebook manages to keep itself up to date and does not let itself fall behind the curve I see no reason for it to not continue.

Facebook is a place where content is collected; Facebook itself doesn't actually provide the content, so in the long run, what's keeping the content on Facebook?
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But it is also moving to be a ubiquitous medium that content is distributed through. It is already on by far the most systems and OS's of anything.

So it functions as a decentralized method of disseminating content as well as a place content is collected.

Might something else be the next big thing? Sure but why assume it does not have the lock on internet social networking that Ebay does on internet auctions, and Craigslist does on internet classifieds? In all of these things there is a benefit to having one central place for all of it. So as long as nothing meets peoples needs better and you get a very high percentage of people moving over, nothing can beat it.

So either it needs to enact policy decisions that drive people away or there is little that can be done to beat it. Its popularity is the biggest thing driving its popularity.
 
Do people actually click on Facebook ads...and buy something?

I dunno...I block all ads on Facebook, YouTube, etc.

I hear people on YouTube complaining about having to watch 15-30 sec inline video ads and I laugh.

Of course, it's best for others to be inundated by ads...so Facebook and YouTube remain free for me.

The only place I don't block ads is on Google's search, but even there I can't recall me actually clicking one and buying something.
 
ponderingturtle said:
And who is going to give away a multibillion dollar idea that would replace it?
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I'm not following that question. Can you elaborate?

Why isn't it Ebay or Amazon or Craigslist?

Two of those don't generate any content on their own either, but are also fixtures of the internet and I see no reason for them not to continue to be.
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I'd say that Craigslist is arguably comparable to Facebook. Amazon and Ebay provide a service by helping to ensure that transactions are done fairly.

As long as facebook manages to keep itself up to date and does not let itself fall behind the curve I see no reason for it to not continue.
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This is probably our fundamental difference. I don't think it's possible for Facebook to retain its dominance for the long term. For me, the question is whether they can use their current revenue stream, resources, and reputation to let them get into a more sustainable market.

Might something else be the next big thing? Sure but why assume it does not have the lock on internet social networking that Ebay does on internet auctions, and Craigslist does on internet classifieds? In all of these things there is a benefit to having one central place for all of it. So as long as nothing meets peoples needs better and you get a very high percentage of people moving over, nothing can beat it.
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I don't think that there will continue to be a benefit to have the Facebook-type content in one central place, any more than there's a benefit to having all the web hosting done by one site, or all of the email, or even internet access.

So either it needs to enact policy decisions that drive people away or there is little that can be done to beat it.
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Continuing with my theme, I don't think anyone is going to "beat" facebook, any more than anyone "beat" AOL.

Time will tell, I suppose.
 
Jeff Corey said:
What is this Face Book you speak of?
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LOL...I have seen it one or two times. I dont understand it myself and never had any need for services like it. People or friends i know i call on the phone or go visit them or meet up in restaurants or bars for face to face interaction.

Other than that i am pretty much indifferent to it mainly due to the fact i never had any need or reason to put personal info on the internet unless it is in some form of professional capacity.
 
WildCat said:
How's MySpace doing?

I don't see any reason why Facebook will avoid the same fate.
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Because eventually something achieves a critical mass. MySpace didn't. I never had a MySpace page. But even my mom has a Facebook page, as do most of her friends.

I don't think they're as big as Google or Microsoft yet are they?
 
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