And for the past eight years, Facebook has been the central neural network of the Internet’s link-sharing brain. But as the site has grown, so have our needs. Now that the company’s public, it’s crunch time, and the skeptics and haters are lining up to talk about how it might all end. One thing’s for certain: whether it’s a bang or a whimper, Facebook is not forever. How could it collapse? Let me count the ways.
Since Facebook’s inception, Mark Zuckerberg has had an uncanny knack for maintaining the site’s exceptional growth, despite royally pissing off the majority of its users with shady privacy practices, monetization strategies like the Beacon fiasco, and of course, its latest incarnation, Timeline. And yet, despite all the user resentment, we’re apparently using the site more than ever before. It’s this kind of fortitude in the face of user frustration that has led some to compare Zuckerberg’s forceful genius to that of Steve Jobs.
But while Jobs always had his doubters, vocal critics, and fair share of questionable philosophies, he commanded the kind of respect that’s made Mac fanboys some of the most annoying self-described geeks around the world. His death was felt internationally, as the world mourned the passing of its greatest tech rockstar.
Zuck doesn’t have the same kind of cult following. He’s been ridiculed all over the Internet and in a million-dollar Hollywood movie. Many simply don’t trust him. Beyond the anodyne hacking talk and his “keep shipping” motto, oracle readers have had to rely on chat transcripts from years of legal cases to learn about his thinking and intentions (for instance, that he once thought of his users as “dumb fucks.")
As net neutrality guru Tim Wu noted, Facebook has a lot of bad karma. “No one really loves the company,” he tweeted the other day. “We just feel stuck with it.” Really, we’re waiting for a good enough reason. At some point, Zuckerberg will push too hard — a new setting you can’t turn off, a “frictionless” feature that shares too much, a product that simply pisses you off too hard — and users will ragequit for good. The company’s controversial IPO and the simultaneous pressure to build up ad revenue will only accelerate this process.
At some point, Zuckerberg will push too hard, and users will ragequit for good
Of course, people have been calling for this for quite some time (almost with every new abrasive change to the site), but no true revolution has materialized. Thanks to the network effect, sheer inertia, and the lack of a compelling alternative, Facebook remains top dog. Our often-surprising threshold for pain doesn’t help, but it is finite. We are always potentially one bad update away from the tipping point. We’ve seen the internet rally together before and Facebook’s track record makes it easy to hate.
Before Facebook there was Friendster. Plus MySpace, Yahoo, and even Compuserve, among countless others. The idea for Facebook, however brilliantly executed, wasn’t necessarily built on some revolutionary, genius idea. It was one of many social networking sites to emerge around campuses in 2004, and it happened to be the thing that everyone started using. Like many success stories of the past, the thing that Facebook nailed was timing.
Facebook arrived at the advent of Web 2.0. Broadband reached the masses and the Internet was going mainstream. Photos that once took agonizing minutes to load on our noisy dial-up connections could now be shared near instantaneously with our dirt cheap digital cameras. The arrival of new HTML standards meant that the new web wasn’t just prettier, it was highly functional. Finally, the world was ready for a social network. Suddenly, Facebook became the coolest party in town.
Of course, people have been calling for this for quite some time (almost with every new abrasive change to the site), but no true revolution has materialized. Thanks to the network effect, sheer inertia, and the lack of a compelling alternative, Facebook remains top dog. Our often-surprising threshold for pain doesn’t help, but it is finite. We are always potentially one bad update away from the tipping point. We’ve seen the internet rally together before and Facebook’s track record makes it easy to hate.
Before Facebook there was Friendster. Plus MySpace, Yahoo, and even Compuserve, among countless others. The idea for Facebook, however brilliantly executed, wasn’t necessarily built on some revolutionary, genius idea. It was one of many social networking sites to emerge around campuses in 2004, and it happened to be the thing that everyone started using. Like many success stories of the past, the thing that Facebook nailed was timing.
Facebook arrived at the advent of Web 2.0. Broadband reached the masses and the Internet was going mainstream. Photos that once took agonizing minutes to load on our noisy dial-up connections could now be shared near instantaneously with our dirt cheap digital cameras. The arrival of new HTML standards meant that the new web wasn’t just prettier, it was highly functional. Finally, the world was ready for a social network. Suddenly, Facebook became the coolest party in town.
by Alec_Liu, Motherboard | Read more:
