I view it this way as well. There is a tipping point, a critical mass, where everything after will be viewed in terms of this dominant product/organization.
Google, World of Warcraft, Facebook, Windows... all of these things conquered their respective markets in such a massive way that every direct competitor is playing catch-up or giving up on reaching the same goals.
MySpace, like pre-Google search sites, was an obvious stepping stone on the path of social networking applications' evolution. It was terribly bad at almost everything and succeeded for a time purely due to demand for something of its general taxonomy.
Facebook, however, is a very thoughtfully realized effort that is largely an agreeable experience for users. As long as they continue to avoid introducing negative changes slowly and with minimal exposure to users, those users will continue to stick around and bring in others. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog]
And the big problem, one that I haven't seen addressed yet, is where people should go when they leave Facebook. There is no comparably-featured competitor, nor one even close. And of course, social networking applications are worthless without the people you want to interact with using them with you.
I don't think that is likely. It would be extremely difficult to be more innovative and more competent than Facebook. That's like saying you should worry about a company that could outmaneuver Apple. Sure, it's possible, but it's extremely unlikely.
Say what you will about Facebook's policies, the company is run extremely well.
I'm pretty convinced MySpace will have a non-trivial comeback. They've made exceptional non-technical hiring decisions of late (Tony Adam, Sean Percival, etc.) and if they have any technical capabilities left, they're going to be OK.
They have been stuck with a low-end image for a very long time and will not be able to take back the lost momentum from Facebook. Add this to the fact that it has been bought out by Murdock, which means there is very little incentive money-wise for those employees to put in the same amount of effort that went into pre-sale Myspace and Facebook.
If history is any indication, history isn't any indication. (E.g., Apple is always the niche player, right?)
Just because the previous top social network eventually faded away doesn't mean we should expect the current one to do the same in any similar manner or time frame. There's quite a lot that differentiates today's Facebook and the MySpace of old. For one thing, how many third parties ever built on MySpace as an application platform, to the extent that they are today with Farmville and Microsoft Docs and the like?
I'd like to bet against that opinion. I suggest this metric: on May 3, 2015, Facebook will still be listed in the top five websites in the world by Alexa traffic ranking (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/Facebook.com), and it will be the most popular social networking website in the world, again as measured by Alexa traffic rankings.
USD$200, proceeds go to winner's favorite charity? This bet is open to ams6110 or anyone else. Feel free to suggest different terms, metrics, betting amounts, or to make it a personal bet, not a charitable bet.
Not sure about that myself. I think over time as any class of service matures and becomes widely used the waining fad effect becomes longer. Early social networking sites were small and died off easily. Myspace was larger and is dying a slow death (still a top 20 site) Facebook is even larger and still growing. I do think going forward people will interact with it less directly. Going to Facebook.com may be old fashion in 5 years but I suspect they'll still be the clogs behind the scene making the machine work.
I don't think that Facebook per se is a fad, but you're probably right that it will be gone or irrelevant in five years, because the aspects of its service that Facebook is trying to build its revenue model around are almost certainly a fad.
Facebook to me is an enhanced contact list. Most of the people I know treat it the same way. The ability to stay in contact and re-connect with friends, contacts, and acquaintances who you no longer interact with on a daily basis is its main feature.
But the "social" aspect of the games and apps available on Facebook's platform is a novelty, and once that novelty wears off, what's the attraction? Facebook as a layer on top of the open internet to signal what I "like"? What's the point?
I think that Facebook are scrambling now to try to find a viable business model, and trying to establish themselves as a _platform_, broadly defined, because they realize that there are severe limits to how far you can monetize social networks, but they haven't really figured out how to leverage their success as a social network to expand into something that can sustainably generate revenue.
Maybe, maybe not. People may have so much data invested in Facebook, like photos, friends, that it is hard to move away. With the integration we see now, on mobile phones, facebook may be the one way we end up maintaining our contacts list.
When you get a new phone, put in your facebook details, it will pull down all the info you need to phone your friends, email, etc.
You get access to all your photos, games, etc...
Maybe even your web bookmarks with the latest facebook effort.
You no longer need an email address, you just use facebook - this cuts out so much spam.
Facebook could become the internet for a lot of people.
