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Facebook Mocks 'Infection' Study, Predicts Princeton's Demise
Okian Warrior writes "In a followup to the earlier story about Princeton researchers predicting the end of Facebook by 2017, Facebook has struck back with a post using similar statistical techniques to predict that Princeton itself may be facing irreversible decline. By using similar methods ('likes', mentions in scholarly papers, Google searches) Facebook has created graphs that indicate Princeton is losing ground compared with its rivals and may have no students at all by 2021."
Princeton will have the last laugh as facebook will be dead before it.
Turn about is fair play sir!
Offers good value for the time and money you spend there.
The best part of Facebook's article is where they use identical research methodology to prove that there will be no air left by 2060.
I predict an immediate rush on all stockpiles of canned air!
You can make numbers look however you like in a study, who knew?
10 : 1 that Princeton wins. Bookie can be contacted over my email .
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Funny how quick they replied to this study, feeling a bit nervous facebook?
This is a brilliant way to respond to the Princeton study - the correct way - rather than issue a press release denouncing it, or whine about it some other way.
Instead, use the study's own methodology against them to show other ridiculous conclusions. What are the academics at Princeton going to do, say "oh wait the original methods are bullshit". Anything they say against just weakens their original paper/study.
While I can certainly see Facebook fading away, the problem with the Princeton study is that an essential assumption was that since Facebook is the successor to Myspace the data regarding Myspace's rise and fall can be extrapolated to Facebook (using the resemblance of Myspace's rise and fall to certain other phenomena). The problem with this assumption is that Myspace's fall was a result of Facebook existing as its successor. Currently there is no "successor" to Facebook which fills the same niche as Facebook, Myspace, and Friendster filled.
I am not arguing that Facebook will not fall in the same way that Myspace did. I am just arguing that we do not have the data to make the case. Accurately predicting the fall of Facebook is a matter of "art", not of science and most of those doing so are expressing an opinion based on a WAG (and perhaps on what they hope will happen). Myspace and Friendster were fads. Facebook started as a fad, Myspace and Friendster faded away when they lost their novelty and were replaced by the next fad. However, Facebook has survived past the fad stage. I will repeat that just because Facebook has survived past the fad stage that does not mean that it will last.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The difference is that Princeton hasn't seen major declines (in the millions) of its primary demographic group. FB is funded both directly and indirectly by advertising/marketers. If the demographic for FB shifts elsewhere, so will the revenue stream. Princeton's funding is more diverse coming from tuition/fees, grants and contributions/bequests. Unless there is a scandal, it is unlikely that those sources will change.
In addition, the competition of universities is pretty fixed. It is extremely expensive to start a new one (and get accredited). FB, on the other hand, well, it wasn't too long ago that Myspace was the king of the hill and FB was the challenger.
Facebook has used the same techniques as Princeton, and as such we can conclude that they approve of these techniques, and find them useful analytical instruments.
The only conclusion we can draw from this is the demise of both Princeton and Facebook.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Is it Perri-Air?
Facebook's reply was even really stupid.
Princenton article proposed a 'virus' model that fitted pretty well to Facebook growth and current decline, and made a prediction based on that, ignoring some social parameters, and made a prediction.
Facebook's article is just extrapolating, and not being a virtual entity, the virtual presence of Princenton might not be an equally good indicator.
The difference being that one is proud if their grandfather went to Princeton and horrified if their grandfather is friending them on Facebook.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
for all intensive purposes.
Facebook is more integrated into the rest of the web than all those other things.
None of the things you just mentioned, had millions of other sites embedding "like buttons" which give free intelligence to them whenever someone loads that other site's pages. Facebook, Google [Analytics], AddThis, and a few other things (Comscore and Quantcast) do something sort of similar (but at greater cost to themselves). I don't remember seeing AOL/MySpace/AIM/ICQ play that game. Go ahead, tell me what script or iframe tag MySpace (or AOL, ha!) ever got some other site to serve to all their users.
AOL and MySpace never (AFAIK) ran an OpenID server, or if they did, they convinced hardly anyone to use it. Facebook did that, except went a step further and did their own protocol instead of OpenID, and lots of sites use it. Look at the "sign in with" part of this page and tell me you see AOL or MySpace. The four (and only four) companies you see there, fucked the users by deviating from standards, and as their reward they get an explicit mention/branding instead of a generic enter-your-openid-URL blank. (If this ain't proof that Evil Is Basically A Good Idea, then I don't know what is. But that's beside the point.)
Do you remember ever seeing other sites show free ads to users, for MySpace or AOL, and where the webmasters thought it was basically a good/sane idea in their self interest? I can think of lots of sites I visit, where that site says "follow us on Facebook" complete with a link to Facebook. Facebook pays $0.00000000 CPM for this ad. It's a dumb ad too, since if you follow the link, you just see a scaled down abbreviated version of that site's own content and links back to that site. (Well, that plus some additional ads that Facebook got paid to run -- and where some of those ads, might even be for competitors to site you came from!)
If in 1997 you told you something like that could possibly exist, I would have laughed in your face. I still do laugh in your face in 2014 over the same thing, but it's a laugh of madness, drowned in the cacophony of a world gone mad.
Facebook is a bad site (there's no reason you should ever point your browser there), but on the other hand, they were brilliantly clever compared to all that came before them, in terms of getting value out of other sites. When Site X becomes the next big thing, there's a reasonably good chance that every pageload they acquire, will also help Facebook a little. Can you say MySpace was ever in such a position? Ever heard of dialup BBS that gained free data, sent from the user's computer, whenever a user picked any menu option on any of a few million other BBSes? Did you ever go to any site, where if you had firewalled off ICQ's servers, that other unrelated site wasn't able to offer all its usual interactivity?
Facebook is a totally different beast than MySpace, with basically nothing in common with it. MySpace was just some website that was popular for a while. Facebook is Shub-Internet.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
to get Facebook so riled up.
Irregardless of the origins of the phrase, it is perfectly reasonable to say "for all intensive purposes".