Slashdot Mirror
Is Mark Zuckerberg the Next Steve Case?
theodp writes "With all signs for Facebook pointing up, author Douglas Rushkoff goes contra, arguing that Facebook hype will fade. 'Appearances can be deceiving,' says Rushkoff. 'In fact, as I read the situation, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of Facebook. These aren't the symptoms of a company that is winning, but one that is cashing out.' Rushkoff, who made a similar argument about AOL eleven years ago in a quashed NY Times op-ed, reminds us that AOL was also once considered ubiquitous and invincible, and former AOL CEO Steve Case was deemed no less a genius than Mark Zuckerberg. 'So it's not that MySpace lost and Facebook won,' concludes Rushkoff. 'It's that MySpace won first, and Facebook won next. They'll go down in the same order.'"
In my network, posts are getting sparser and sparser. Just like the end of Freindser, or Orkut, or any other social network system. People get bored and stop. It the infusion of new users that drives their survival, and Facebook my be nearing the end of people willing to sign up.
So if the Facebook hype is fading and FB already cashing in, what is the competitor and why did their user base just go from 500 million people to 600 million people? Facebook is stronger than ever, and I don't see why they have to keep increasing their user base to remain profitable. Google don't need to attract new users to their search engine all the time in order to stay profitable, since it's ad driven, not driven by signups.
Until there is a good competitor to Facebook, Facebook has absolutely no problems, and its future isn't even dim.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
If a tree lands on Facebook would anyone care?
Then again I won't use sites like that as i won't have control of my data. You are never really gone from facebook, it is all still there at best you can hide it somewhat. Even that though is difficult.
Or maybe I just don't have a large enough ego to be on there.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Except that when AOL was deluging the world with free installation CDs, it was clear that most of AOL's users would migrate to The Real Internet as soon as they got a clue. I don't see a successor to Facebook on the horizon just yet. Not that it can't happen.
He has a point in that in there are some unknown quantities in Facebook's revenue model. We don't know how valuable all the information they've collected on users will turn out to be in terms of actually increasing the effectiveness of advertising. We know that it is desireable to marketers at the moment, but marketing trends change.
The one thing facebook has going for it is media attention. Outside of that, they are a very easy market to attack.
Facebook is the next bubble. There is just too much money investors are trying to put away. FB seems a good bet for them. There will be more FBs in the near future.
People are already getting bored of Facebook. It's just there and taken for granted now.
What has been lost with Facebook is the spirit of social networking. It's more a site where you add all your friends or people you have met in real life. Other sites allowed you to make new connections with people you didn't know.
I put this down to Facebook's ability to enter all your details, name, address, phone number and so on. It was pretty obvious once your profile allows you to add some very specific information that is valuable for ID theft that people would then lock down their profiles and no longer be networking outside of their group of friends.
Or should that be "me too"?
I think my retinas get a rash every time i see the word 'facebook'... But there's one flaw with this argument -- we haven't observed the Internet long enough to be able to make definite conclusions about how on-line companies evolve. The Internet 10 years ago was a very different place from the Internet today, and I'm not sure the AOL case generalizes to FB (unfortunately).
weinersmith
Its happened before. it'll happen again..
First it was everyone had a useless page. Geoshitties ect..
Then everyone wanted to be IM connected all the time to everyone. AOL, icq, ect ect ect.
Then everyone wanted a blog.
Myspace/Facebook is back at the top. A useless page.
SMS might be the next stage...
I wonder what the new version of the blog will be...
Everything old is new again.. And again... And again..........
I'm not sure this guy properly understands that Facebook is not just a website that someone can make a better alternative to and everyone will ditch. Facebook knows who everyone actually is online and everyone has invested time into building their profiles on it. Thus people value their Facebook profiles and are much less likely to spam, say obscene things, troll and generally be a total idiot on the internet if it is tied to their Facebook profile. This one thing is priceless and subject to massive network effects making it very hard for a competitor to enter.MySpace fell due to being offline and not being an adequate website.
...was the end of the end of facebook for me
When I read the headline I thought huh, he's going to pose for Playboy and marry John Romero?
AOL died because it was impossible for them to transition from dialup to broadband. While they could easily serve the entire country with dialup, it was impossible for them to do the same with broadband because broadband access is controlled by an oligopoly of companies who knew it was in their interest to keep tight control.
AOL died when the open access rules died.
There is no parallel to facebook because there is no oligopoly who can keep facebook from upgrading their website.
Actually, that may turn out to be the dumbest thing I've ever written. The lack of net neutrality rules could kill facebook just like the lack of open access rules killed aol.
Even if that doesn't happen, I would not eagerly invest in facebook. Of course, I said the same thing about Google when they IPO'd, so what do I know?
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
Does anyone remember it? Even real companies were spending money to build their spaces there. How long ago was that? And now? Just tumbleweed...
With all that data they're getting everyday, the real loss will be at who had it given. That data will be very useful for the next 50 years and if they go under radar they will have more freedom to work and sell it.
I don't really see too much value in Facebook. Its nice to keep track of your relatives and friends but it becomes a pain to maintain. I laugh when I hear people at work who actually put effort into their Facebook page-especially since some of them got fired for for what they posted on it. I have my 15 year old daughter put some generic pictures of the family up there and occasionally I answer the friend request. I may be lazy or greedy but Facebook doesn't put money into my pocket so I don't put much effort into it. In fact I see it as a potential liability that can be used against me on the job, or give the general public too much information as to what I am doing. If I am going to post on a website it will be Slashdot or one of the hobby websites that I subscribe to. Now my 15 year old daughter lives for Facebook-this news might affect her. This may be a generational thing. If it is fading I don't see it with the younger set-yet. I wouldn't blame Zuckerberg for cashing out-isn't that what every computer geeks dream is?
When you get down to it, Facebook doesn't actually do something people need -- it is fun, people like it, but people had friends and social networks before Facebook, MySpace, BBSes, etc. People talk about how Facebook puts them in touch with lost friends; my experience has been that people are "in touch" only to the extent of clicking adding the person to their friends list, and then never speaking to them again. Farmville is not really a killer app, it is just an amusement. Facebook could vanish suddenly tomorrow, and I doubt that society would be seriously affected by its absence.
Palm trees and 8
Why do you think my computer is facebook.com?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Comparing Zuckerberg to Case is an insult to Case. AOL wasn't the best internet service - what with being a kind of walled garden - but it was built on providing internet services to novice customers. Zuckerberg on the other hand built a service based on selling profiling data to advertisers. Zuckerberg would be lucky to be compared to John Sculley (or if you want scumbags, try Kenneth Lay), let alone Steve Case.
Seriously, do they care if they become the 'next to fade out'? They made their billions, and if their company fades away they can just do something else that is fun to them. No real skin off their nose, so to speak.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Facebook has a very large number of active users, and it will have a very large number of active users for at least the next 3 years. The photo albums and friend networks are very good reasons why people will keep coming back, and I think it would take some fairly strong disincentives to get them to stop.
All of this means that they have a way of making money for at least the next 3 years, probably far longer. It won't be enough to justify their valuation, but it will be a lot.
I think that they are a far better bet that Google or Apple right now, but they are hugely overvalued. None of these companies will go bust or just disappear, but all three will find tougher times ahead for sure; and all three will be worth much less in 3 years than they are now. On the other hand if you had bought stock in them three years ago and keep it for another three years you will still be quids in (I know that you can't buy facebook stock)
It is a good company, and a great idea, but it's worth something like $10bn not $50bn and that's factoring for big growth in revenue and maintenance of the user base.
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
What an idiot. He just says "MySpace falls first, Facebook falls second" without even attempting an analysis into why MySpace fell to Facebook. It's not the definitive analysis, in fact it's off-the-cuff, but here's mine:
MySpace was infantile. It encouraged aliases, whereas Facebook encouraged valid names. MySpace also had GeoCities personalization. There's nothing wrong with infantile if that's what you want your market to be. Facebook appeals to people of all ages, and that is one of the main reasons it won.
Now that Facebook has its installed base of the whole world, it's not going anywhere.
For some reason, the author of this article has AOL on the mind. He mentions "AOL chat rooms" as being in the same spectrum as MySpace and Facebook. Never mind that AOL chat rooms, by being on AOL, limited the potential audience to those on dial-up. More interesting to me is why Facebook has replaced UseNet or even the blogs that supplanted UseNet. The reason is that Facebook is people-centric while UseNet and blog are topic-centric. There is a reason why we call it "social networking". It's different.
I see Facebook as being the Microsoft Word that beat out WordPerfect, WordStar, and a host of platform-specific predecessors to those. Once Microsoft reached the installed base of the whole world, the whole world wasn't about to switch, at least not for a few decades. There was an ultimate and lasting victor in that chain of previous market failures. In the analysis of trends of word processors, it was a case of "Past Performance is No Guarantee of Future Results".
Who the hell is Steve Case?
The image of Zuckerberg doing a playboy shoot, is disturbing in itself. On the other hand, the shoots of Killcreek never made it into playboy anyway.
I really had to think to remember who Steve Case is.
But I guess that's the point of the story.
Here is what I've heard by talking to real people: Facebook is pimping out their data. People are increasingly putting up fake information and entering fake information into FB's forms in order to get their accounts - all that personal information. AND this requirement for cell phone numbers.
At a party, someone who was notorious for putting pictures she took on her FB page. As soon as she took her camera out, folks were declining to have their pictures taken and saying, "I don't want my picture on your FB page."
She put the camera away real quick.
FB's popularity is going to plateau and anyone who "invests" in their IPO will be seriously disappointed.
Was Steve Case's net worth estimated at roughly 7 times AOL's all time cumulative profits? Cause thats the fantasy Facebook's CEO is currently enjoying.
I said the same thing in my slashdot journal a few days ago. I guess I should have sent my journal entry in to CNN.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
....for whatever reason. People signed on to Facebook with their real names.
It's the first popular social network where you can actually find people from real life.
Facebook knows who everyone actually is online and everyone has invested time into building their profiles on it.
Facebook knows who everyone who set up an account with them is. As much as you might not realize it, there are still people who have never set up facebook accounts. Facebook may know our friends but they don't know us, or how we relate to those people since we aren't on their website.
They will never have everyone.
people value their Facebook profiles and are much less likely to spam, say obscene things, troll and generally be a total idiot on the internet if it is tied to their Facebook profile
Plenty of foolish college undergraduates have already proven that statement false.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The info FB has collected on EU citizens may be valuable to marketers, however they won't get their hands on it. Thus the value of it to FB's bottom line is very nearly zero.
Basically FB and similar huge online sites collecting personal info, like Amazon and eBay, would run afoul of EU's Data protection Directive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive if they start sharing their databases with third parties. FB has specifically been told by the EU that they, FB, will be blocked in most EU member states at the firewall level if they do this.
The background is that the data FB is likely to have, in many cases will include particularly sensitive information relating to gender, sexuality, political observation and more. This type of data are especially sensitive in the view of EU law and subject to extremely strict restrictions on how it can be used and shared. In particular some kind of click-through EULA absolutely isn't sufficient to consider the user to have given consent to sharing of data. Please see this page for more info: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/policies/privacy/index_en.htm
Also check the last paragraph in the section marked 'Scope' if you wish to argue that FB isn't based in the EU. The short answer is that - as far as EU law is concerned - this doesn't matter. The service provider, FB in this case, will by definition need to use electronic equipment, IE. networking equipment, inside the EU to reach their users.
So now you know why the info collected by, say, eBay isn't already used for marketing purposes by third parties.
All this was made clear to FB in no uncertain terms not too long ago, and may be one reason why people try to cash in on FB. Once the market realizes the collected EU info is worthless, then things may change a bit on the valuation front...
Facebook? They still exist?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It should be a good indication that it took me as long to remember who Mark Z. was as it did to remember who Steve Case was.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Right I mean we had phones before that so why the email or IRC and before that we had the USPS so why bother with the phone and before that we had messenger services so who needed the USPS. Just because it's a new form of communication does not mean it acts in the same way that all other forms of communication does. Following you logic is doesn't make sense to ever buy a new book.
Will the next big thing in social networking be DNSP? Switch from providers to just a protocol - just how neat is this?!...
"This week's news that Goldman Sachs has chosen to invest in Facebook while entreating others to do the same should inspire about as much confidence as their investment in mortgage securities did in 2008. For those who weren't watching, that's when Goldman got rich betting against the investments it was selling.
This time, Goldman is putting up some millions of its own -- as if this skin in the game means they couldn't be up to their old tricks. But the commissions and underwriting fees Goldman is earning for selling that other $1.5 billion of private Facebook shares could be enough to offset the cost of their own investment. And bets against Facebook could be leveraged any number of times."
Social Networking is dead, Long Live Social Networking.
I have participated in a number of topic-specific web-based "social networks" over the years. The topic-focused web sites are able to tailor themselves to those who are interested in specific topics. There's a brisk competition in those sites. Off-topic discussion is almost always tolerated in some form, as long as it's done within guidelines.
Slashdot is actually an example of this.
We were all doing "social networking" before it was even called that.
Maybe "General-purpose one-size fits all" social networking is dead. Special purpose social networking is alive and well, and I suspect it will continue.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
IRC will make a miraculous comeback!
Sep. 22, 1997: AOL's Big Coup ("The Web was going to kill it. Microsoft was going to bury it. But by grabbing CompuServe, America Online keeps on growing."). Jan. 24, 2000: The Big Deal ("How the AOL-Time Warner merger happened. Does it make any sense?"). May 31, 2010: Facebook ...and How It's Redefining Privacy ("With nearly 500 million users, Facebook is connecting us in new (and scary) ways"). Dec 27, 2010: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg ("Person of the Year. The Connector").
You are never really gone from facebook, it is all still there
Yeah, you can check out any time you like... but you can never leave.
Welcome to the Hotel Facebookonia.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The kicker is that the shares they themselves bought are unrestricted. The ones they are placing have big restrictions on selling. So now, once those restricted shares are placed they can turn around and dump the shares they bought. But those are worth quite a bit more, as they are unrestricted.
Goldman-Sax might rake in as much as a cool billion on this deal, while Facebook not only gets the cash, but they also get to enjoy this shiny new "valuation" in further deals.
What a racket.
Also, and most important to me, if I have a situation where people wants regular updates(my kid deathly sick in the hospital),
it is an easy way to send them without annoying people.
I can also follow friends and family with annoying them.
Two words: identity theft.
"Here's my last picture of grandpa Jones" means your mother's maiden name was Jones.
"Here's the family in front of our new home" means the street number appears on the photo.
And so on. I don't want to spread unnecessary data about myself and my family, that's why I don't use social networks.
Why I am leaving facebook
- unnecessary censorship (certain words like lamebook)
- lack of control of my data (e.g. delete my data for ever, privacy in general)
- lack of customization (even on declining MySpace or on a simple Blog you can select a custom background)
- future alternatives (diaspora, private webspace with OpenID?)
- recent trend: growing governmental interference (data extraction of wikileaks data - e.g. twitter), also Internet control in general (data retention, content, domain and IP blocking), this trend is really destroying trust in public web services
So congratulations Goldman, you have made the next bubble investment.
Facebook seems to have more penetration than MySpace or Friendster ever did. It also has those retarded games that (some) people seem to love and seems to be making inroads into communities outside the U.S. at a faster clip than its predecessors. Here I'm ignoring the fact that Friendster eventually became popular in Asia even as it died in the U.S. None of this means Facebook it will last forever, but it may have more positive inertia, meaning it will last longer before falling apart. AOL fell by the wayside because people realized you could get everything it offered (plus some) from a raw pipe to the Internet. What is "the next Facebook" going to have in terms of features that's so much better than what the current Facebook already offers?
Count me as someone who has not drunk the Facebook Kool-Aid. No wall, no friends -- poor me. Every now and then, I get an invitation from a friend or personal acquaintance to join. But lately almost all of the invitations are from corporations -- inviting me to Like them in return for some coupon or other offer. I know that the Supreme Court recognizes corporations as people, but I'm still able to make the distinction. Will I offer my identity (which they probably already have) in return for a sweepstakes entry or a 10% discount on some product I don't really need? Probably not. FB is clearly very exciting and innovative in developing countries, at least for now. If I lived in Indonesia, where FB seems to be a basic part of life, then I would surely sign up. From my perspective, though, FB's growth is in quantity of users, not necessarily in quality. Not a good sign.
Is this the trendy restaurant/nightclub syndrome?
I use it to look up hot pictures of girls, ex-girlfriends, and my girl's friends and masterbate to them. It really is a great resource.
...nobody could complain that they weren't "told first" (something that happened when we announced our wedding)
I have a strict policy for people who do this to my wife and I. They get told *last* if they get told at all from that point on until we receive an apology. This applies to parents, siblings, and everyone else. I have no time for anyone who thinks they "deserve" priority in how I disclose facts about my life.
Usually I just designate someone I trust to be the point person and I relay all information to them if I don't have time to relay important information myself. They get it to the people who need/want to know. Most of the people I deal with do not use Facebook or Twitter (myself included) so if I used those services I would be de-facto prioritizing those few who use those services. Nothing wrong with doing it through Facebook if that fits nicely into your social network. Doesn't work for me though.
Well, your uses of Facebook are all very good (same here, BTW). And, as is being pointed out by other posts, the fact that we all (typically) sign on with our real names has helped foster these uses.
From Facebook's perspective, though, this is a still a problem - it does not create any revenue. And revenue is what they need. And they will do pretty much anything they can do to make money, eventually. Anyway, I digress.
There is one point the article actually does not make, and an ironic one at that. Goldman Sachs, the epitome of a useless company (what tangible product do they really ultimately create other than wealth for themselves?) financing Facebook, which, economically speaking, is equally useless. I am not saying it's useless to you and me as a nice tool to stay/get in touch with people But economic value? Just factor in all those hours lost at work by people playing FarmVille ...
Facebook has it's value (pun intended). But the all-emcompassing internet platform it strives to be?? Not a comforting thought, and likely (hopefully!) not a realistic one, either.
Do your own thing. And overdo it!
First of all, if there's something you need to say to many people (like, It's a boy! or, I got a new job!), why would you go through the effort of telling everyone you know individually?
Because it solidifies a relationship, makes the other person feel special, let's them ask question or make comments they might not want to make publicly, and generally is what you do with people who you actually care about. If my sister notified me about her wedding via a Facebook post, I would rightly conclude that she didn't care very much about my involvement with that information. There are perfectly wonderful reasons to use one-to-many broadcasts of information but mere convenience isn't necessarily a sufficient reason by itself. Social interactions aren't just about your personal convenience.
Why wouldn't you bother letting everyone in the world know at once (keeping in mind that most people couldn't care less about their privacy or security of course)?
I think you just answered your own question. Furthermore you presume that everyone uses Facebook and the like. I can count on my fingers the number of MY close relatives, friends and associates who regularly use Facebook. This is particularly true of the generations that are older than myself. Posting to Facebook doesn't remotely let "everyone in the world know at once". There is nothing wrong with using Facebook if it fits your social circle but don't presume it makes sense for everyone.
The Web, AOL, they were all largely novelties that died down when people realized it wasn't relevant to them.
Huh? AOL sure but you are using the Web right now. Facebook is a subset of the Web. If the Web isn't relevant, Facebook isn't either. QED it is personally relevant to you.
Facebook is different. It's something people actually want, and it's something that makes their lives easier and more enjoyable.
Facebook is just another means of communication with certain advantages and certain disadvantages. Facebook offers me personally nothing that I desire or need. Might be great for you and lots of other people but it's hardly universally wanted.
AOL failed before the Time-Warner deal because it had no way to dominate broadband like it did dial-up. It beat compuserve and such and pretty much owned the dial-up world (and probably still does). But the game changed Broadband technology became really good, the cable and phone companies deployed it widely and it got adopted widely. AOL was left out in the cold. They knew this and did the TW deal before everything collapsed. Good for them. FaceBook was lucky because it got into the game before MySpace really got critical mass and became ubiquitous. Facebook has reached that status. I'm fully connected to all my family and friends through FB and it would be very hard to move now. This is why things like social media in GMail keep failing, if they don't have a monopoly (in this case in email) then they can't achieve the reach that FB has. Certainly FB isn't perfect and still has a lot of growing pains to go through. But it does have 500 million users and so many people really are connected to all their friends and family this way (and no other way really).
(Goldman)
It's not Robbing. It's a Deferred Loan for Undefined Reverse Futures in Intangible ROI. I can sell you some Hedge Options if you like.
(/Goldman)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Yep, 80% of "Security Questions" can be found on a Wall with more than 30 entries on it.
All we need now is an App like that Fire-thingy that took the possible and gave it to everyone.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
An observation comes to mind: FB Provides the social reality of small villages about up to 50 years ago - everybody knows everything about everybody in your social circle. This fosters gossip but definitely not reputation, actually it amplifies both positive and negative social imaging. People got out of villages because anonymity does have advantages.
Can I get an amen!
This spectrum of interaction styles, including email, usenet, web forums, and facebook et al. makes me wonder if there is an underlying sociological or psychological message or two...
As a recently graying beard myself, I know I miss the days when usenet and email worked and were assumed to be the right solution. I still vaguely despise these new-fangled web forums for replacing usenet with more of a walled garden, where the forum operator can wield their little powers and also siphon ad revenue out of the cosmos. And I despise facebook et al because they go a step further, encouraging a narcissistic world view within a continuation of the web operator's unnecessary concentration of power.
But these are two different dimensions: greed drives the commercialization that works very hard to dismantle the decentralized nature of early Internet communication and replace them with walled gardens where ads and analytics can run wild---the conversion of the populace into a market/product. On the other dimension, the communication styles still range from personal 1:1 or 1:many (email, informal email lists); to celebrity-oriented broadcasts or cliques (email newsletters, blogs, conventional web columns); to topical forums (usenet before it rotted out, discussion forums like slashdot, research via search engine).
Those of us who despise the new social networking the most are often more academic- and engineering-oriented users. I think we secretly want to retain the web as a worldwide library where we can research whatever we need and possibly publish if and when we have something worth publishing. Meanwhile, we've got other users who want it to be some version of gossip circle, whether fitting the template of the town square, cafe, pub, school house, or street corner. And of course we've got greedy fuckers who don't care about any of that, really, as long as they can figure out how to exploit it---this includes the big corporations trying to control the market, the small sites living on ad revenue, the kids fantasizing about launching the next big thing, and the users hoping to get their big break and transcend to celebrity status.
Don't forget fbcdn.net, blocking both gives a great boost to your page load speeds. They're as bad as the advertising scum.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
at least jobs isnt a dirty jew.
the real problem is not that you post your grandpa's name - it's that it is routinely used to verify your identity.
Facebook also looks a bit like Second Life, which was really hot for a while as a social interaction platform. It was all over the news feeds and real-world companies and government agencies even paid to set up shop in it. Apparently, Second Life continues to exist and has customers, but they only hang out in the sleazy "adult" sections; the rest of it is essentially empty, and the companies have abandoned it. This does not bode well for the future of Facebook, even if they add a few Facefuck "adult" areas...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
slashdot, one of the original social networking sites
since when is slashdot social? you could call it "topical" if you need an adjective, but it's really just a forum with comments on a topic.
you might want to check with list of social networking websites, there is no slashdot there but there is a link to wikipedia's definition of social networking website, fyi.
i respect mother nature - but who the f. is facebook?
# Block Facebook
127.127.127.127 www.facebook.com
127.127.127.127 facebook.com
127.127.127.127 static.ak.fbcdn.net
127.127.127.127 www.static.ak.fbcdn.net
127.127.127.127 login.facebook.com
127.127.127.127 www.login.facebook.com
127.127.127.127 fbcdn.net
127.127.127.127 www.fbcdn.net
127.127.127.127 fbcdn.com
127.127.127.127 www.fbcdn.com
127.127.127.127 static.ak.connect.facebook.com
127.127.127.127 www.static.ak.connect.facebook.com
That is what I have. No more icons or whatsoever. The 127.127.127.127 is becase it points to a specific vhost where the 404 error is an empty file. If you don't have a webserver running, best use 0.0.0.0 which is a bit quicker then 127.0.0.1
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If Facebook could get it's privacy settings to be easy to use so that people could share all the personal details with trusted people while maintaining connections with untrusted individuals then people would be able to build out more.
They would then be able to start recommending people based on common interests, relationship status, etc.
Right now it's more of a place to keep people up to date with your life and find old friends rather than a way to find new friends or date.
Work Safe Porn
Easily. They have the users, they have the infrastructure -- photo hosting, chat, calendars, email, they have everything. They haven't really tried yet, that's all.
Basically what Facebook (and whatever comes after it) shows is that any social networking platform gets the more useful the more users it has and the more data it has. There is great potential in that and great danger, of course. But who has the most data in the most dimensions? Google. Google will suck up everything like a black whole sucks up everything.
For people who use it, it takes the place of many other forms of communication. Instead of calling someone on the phone, it's easier to just shoot them a message on FB. If I see them online I can chat with them really quick about something. It keeps all of my friends casually informed about if I'm going to be in town, or if we'll be going to the same event. Often times I find out about concerts and parties because I see that a lot of my friends will be going. From my perspective this whole "Facebook is stupid" attitude is mostly from old people who don't regularly keep in touch with friends the way younger people do. To me it seems like most social, happy, friendly, creative people who like to share stories and keep informed about the world, love Facebook and see it as an efficient form of communication and use it regularly on their phones, at home, and at work.
JeffK's little known book "HTML for teh Slobbergoat" seemed to be the basis for layout on the earlier sites like Myspace. Like Google Facebook is white, clean and consistent and not riddled with ads making it easy to take in information - especially important for anyone who has grown out of drawing on their pencil case. If Rupert Murdoch actually had taken the time to look at some Myspace pages he wouldn't have felt compelled to buy it for the ridiculous money he paid for that turkey.
Wait, we're talking about Stevie Case, right?
+1 Insightful
Cue the Bubble Machine!
Facebook and Goldman Sachs unleashed a tech investing mania this week compared far and wide with the euphoric 1990s dot-com run-up. By arranging a $500 million private investment, at a staggering $50 billion valuation, Goldman at once delayed a Facebook public offering (now expected in 2012), prompted a likely LinkedIn IPO, and thrilled its clients, who clamored for a piece of Mark Zuckerberg's behemoth.
But for all the nostalgia for pre-IPO "friends and family" stock in Pets.com, the dot-com era comparisons are off base. Instead, Goldman's Facebook deal mirrors the subprime collateralized debt obligation deals that blew up entire companies, as well as crater-size hole in our economy. In fact, what Goldman just engineered might well be worse...
the Facebook phenomenon shows us that nothing has changed. Goldman again moved aggressively to get the business--investing $75 million into Facebook early, at a low valuation, through one of its hedge funds, in the same way it used to get CDOs rolling--again will rake in the fees (to the tune of $60 million--upfront) and again will pawn off the overvalued results to its clamoring clients, who don't have nearly as much information as Goldman.
If you're one of those investors, here's the deal in a nutshell: You get to buy shares, forking over 5 percent of any possible gains, on top of a 4 percent placement fee and a 0.5 percent expense reserve fee (so you're down 10 percent before the game starts) in a private company that doesn't have to disclose any pertinent financial information to you or any regulator for 15 months. For the privilege, Goldman gets its eight-digit windfall.
The rich Goldman clients aren't allowed out until 2013. But Goldman is. ...The rich Goldman clients who must pony up a minimum $2 million investment aren't allowed out until 2013. No exceptions. Ditto Facebook employees (although they were allowed to cash out about $100 million last year). But Goldman is. Whenever it wants "without notice to the fund or investors in the fund."
CDOs were private, unregulated, overvalued, disclosure-lite, fee-intensive deals. The Facebook deal is private, unregulated, overvalued, disclosure-lite, and fee intensive. CDOs sold like mad-- until they didn't. That can happen here. At the end of the holding period, there may be no bid for Facebook shares anywhere near the price paid. Plus, by that time all the enthusiastic global users of Facebook may have dropped it for thenextgreatfad.com taking the advertiser money along with them.
The Facebook deal sucks so badly that one of Goldman Sachs' own funds didn't want a single share of it. Richard Friedman, who runs the money for past and present Goldman partners, among others, said, thanks, but no thanks. That should tell everyone something...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-01-07/goldmans-facebook-voodoo-why-its-social-media-deal-is-worse-than-toxic-mortgages/?cid=columnists
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It also reminds me of the AOL days (during the time, I was an engineer at Netscape) in that "everyone" was amazed by it as a consumer or an investor, but everyone I knew saw it as an obsolete toy for people that hadn't yet grown out of it.
While I don't care that much about Facebook, I see one big difference between between AOL and Facebook. AOL as a service provider was largely a US phenomenon, with the possible exception of a few international branches limited to English-speaking territories. I myself haven't had the chance to sign up for an AOL service account. Although I did manage to eventual get an @aol.com webmail account, I believe this isn't the type of service that earned for AOL its status as a network giant. AOL became a humongous US company, but largely (pun unintended) a midget elsewhere. Compare this to Facebook. Among those with some form of Internet connection, who hasn't heard of Facebook? Among the people I know, I'm the only one without a Facebook account. So unless Zuckerberg makes some really bad moves or Facebook suffers from a day-long outage that results in the deletion of everybody's favorite baby and w3dding photos, Facebook is here to stay.
Hate the damned site. Hate it.
I check in once a month (or less) just to access the dumb messages people don't feel fit to just email like in the old days, but mostly to make sure people don't feel left out. Apparently, I have several hundred friends. Who knew? I wish everybody the best, but I find that site aggravating beyond belief and I am almost 100% certain it's the result of some half-baked CIA funding on some level.
Best story I heard lately which sounds the death knell for that atrocious waste of bandwidth: "My mom wanted me to show her how to sign up. I said no way! I don't want her knowing about my social life!" (Speaker was a lesbian and whose hard-case mom didn't know it.)
FB is also no longer, as far as I can tell, useful for legions of bored stalkers and Jr. High social comparison because people have been locking down pictures and other "top secret" personal silliness. Thus, the main feature which attracted everybody to it, the chance to see beneath people's public masks, is now drying up.
That stupid, soul-diminishing site which encourages the dumbest, most 2-dimensional human behavior sets is dying, and not a moment too soon. The only thing which sours my joy over this fact is the unpleasant anticipation of what new horror is no doubt waiting in the wings to continue the feast upon people's hearts and minds.
-FL
Are you trying to suggest that there's nothing at all special about the brilliant, almost groundbreaking, even better than Geo-Cities, or AOL, or powow uhm... It's like IRC on steroids!
So, what you're saying is there's nothing at all terribly innovative that Facebook is selling? That the only thing driving it's success is that finally, a generation or so into this, the "average" non-geeky consumer has come to understand a bit about the potential of the information age? And instead they all chose to play farmville and post ugly baby pictures?
Check. The thing that drives facebook is simply that "everyone and their grandmother" all decided to use it suddenly. That makes it briefly very useful. Sure they can extend that, or maintain it for a long time. But as soon as a better networking tool comes along. With no doubt an automagical way to import your profile information, photos and friends, all while winning five megabannanas for jungleville 3D. Then Facebook will be... Friendster/myspace/geocities/whatever other icon of forgotten internet community you'd like to bring up.
FB owns a lot of users and a couple really worthwhile properties that those users beat the hell out of. As a consequence, FB will experience the same type of long death that arises from a large user base reluctant to move all their stuff to a new service. Hell, look how many active users Yahoo Mail still has.
The only real downside for FB is that Zynga can plug into any potential successor. That means should a successor emerge in the near future, Zynga can move overnight into that space. Since a lot of FB users are there only for the Zynga games, any move by Zynga into a successor's space would be massively damaging to FB.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Or Status.net even?
This is a plausible argument. For the many web programmers who likely frequent /., it should be possible to reverse engineer Facebook (and greatly improve on it). Doing so would be a fascinating experiment and one way to create a platform where this hypothesis could be tested. In fact, the amount of human energy that went into compiling all the the comments related to this particular post would be enough to develop the database and write at least some of the code to make this possible. That said, who is up for it?
Wrong. It's now half-empty. Spam levels have dropped 50% since Christmas.
Spam volumes shrink over festive season
Yeah. Preview! The link was good, though. ;)
Put identity in the browser.
Zuckerberg the latest Steve Case? I think he's the latest "Head Case"
nuff said
People will finally grasp what the rest of us grasped ages ago. That is, I have nothing worth saying that hundreds or thousands of people need to know about and none of them have anything worth saying that I give a damn about.
If you had grasped that yourself, you wouldn't be posting on Slashdot.
> which is a bit quicker then 127.0.0.1
quicker THAN. Why would you even write "then" in this context? The two words sound nothing like each other.
Douglas Rushkoff is right on the money with his assessment of Facebook. In fact, I predicted back in 2008 in the article "Evolution of Social Networks into Virtual Organizations" at http://www.virtualorganization.net/2008/07/evolution-of-social-networks-into.html that these social networks will eventually evolve into virtual organizations within the next 5 years. All the hype going on around Facebook's "valuation" is a sure indicator that we're getting very close to the end of Facebook's dominance of the social network era. As well, it's a perfect time to begin to prepare to cash out even before you begin to invest. The cashing out window period is 12-18 months following any upcoming IPO because I predict that the next 2 years portend to be the "supernova" stage for Facebook, that point at which it will shine its brightest before it begins to completely collapse. As an investor, you definitely don't want to wait for the full 2 years because it will definitely be too late by then. My advice is to SELL, SELL, SELL by no later than 18 months following their IPO, regardless of the selling price of the stock. I did also write an update on that article back in April 2010 titled "An Update on the Evolution of Social Networks" at http://www.virtualorganization.net/2010/04/update-on-evolution-of-social-networks.html which sorts of validates my 2008 prediction and the 5-year timetable. Without getting too technical and philosophical, there is a very good and fundamental reason why Facebook or any other successful newcomer is unable to escape their fate. That reason is based on the current One-Sided Coin strategy that is so much the central component of the business model of these social networks. I have written about that in great detail in an article titled "Content Monetization Strategy for Social Networks" at http://www.virtualorganization.net/2009/03/content-monetization-strategy-for.html ::
Facebook IPO is around the corner and in that case, I believe the fall of facebook is getting closer... people making that IPO must know something already. Its very unlikely that they do IPO just to raise cash - they have anough of cash already, its the other way around - they want to get their ivested money back. I am guessing, but it will be very interesting to watch it unfold in the comming years.
....A conclusion I reached after reading the comments to this article.
I thought slashdot was supposed to be full of smart people? Geeks with 130+ IQs? Where's the vision, or intelligence, in comments like "Facebook is just a fad", "I don't see any use for it in my own personal life so therefore it's a useless waste of time for everyone", "why would people use Facebook when they could just use IRC, email, or telnet into a FreeBSD server to set up their own CMS", "myself and my friends are all boring, so everyone else must obviously be boring too, and therefore they are stupid for using Facebook", or the billions of variations or similar idiotic lines of reasoning I've seen posted here?
Facebook is not dying any time soon. It fulfills and enhances real needs in people's lives, which is why it's so damn popular, and why millions of people (myself included) are on there every day. The great thing about it--and any other technology which successfully recruits 500+ million members and is still growing daily--is everybody has their own use for it. Men, women, stay at home moms, professionals, grandmas, grandpas, high school kids, college students, entertainers, politicians, the list is endless, and every one of them finds some kind of value in it that's personally relevant to them. Maybe it's contacting and staying in touch with old friends. Maybe it's sharing pictures of friends and family (especially HUGE amongst women of all ages). Maybe it's attracting supporters to a cause. Maybe it's finding girls to date and fuck. Maybe it's organizing events or parties. Maybe it's keeping others up to date on happenings. Maybe it's playing some time wasting game with friends. There's tons of value that can be had from it, if one is a social creature and wants to easily communicate and stay in touch with other people for any reason. (Which might explain why a site full of antisocial geeks like Slashdot finds particular trouble in understanding why people like it so much.)
Something may eventually come along better to replace it, but it's not happening in the next 5 years, or likely 10, since Facebook continues to do a great job in adding new features and upgrading/improving existing ones. You can take that to the bank and cash it.
I've been saying this for years: Facebook is a fad. Yet Another Fad, and not a very good one at that. It's a fad like MySpace was a fad, even though people on MySpace swore up and down to me at its height that everybody was on it and I should get an account, too. But its time passed, it faded, and so too will Facebook.
What people like about Facebook are features it has which are not fads: Self publishing text and images, instant messaging, email. Keeping up to date with friends is not a fad, even though Twitter probably is too. (I say probably because Twitter-style microupdates is actually a lifestyle and for some people will never go away; it's just that it's mainstreamness is a fad.) There will always be ways to do these things which mass numbers of people will use, but it was always clear that Facebook would not be The Way.
Why was Facebook always doomed? For the same reason, as the article notes, that AOL was doomed: Its success was coincidental, based on happenstance more than merit, and it built a walled garden. Facebooks walls are not as high and stupid as AOLs were, but they're there. Both systems tried to leverage early popularity into an independent applications platform that gets people in, keeps them in and gives them everything. The problem is that you simply cannot compete with the entire world, no matter how good you are. Facebook is always going to be a tiny fraction of the Web, and so Facebook apps will not provide everything.
To build a Facebook-like experience for people in a sustainable way you have to be open, that's the bottom line. You have to give up all control and let people do what they will. In short you have to be email, you have to be jabber, you have to be HTTP. You can't have one company owning the server farm and the protocols and the UI and the APIs, no matter how good those things are. The long-term Facebook replacement must be a system of systems communicating over open protocols that many people implement, allowing the UI to be a web browser or something else, allowing the back end to be written many ways, allowing the data to be stored many ways, and allowing the users, ultimately, many choices. When you can do all that and the users still find it easy to self-publish text and images, stay connected with friends and play silly little games you'll have a long-term Facebook-type system (but not a single site) that will not be a fad.
But, it won't get any buzz.
I want my Cowboyneal
Nope, $RANDOMLUSER --- That's MY Computer..... I just checked...
Okay, I'm late to the party what with over 400 comments already. But I was just commenting the other day about how Facebook is the new AOL. Remember back in its heyday when every company, every TV commercial, every everything said "AOL keyword BLAHBLAHBLAH" at the end? Notice how now every company, every TV commercial, and every everything now says "Like us at Facebook.com/BLAHBLAHBLAH" ?
Everything old is new again. It's the circle of life. And Facebook will eventually go the same way as AOL. It's already started.
Here you are, on slashdot, sharing your opinion with a mass audience.
Ironically, you are doing so pseudononymously to a crowd of pseudononymous and anonymous people.
While hey may be right - hell, I HOPE he's right - a major difference is that AOL was ubiquitous in America, while FB is ubiquitous on the internet.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Who is to say that the accounts created align with true identities? You can already create a bogus profile and fill it up with friends in minutes.
No, I think it more true that FB is still relatively new, and has not yet been fully exploited such as MySpace or other has been social sites already have.
It is onlly a matter of time.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
Hi, mr Zuckerberg!