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Is Mark Zuckerberg the Next Steve Case?

Posted by Soulskill on from the case-in-point dept.

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.'"

8 of 470 comments (clear)

  1. Dead on. by headhot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Dead on. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I would disagree.

      I don't post on facebook much but it has gotten me in touch with a lot of past friends.

      It is an easy way to post pictures of the family without clogging people e-mail box.

      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.

    2. Re:Dead on. by boxwood · · Score: 5, Interesting

      New users spend a lot more time on the site, post more content, send more messages, etc.

      I've been on facebook for years. I rarely update my status or post photos now. All of my friends who have been on there for a while are the same. Sometimes I meet someone who just got on facebook and they post more messages so I load up facebook more often to see what messages they've posted to me. But after a while they get bored too, post less often, and so I have less need to go to facebook.

      Facebook became the most popular website due to the network effect, but they will become less popular due to the boredom effect. As more people become bored with facebook they stop posting and just go to read what everyone else is up to. But as more people transition from adding content to just viewing content, there is less content and less reason to go there to view content. And now that more people are becoming aware of privacy issues with facebook it becomes even less likely they will post stuff there.

      So it has a big userbase, but a lot of that userbase is bored. When the next cool thing comes out that "everyone" is using, they will just use that and not bother with facebook anymore.

  2. Boring by gilesjuk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:Huh? by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are 3 stages.
    Early adopters: It is the new hip thing to do. Also this is where the zealots and the big fans come in. This was the area when face book was considered a social network for college kids.

    Middle adopters: This is where the product gets it's name recognition. And big envesters come in. This is where it really grows. you don't need to be hip to use it it is mostly expected.

    Late adopters: Ok it isn't a fad. That is when grandma gets an account. It is big and the early adopters start leaving to the next big thing.

    So even when you go from stage 2-3 you are still growing. But you are approaching the end.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  4. Second life by pepax · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does anyone remember it? Even real companies were spending money to build their spaces there. How long ago was that? And now? Just tumbleweed...

  5. Re:Can't wait by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's not so much companies as communication models. Initially, any new form of communication is dominated by incompatible proprietary systems. Then these give way to some form of standard and the market is either filled by government monopolies that interoperate at a national level or by smaller companies that interoperate at a smaller scale. We've seen this with postal systems, telephones, electronic mail, computer networks, and instant messaging. Social networking might be the one that breaks the trend, but it seems unlikely.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  6. Marketing value of EU data: Zero. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...