Do you think that Facebook will ever die?

Yes. Many young people have never used it and regard it as something only old people use. It’s been a primary communications network for me for 15 years or so, and suddenly over the past year I have noticed only a small handful of my friends post to it regularly. Most of the ones who do use it for some sort of activism and no longer for the sorts of friends-and-family connections that were once primary. The most telling thing is that Facebook is now running a national apology campaign via television commercials. That means it is forecasting a major crash in the near future. Remember that MySpace was going strong until everyone abandoned it en masse for Facebook. Before that, the same thing happened with Friendster. There’s really nothing that is particularly novel about Facebook that can’t be replicated or replaced by a different interface. More people are using Instagram (yes, an FB property) to post text along with their photos now than in the past. I think the primary reason FB has not been replaced is that it purchases its competitors—but now people don’t trust the Facebook brand and it’s time for a divorce.

R1 That always confused me too. In The Social Network, we find that it wasn't even Zuckerberg's idea, but everyone already knew that since Friendster was around since 2003. The only thing that made Facebook different was its ability to integrate with third party applications and it becoming popular at the same time that people were becoming addicted to their smartphones. The irony is that its interface is even more cluttered today than its former competition.

[Quote] Remember that MySpace was going strong until everyone abandoned it en masse for Facebook.

Probably also helped that Facebook wasn't as flashy as Myspace. Some of those backgrounds gave me a headache.

R2 There were some things about MySpace (and the gay site DListed, if anyone remembers that) that I liked—especially discovering new music and setting up playlists on profile pages. We’ve been molded by Facebook into thinking it’s the best model of a social network, when it’s just one model that can be replaced by someone with startup funds and the will power to turn down a $100 million buyout from FB. Doing so will make that person or group of people billionaires.

One of my favorite media writers describes it as a "slow leaking balloon" kind of like AOL.

AOL is still around, Verizon paid billions for it not that long ago, but its audience is all over 50 and gets a little smaller every year.

As R1 noted, teenagers are not on Facebook other than to talk to Mom and Grandpa, and overall their "engagement" numbers are slipping.

Cribbing from that same writer, Facebook the Company is not in much danger as they own Instagram and WhatsApp, and while Facebook the App is slowly dying in the US, Canada and Europe, it's still very popular in the developing world and will be for a few more years.

I'm still waiting for ReaganBook to take off.

Then how will people reconnect with long-lost acquaintances then tryna bang?

Fb won't die till a new young whippersnapper techie Zuckerberg 2.0 gets his new "ad-less" platform mainstream.

R5 AOL also still exists in other countries as a dialup Internet service provider and as of 2015 still had 2.2 million dialup subscribers. It really is dying a long, slow death.

Why are people so terrible at polls? Don’t just list the first three answers that occur to you. Try to be exhaustive.

The correct answer is “Yes, but a long, slow decline.”

Here's the piece I was referring to. Was spelling the writers name wrong which is why it was not coming up in Google.

Facebook isn't dying. Its still popular in many other countries. Just because many users in the US aren't using it doesn't mean that its going away. Social media is a global phenomenon.

I believe that Facebook is dying. Now the social network is being displaced by Twitter and Instagram, and in my opinion, one more reason not to upload all your life on social networks or maintain the profiles only for friends .. what is happening with facebook in a few more years with Twitter and Instagram.

This is a great retelling of the life and death of AOL if you have 10 minutes to watch it. It’s got more info than I ever knew, anyway.

R12 Instagram is Facebook since it was acquired by Facebook. There was a big survey this year that said the most popular and fastest-growing social media platform among young people is...YouTube. I had never thought of it as a kind of social media, but evidently it has displaced Snapchat among Millennials and the kids behind them.

I have seriously never met a group of people who pine for Facebook's failure as much as people here do. I really don't get it. Social media is not perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I believe that if you were to ask people whether their lives are improved by services like Facebook, most would say that, on balance, yes, their lives have been improved by them. I am really glad that Facebook and Instagram exist so that I can keep connected with people whom I care about but otherwise would have lost touch with as life takes its inevitable course.

What is wrong with you people?

R12 That's because of YouTube celebrities. In the topic about the concept of the movie star dying, someone brought up kids loving YouTube celebrities instead of film actors nowadays.

R15 Is this the only place you visit online? People seem to loathe Facebook on Twitter, reddit and on political forums.

R15 I can only imagine you work for Facebook or are a paid shill for it. Everyone I know is predicting the end of Facebook, from my 70 year-old father to my 40 year-old peers to the Millennials I know who tell me they’d never make a Facebook account. A girl at work had to make one to post social media as part of her job and she was so appalled that she had to use this archaic dinosaur of a social network. A new girl who just graduated from college said the other day that she only has a Facebook account because her grandmother won’t text and it’s the only way she has to keep in touch. Things are changing.

[quote]Everyone I know is predicting the end of Facebook

Literally no one who has any clue what he is talking about is predicting any such thing.

Every one I know has switched to Instagram (yes I know FB owns it).

“Literally no one.”

Literally no one!

Yeah, inevitably some shill/autist posts to threads like these to let us know there's something abnormal about us for disliking Facebook.

R14 Young generations are following pro youtube channels daily

I'm deciding whether to short it or not. The problem with shorting it is there is no debt. It makes money trough ads, and does not take out loans.

R25 You accidentally published your insider trading plans to Data Lounge.

Stalkbook

Based on the behaviors my assorted nieces and nephews, and cousins, young people are not using Facebook.

r26, that is not insider trading.

I have no inside to Facebook, all that information is public knowledge.

Find a clue before you post.

I was joking, R29. But while we’re trading juvenile personal attacks, find a dictionary before you post, mmkay? :)

r30, yeah I always claim I was joking when my ignorance shows. I made a typo, don't care. But you don't know how trading stocks works. LOL

He he ha ha ho ho!

I explained how troll farms and bots work to my husband. He's appalled Facebook won't do anything effective to stop this. Like most people (outside my field) the scope and pervasiveness is numbing.

The whole "mommy blogger" phase it's at it's end. Lazy fat middle aged women whose child support checks have come to an end need to wake up.

[quote]That's because of YouTube celebrities. In the topic about the concept of the movie star dying, someone brought up kids loving YouTube celebrities instead of film actors nowadays.

R16 that ‘s so funny, because due to the Disney Frau thread I got obsessed with a Disney YouTube blogger mentioned in that thread, Adam Hattan. I don’t have an interest in cruises or theme parks but I found the videos so relaxing to watch before bed.

Nobody cares about facebook, only datalounge is important!

Its already dead to anyone under 30

Next to mosquitoes, it's the biggest bane to humanity.

I think it'll be dead by 2020. I remember that Myspace seemed unstoppable in 2008, and by 2010, I couldn't believe that people still used it.

Why would poor people need to know about real estate?

It was foundrd by amoral slimebags, so I think a lot of people will be happy to piss on its grave. Given that Google has abandoned its “Dont be evil” maxim, and now aggressively engages in evil - from tracking to censorship), the relationship of it with its users becomes more toxic by the day as well. Once you lose trust, it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to win it back.

Remember when you needed a college email address to sign up on Facebook. I predict it will go back to something like that where only likeminded people can interact with eachother. We're constantly being asked to be separated by our group identity so the powers that be will happily oblige and thus people will be able to agree about everything all the time.

You'll also have a similar thing to LinkedIn where every time you try to friend somebody, it will ask even more intrusive questions as to how you know this person. They'll also clamp down on user verification requiring everything short of a driver's license to register, and whoever fails to comply will lose their account. It will no longer be Facebook but Facegroup where your communications are limited to how you classify that person. It won't just be limited to friends and family, but coworkers and so on. Everyone, democrats and republicans, will of course praise this change and be fine with it.

Face it: Facebook isn't going to disappear until something better replaces it, and that's not Twitter or Instagram. Facebook got the Baby Boomers into social media - and there are PLENTY of them to keep it afloat.

I think Facebook is getting desperate. I logged into eBay and they have an option to login with Facebook.

R45 is the poster child for this entire thread. That "option to login with Facebook" is just one tiny example of why Facebook is not going anywhere. The company is thoroughly embedded into the web and the internet at this point.

And the whole thing about young people abandoning or never joining Facebook is also stupid. What does it matter that young people prefer Instagram to Facebook, when Facebook, the corporate entity, owns both?

In fact, in all likelihood, segmenting off older users to Facebook while pushing younger users to Instagram is probably part of the company's strategy.

You guys just don't get it. Facebook is not Friendster and it is not MySpace. Whatever insecurities the parent website brings forth in you, it's not going anywhere, nor is social media.

And nice try, R21 and R22.

My kids think Facebook is for old people. They have Instagram and probably other shit I don’t know.

R46 They just added it to eBay. I've never seen it on there before and I use eBay a lot.

Hi Dr Priscilla Chan-Zuckerberg/r15!

Yes, but it will be slow. Even half as many users is a huge number of users. It's gonna be around for the foreseeable future Remember how big of a deal Yahoo was, and then it sort of fell apart piece by piece, not all at once, and actually STILL exists in some form. Facebook will go through he same long process of plateauing downward, but, again, for the foreseeable future it's still huge, even if smaller.

I think a better social network can come along in the meantime such as one that allows us to separate our contacts and target our content to who we want rather than forcing us to make our entire feed public.

R52 Facebook allows this, so I don't know what you mean.

Anyway. I'm 28 and I'm in my last year of returned college, with mostly late 10s to early 20s classmates. Facebook is used, but normally not frequently. We have enough to have Facebook groups for our year and program, and the very odd social media addict to post stuff regularly (to little response). My phone was bought in 2014, is a 2013 model, and was lower end at that, so I really want to replace it. If I replace it this year and then get easier and faster access to various apps, and as I head into less than a year before I graduate, I am considering storing what I want (contacts and their info, media, etc) and closing my Facebook account for what will be a second time - the first was early 2010s. The Feeds suck more and more, almost consistently (there are rare times of improved design), everything almost verges on bloat, and I just don't like their practices.

And yes, the apps I hear 'the youth' use nowadays are Instagram and Snapchat (both are slow on my phone so). Facebook may be kept for family and professional and public contacts, Twitter is used sometimes but I don't notice it as much as when Iast went to school (late 00s to early 10s), and gamers may have accompanying apps for Discord, Steam, and more. If there's something that really divides the Gen Y and Gen Z, its that Gen Y prefers an archive that they can feel like they have control over managing, while Gen Z acknowledges that its all in the company's control so they will shoot out their media into the ether and it'll mostly disappear from public awareness after (Instagram is a long feed that's hard for the non-techie to retrieve, Snapchat is presumably posts that disappear quickly). Facebook is some big and more static archive that Boomers and Gen X eventually flocked to, but that's anathema to at least Gen Z and it partially was to Gen Y. Z is just happy to make some stuff, save and use it on hard or cloud drives if important, and shoot out their lazier short videos, messages, photos to be casually consumed. On one hand they're more glued to using tech than we've ever had, but on the other it actually feels like more of them can turn way from that glued position and talk. Yeah they need their damn phone and networks, but its more of a scattershot activity than the millennial fixation. They won't miss Facebook. In fact they may end up missing it the least.

[quote]I think a better social network can come along in the meantime such as one that allows us to separate our contacts and target our content to who we want rather than forcing us to make our entire feed public.

What the fuck are you talking about, Facebook lets you do this and has for at least eight years, dipshit.

R54 Are you referring to this? Does this apply to who can see what you post on your feed or just stories?

tech isnt really my area but my god kids dont like facebook and only do snapchat and instagram. For a certain age group facebook is an absolute addiction and their lives are devoted mostly to facebook, as crazy as that sounds. I think it is like cigs, we know its hazardous to your health but its an addiction that cant be broken.

I know I would be in the minority of one, but facebook always struck me as extremely narcissistic and for people that already have that problem it magnifies it tenfold.i

When you post on Facebook, it explicitly gives the option of deciding who should (or who should not) see the post in question. So you can create groups of friends that you would like to see one type of post (say, family members), and other groups of friends who should see another. Then you can tailor that with exceptions for individual people. You have total control over who sees what on Facebook.