The Red Giant (Five Reasons Facebook is Over) - Joshua Brown via The Reformed Broker ⇢

Joshua Brown makes some arguments about the salad days of Facebook being over, and one I completely buy:

Joshua Brown via The Reformed Broker

Something new comes along - It is laughable how seamlessly, completely and quickly Facebook supplanted MySpace - let’s not act like anything on the web is permanently dominant forever.  Facebook is picking up major steam in countries like Indonesia and Brazil right now, the rate of new users signing up is breathtaking.  But consider that they are pulling people from Google-owned network Orkut and that one day someone else will do the same to them.

[…]

Kids rebel against a social network that includes their dorky parents - Can you imagine being 15 years old and being involved in any kind of socializing that involved your parents and aunts and uncles and Sunday school teachers and god knows who else from the dark side?  There is a Facebook hipness hourglass somewhere and it has already been turned over…it is only a matter of time before the grains of sand slipping from the top to the bottom become noticeable and the tide turns.  The kids will be first, the advertisers will follow.  In the end, Facebook will be comprised of dormant and inactive profiles with a majority of its “engagement” coming from people in their forties stalking their exes from high school in the late 80’s.  For the younger generation, talking about Facebook at all will become painfully lame.  Every generation mocks the one that came before.  This moment rapidly approaches, the emptying of that hipness hourglass is inexorable.

I’ve said for years that Facebook is the new AOL, a service that made the big forbidding and vast Internet approachable for the masses, and then was instantly passé. And Brown’s scenario will become truth as soon as something un-Facebook-like and hard for grown-ups to understand pops into existence, and starts spiriting the kids away like the Pied Piper. Kids will defect to be different, and it’s game over in a few years.

His other points have merit too, but I don’t think they matter an iota compared with the cool kids playing in a different park.

3 January 2012 21 underpaidgenius
facebook

Notes

  1. delonghi-lattissima-en-660 reblogged this from stoweboyd
  2. bauknecht-wak-12 reblogged this from stoweboyd
  3. cartouche-hp-deskjet-3050 reblogged this from stoweboyd
  4. 3d-fernseher-testsieger-2012 reblogged this from stoweboyd
  5. writehandman reblogged this from questionall and added:
    Umm…yeah, that’s why everyone is on Tumblr and Instagram and moving over, albeit slowly, to Google+ underpaidgenius:
  6. digitalgoverning reblogged this from stoweboyd
  7. questionall reblogged this from underpaidgenius
  8. sboyar reblogged this from underpaidgenius
  9. removepoke reblogged this from stoweboyd and added:
    It may be the new AOL, but more than that, Facebook very much over-delivers on what AOL promised to be and never did....
  10. deepthinking reblogged this from stoweboyd and added:
    I’ve been looking for the next new thing for quite some time but I’m not sure what it is or if I’ve already found it. In...
  11. gbattle said: Josh nailed this post. And I agree, ubiquity will be the gift (revenue) and curse (uncool) for Facebook. The lingering question for me is has the compression of cool accelerated or stood still for Facebook - are they extending the inevitable?
  12. stoweboyd reblogged this from underpaidgenius and added:
    Joshua Brown makes some arguments about the salad days of Facebook being over, and one I completely buy: I’ve said for...
  13. underpaidgenius posted this

← Previous Post Next Post →

About

Web anthropologist, futurist, author. My focus is the future, and the tectonic forces pushing business, media, and society into an unclear and accelerating future. (More.)

Working on longer format projects, Sign up for the newsletter.

GigaOM Research analyst and curator.



Also writing beaconstreets.com.

Contact me. or ask me a question.



My Vizify profile.

Socialogy

  • Brian Solis | Brian and I debunk big data, and Brian makes the case for empathy.

  • Deb Lavoy | Deb is dubious about management's inclinations, and says, 'Just because you are networked doesn’t mean it necessarily helps you understand, or realize your needs more effectively.'

  • John Hagel | John offers up some great insights, like the fact that passion is lower the larger that businesses get.

  • Euan Semple | A chat with my old pal, and the author of Organizations Don't Tweet, People Do

  • Will McInnes | The author of Culture Shock and managing director of Nixon/McInnes

  • Jennifer Magnolfi | An interview with the woman who said, 'Work is not a place you go, it's a thing you do'.

    • Hot Now

  • What Drives Us? | A draft chapter of my book, discussing motivations, Maslow's hierarchy, and fluidarity.

  • Socialogy: Interview With John Hagel | I Speak with Joh Hagel about the innovation at the edge.

  • Complex organisation arises from webs of interaction among causal factors | So, it turns out that DNA is, in fact, a great metaphor for business culture, but only after you realize that DNA is not a few hundred off-on switches, but instead a universe of unknowable complexities, that we can interact with, and understand at some abstract cartoonish level, but not control, and never fully comprehend.

  • Bitcoin May Be the Global Economy’s Last Safe Haven | Paul Ford

  • Innovators Get Better With Age | Companies make a mistake by relying too much on the innoations of the young, because Nobel laureats don't come into their prime until their 50s.

    • Oldie

  • Infodemics | 2009 | Passing incomplete or inaccurate information about some risk event can make people take actions that increase the damage of the event itself.

    • Lynx theme created by Andrew Stichbury for Tumblr.