Why Facebook's Network Effects Are Overrated

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from a contrarian take on the power of Facebook from hacker Benjamin Mako-Hill: "A lot of people interested in free software, and user autonomy and network services are very worried about Facebook. Folks are worried for the same reason that so many investors are interested: the networks effects brought by hundreds of millions of folks signed up to use the service. ... Facebook is vulnerable to the next thing more than many technology firms that have benefited from network effects in the past. If users are given compelling reasons to switch to something else, they can with less trouble and they will. That compelling reason might be a new social network with better features or an awesome distributed architecture that allows freedom for users and the ability of those users to benefit from new and fantastic things that Facebook's overseers would never let them have and without the things Facebook's users suffer through today. Or it might be a sexier proprietary box to store users' private information. It doesn't mean that I'm not worried about Facebook. I remain deeply worried. It's just not very hard for me to imagine the end."

Comments

Data ownership

[Martz]

Users don't care about who owns their data.

Sit down with the average user and explain to them that Facebook owns their comments, photos, videos, metadata - and they totally don't care. Suggest to them that Facebook might start charging the user for the service (obviously they won't) and the user will freak out as that costs them something real and tangible.

The author of this article is basically saying that Facebook is vulnerable to failure because the mass of people might leave and join another service. The reason for that happening would be to join a free and open network, but as I stated before (without evidence) most users don't care about a company owning their data anyway - so it's not going to happen.

For Facebook to fail it has to stop innovating and offering new features, and a competitor has to come up with something new and cool. People will not "leave" Facebook - they'll sign up with the competitor and forget to go back to Facebook to check on what's going on.

Facebook is going to be around for a while yet, regardless of if geeks "get it" or think it's worth something.

Re:Data ownership

[moozey]

Agreed. A lot of people are so quick to suggest that Facebook is going to turn out like Myspace in a matter of months but in reality that really couldn't be further from the truth... Usually the people who suggest it also have a huge dislike for the service for whatever reason.

The summary suggests that Facebook could be ousted by a new site coming a long with some new features and what not, but If Facebook sees another site as a threat, there's nothing stopping it from implementing whatever new attributes they're plugging before it affects their user base. Or better yet, there's nothing stopping them from buying the damn company like they did with Instagram.

Re:Data ownership

[Certhas]

More so, it's hard to leave. People are invested in the infrastructure. It carries their data, their pictures and activities, and a lot of metadata about their pictures and activities (like tags in the pictures).

There is no reason why we shouldn't all start referring to "tables" as "papgualas", but it still will never happen. Facebook just needs to not be significantly worse. G+ was IMO significantly better than facebook when it launched. But I still couldn't switch because I would have needed to convince everybody I want to coordinate with using that infrastructure to switch with me.

Re:Data ownership

[shiftless]

most users don't care about a company owning their data anyway - so it's not going to happen.

Sure they do.

They just don't care enough to ditch FB because of it.

Give them a real alternative (no, G+ doesn't count), and watch people switch in droves.

Re:Data ownership

[hairyfeet]

The author of TFA is also missing something even more fundamental and that is the users don't give a damned about free as in freedom all they give a shit about is convenient. Most users of FB that I've watched are using it for the same reason my GF uses it, and that is to keep in touch with distant friends/relatives easier than email. Her old HS buddies and distant relatives can find her in seconds on FB and contact her, no need to know an email address, and they can keep in touch through FB with a minimum of work.

So the ONLY way I could see FB going down is if they did the same dumbass mistake that MySpace did, and that was spamming the crap out of the users. Everyone I know ditched MySpace not because they didn't like it or felt the need for the "freedom" of FB, its just because MySpace started spamming all over the place. With a service like FB its really their audience to lose, and by doing smart moves like buying Zynga (I swear those games are like catnip to females) I just don't see any real dumbass moves happening.

But I don't think something "cool" would be enough because people are basically lazy and FB could just copy whatever the feature was just as Zynga rips off other games. No the only way I see FB going down is if they decide they need to "monetize the users more" and basically crap all over the network but I haven't seen any signs so far they are THAT stupid.

Re:Data ownership

[s.t.a.l.k.e.r._loner]

Agreed. A lot of people are so quick to suggest that Facebook is going to turn out like Myspace in a matter of months but in reality that really couldn't be further from the truth...

If you want to see the digital equivalent of tumbleweeds, go check out MySpace. Just for the hell of it, I logged into my MySpace the other day for the first time in many months, and the only thing I saw there was dozens of bulletin posts by one band whose posts I used to ignore every couple days. About 4 years ago, MySpace added a bunch of worthless features (apparently trying to copy the increasingly popular Facebook) and increasingly in-your-face advertisements, and not coincidentally most people made the migration to Facebook. Then about 2 years ago, Facebook started adding a bunch of features that reminded a bunch of us of MySpace's missteps... but oddly enough, people didn't migrate away. They do seem to have a much better thought-out system, and their people-searching is top notch. Facebook probably will go away in a few years and be replaced by something else, but it's definitely not fading away in the foreseeable months.

Re:Data ownership

[moozey]

Well, supposedly come the end of the year, Myspace is going to be launched again as some revamped music service. Justin Timberlake and a few other idiots bought it for ~$35 million... talk about beating a dead horse.

Re:Data ownership

[Lisias]

Facebook *is* going to turn out like Myspace - I just don't know when - perhaps not in my lifetime.

People are always looking for the next big thing - and the satisfaction saturation (that precedes boredom and the desire to change) are reached exponentially faster after each change.

Orkut lasted almost 10 years. Perhaps Facebook will face its book, I mean, its nemesis in 6. But I don't think it will manage to last more than 10 years.

Re:Data ownership

[rev0lt]

I'd say that, after the unsurprisingly disappointing IPO, the infinite money faucet has closed. Give them some months to settle, and then you'll start to see less monkeying around new features and more commercial focusing. People didn't buy Facebook shares to "finance the vision". They bought them to make money, and for that, they need to have a business model (and I really doubt that advertising - at current levels - is enough to keep the lights on).
When they start to put more ads, when some new features start to be paid, it will be the beginning of the end.

Re:Data ownership

[Pieroxy]

No the only way I see FB going down is if they decide they need to "monetize the users more" and basically crap all over the network but I haven't seen any signs so far they are THAT stupid.

Watch the stock go below $15 and they'll become that stupid. It's a matter of days.

Re:Data ownership

[jezwel]

Does this mean G+ might finally get some activity ? :)

Re:Data ownership

[k(wi)r(kipedia)]

So the ONLY way I could see FB going down is if they did the same dumbass mistake that MySpace did, and that was spamming the crap out of the users.

I see two ways that FB could go down. First is when they run out of money because they couldn't monetize their xillion users. This could very well be the fear behind the stock price decline.

Second is Facebook failing to provide a suddenly popular feature that another social networking site has. This feature can be anything from better-than-Skype video conferencing to practical telepresence.

I suspect what allowed Facebook to leap ahead of MySpace was the Flash games. The bandwagon effect ensured that MySpace was left behind, as more and more users deserted a site that was becoming less and less cool.

Re:Data ownership

[Blue Stone]

I see another way that Facebook could implode: poor performance to give a return on the investments made. This creates demands for Facebook to do stuff to exploit its users data in a more ruthless and abusive manner, creating a death spiral of people leaving -> more exploitation of data -> people leave -> more exploitation ...

Just look at internet advertising. The more abusive it became, the more people installed pop-up blockers and adblockers and the more the advertisers tried to circumvent those things, the better the adblockers became.

Facebook has already proved it's just as dissolute as any regular internet advertiser now, with their numerous opt-out privacy changes. I think it's only going to get worse and I don't think the money men will be able to restrain themselves from making things worse.

Re:Data ownership

[drinkypoo]

Orkut was a victim of its Brazilian success. I and everyone I know stopped using it because it became nothing but a bunch of portuguese spam.

I sure would like it if Google would use (or hell, even "leverage") their language tools to automatically mark things in languages I don't read as spam.

Re:Data ownership

[rev0lt]

First google hit - http://www.splatf.com/2012/02/facebook-revenue/
85% of revenue is made from advertising. And those revenue numbers aren't up to par with the company size, or IPO valuation. Not even close.

Re:Data ownership

[Psychochild]

There's a lot of activity on Google+, the problem is that you have to invest some time and effort to find the good conversations.

The circles Google+ uses are it's best feature and it's biggest weakness. You can send out updates only to people who you want to see. But, the problem is that newcomers to the network don't see anything you're just sharing with a circle. So, to someone who just signs up, it looks like there isn't much going on.

In my case, I was lucky enough to have a few people involved with indie tabletop RPG development add me, probably because I'm a somewhat known MMO developer. From them I was able to add a few more people, and some of them shared their circles, and now I have nearly 3000 people who post about tabletop RPG stuff in my circles. There's a wealth of information there, but if I hadn't found the first few people I wouldn't have known about it.

I wonder if Google+ could do something about this. Maybe have some "official" circles for people to join into to see some activity immediately upon joining. It won't replace personal circles, but might help fight the perception that nothing goes on at Google+.

Ultimately, the lesson here is that you get out of Google+ proportional to what you invest into it. If you just add a few friends to circles it's boring. Find some existing circles on stuff you care about and it'll blow your mind.

Facebook will change or die

[AndrewStephens]

Facebook has reached the pinnacle of social networking - the only place to go now is downhill unless they change. They already have every user who wants a page, the only new users are young kids just getting online - not Facebook's target demographic. Also, they have just gone public which puts pressure on the company to make more money.

I predict Facebook will start to branch out into video and music more and more in an attempt to get more pages views - it must be galling for Facebook to see people sharing videos with YouTube advertising instead of Facebook's. They are going to have to be careful, users don't like change.

(One thing users don't want is a whole slew of different social networks. I am on Facebook and G+, but I would only use one if either gave me full control over who sees what. I think projects like Diaspora are always going to be niche ideas)

When facebook came out ...

[Taco Cowboy]

... I registered for an account

The few times I was there I felt uncomfortable

Everyone was telling everybody else everything about themselves - their name, their phone #, their address, their hobby ... everything

Maybe I'm just old fashion. Privacy for me is something very important

I haven't been to facebook for years, and I don't miss it

Re:When facebook came out ...

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a time when it all made sense. When I first signed up for facebook, it was only people at my university and a handful of other universities. People at other universities could see that you exist, and could message you. You could set your privacy so that only people from your university could see your info. This made sense in the context of not knowing what Facebook's future plans were. At the time it was a very convenient way of keeping up with people you met on campus. Honestly, facebook was ruined when they let the masses in, but it's obvious now that that was their plan all along. When they let the high schoolers and the unwashed masses in, I was reminded again of Eternal September on USENET.

Re:When facebook came out ...

[Lisias]

I ended up using it by force.

My son (that lives far away) and childhood friends are there, and just there (a managed to convince some of them to go to G+, but just a few).

So basically I signup with my well known email and my first name - no other personal information added.

No big privacy at all, I know. But better than nothing.

Re:When facebook came out ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The IT lifers on slashdot don't get it, but the average person doesn't give a rats ass about privacy. If you do? Don't share anything of value on Facebook, just use it to interact with distant relatives, old friends, whatever. Nothing worth griping about on EVERY Facebook article posted here.

Re:When facebook came out ...

[Sique]

Actually, about 10% of the human race like it. That's the actual number of accounts compared with the size of the human population. That means that 90% of the world still doesn't have an account with facebook.

Re:When facebook came out ...

[thetoadwarrior]

No one can answer that but what we do know is that as of the end of 2010 only 30% of the world's population apparently has internet access. So if only 10% of the world's population likes FB that means 20% who have net access still opt not to have it and not due to technical limitations.

http://news.yahoo.com/disconnected-70-percent-world-doesnt-internet-despite-rising-201836035.html

I suspect increasingly a lot of FB accounts are doing to be dud accounts of no real value because companies like spotify force people to login via Facebook so they create an account just so they can have spotify.

Spotify and everyone else has to quit assuming everyone on the net has a Facebook account. They don't and in fact most people don't.

Re:When facebook came out ...

[h4rr4r]

2004 would be facebook being open to college kids and fairly private, the eternal sept was 93, only 11 years before. I would say I remember both of these as well. I was one of the newbies allowed onto usenet with the Eternal September and I was finishing university just as facebook emerged.

Re:When facebook came out ...

[mlow82]

Not many, because most of that 90% is worried about more important things, like surviving for the next week with an immediate food supply of grass, weeds, and dirt.

Re:When facebook came out ...

[spire3661]

And the average idiot doesnt get the VERY GOOD reasons why we get up in arms about this stuff. You are equating not caring with not important, which is completely false.

Re:When facebook came out ...

[jedidiah]

I know someone that can barely deal with Windows well enough to get onto the web and still manages to be paranoid about privacy on Facebook. You don't have to be a Slashdot geek to understand that exposing yourself to the world is perhaps not such a great idea.

Re:When facebook came out ...

[rHBa]

No one can answer that but what we do know is that as of the end of 2010 only 30% of the world's population apparently has internet access. So if only 10% of the world's population likes FB that means 20% who have net access still opt not to have it and not due to technical limitations.

Or in other words, two thirds of the internet connected population of the world DON'T have a Facebook account.

Article is wrong.

[will_die]

The article is wrong because FB is not about new features or the architecture. FB power is that I can connect with easily with people of similar interests.
With FB it is easy to setup local group, and invite people, or for them to find it, of similar interested and then all those people plan, talk about or support the topic.
Until something new can get everyone to switch over to that system there is no value in me, a single person, switching to that new site. Even in the event that facebook does something totally stupid to upset the users it will not loose that many because the abaility it provides for communication is worth some hassles.

No content

[antifoidulus]

Wow, the article wasted a lot of words essentially saying nothing. Heres the article in 1 sentence: Facebook is big now, but like others before it, it may not be big forever.

See, was that so hard?

Re:No content

[WrongSizeGlass]

Wow, the article wasted a lot of words essentially saying nothing. Heres the article in 1 sentence: Facebook is big now, but like others before it, it may not be big forever.

See, was that so hard?

Hard? No, but distilling their message down to a sentence that can fit on twitter doesn't do anything for their ad revenue.

Re:No content

[StripedCow]

Can slashdot please hire this guy?

Read the EULA

[Savage-Rabbit]

Facebook doesn't own my data, I still have all my photos I uploaded

Actually by uploading your private data to Facebook you granted them a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide IP-license to use any of your stuff long as it is on the Facebook network even if it isn't posted there under your account. From their EULA:

"For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it."

Re:Read the EULA

[Anonymous Coward]

They need something like that EULA otherwise they can't share your photos/videos with other people.

And of course they're not going to bother making it so narrow.

Re:Read the EULA

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trying to tell me, that if I upload my pictures to the service to publishes them to my contacts, then the service will have the right to publish those pictures to my contacts? Shocking.

You know, I always uploaded pictures on Facebook with intention to publish them to contacts. That is the whole point. I'm even fine with them not paying me money for publishing those pictures to my contact. And if I'm uploading them as 'public', then I'm fine with them showing them to anybody. That is what the 'public' setting is for.

Re:Read the EULA

[TheRaven64]

Are you trying to tell me, that if I upload my pictures to the service to publishes them to my contacts, then the service will have the right to publish those pictures to my contacts?

Yes. They also have the right to sell those pictures to anyone who wants to buy them, such as Starbucks for promotional material, or if you upload sexually explicit photos then they would be legally allowed to sell them to porn sites. The same applies to any music that you upload, along with any writings or other creative content.

Re:Read the EULA

[bickerdyke]

There is nothing in that EULA that would keep facebook from publishing your non-public pictures to your non-contacts.

Re:Read the EULA

[Gr8Apes]

You didn't read the EULA. Not only can they share it with your contacts, they can use it for any purpose they desire, including ads for Facebook, etc. Even if you delete said content, as long as even one of the original people you shared it with has a copy (or link) then they will still have rights to it. In short, until all copies are deleted off FB, including the ones that you shared (and perhaps they shared....), your content is not yours. You see how you've lost control?

Re:Read the EULA

[tenco]

Interesting. Why do you think they can ignore that "subject to your privacy settings" part?

Re:Read the EULA

[TheRaven64]

Because your privacy settings are defined on a scale that Facebook controls, separately to the T&Cs. If they want to sell something of yours, all that they have to do is change the definition of the 'private' setting to mean 'share only with people who pay money, or are on your authorised people list'.

Re:Read the EULA

[TheRaven64]

You retain the copyright on them, you grant them a license. Facebook doesn't own your photographs, just the right to do whatever thy want to them. Oh, and you only have to have left them public for a second for Facebook to transfer this license to a subsidiary, at which point the 'unless already shared' clause kicks in.

Perpetual Data

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook can turn this whole privacy thing on it's head with one smart business move - promise to keep your data public on the internet forever, if you pay for it during your lifetime. I have several dead friends now where the facebook pages they left behind are the best way to remember them, as they are full of pictures and movies and things they said and did. But there has never been a guarantee that the data will be there forever.

If facebook started charging people a few bucks a year to guarantee their data will never be deleted, I think that would be an excellent value-add.

Facebook is a lek.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

A lek is the courtship ritual in many species of grouse, pheasants etc. Essentially the males gather in some clearing and do their courtship dance. Females gather around and choose their mates. The most interesting thing about the lek is that, most females choose the male chosen by most other males. It is essentially the perceived popularity of the males becomes the actual popularity. Scientists have done experiments using robotic female birds, and by making the robotic females change their preferences, other real females also would switch their preferences.

Facebook is popular because most people thought it was the most popular social network and joined it. It was exactly like most businesses choosing Microsoft windows in early 1990s because they all believed most businesses were choosing Microsoft windows. One of the consequences of lek courtship behavior in birds is that, species that practiced it produce the most ostentatious males with outrageously useless features like seen in peacocks and birds of paradise. Much in the same way Microsoft in its heyday and Facebook now go for so many bells and whistles whether or not they are useful.

Facebook is Meh

[Jay Tarbox]

Recently the wife and I tried an experiment, we put an ad on Facebook for a few days about her eBook. I targeted it to 18+ females with an interest in reading/romance/kindle and so on... In theory it's pretty cool how you can target an audience based on their profiles. Facebook will tell you dynamically exactly how many people meet the criteria as you add and remove options.

We saw no effect in book sales. Before, during and after the advertising, sales remained on average the same.

Re:Facebook is Meh

[foniksonik]

You probably didn't spend enough money.

Display ads or text ads definitely have a minimum impression count requirement to be effective, especially for an unknown brand.

I'm sure FB displayed your ads but the customers may not have been receptive at that time. Just before a holiday would be best, when your demo is feeling lonely.

That time spot is likely more expensive though.

Or you could leave it up longer to establish familiarity. Unlike actual romance, it's not the first impression that works, it's the 3rd, 4rth or 5th.

The horror

[anyaristow]

Everyone was telling everybody else everything about themselves - their name, their phone #, their address, their hobby... everything

OMG the horror. People making social connections and finding things to talk about.