I recently made a friendly wager with a friend of mine: Facebook will not be around in two years. My friend joins the more mainstream viewpoint that Facebook is a massively valuable web application and i respectfully disagree.
Let me explain my case.
First, technology is increasing exponentially. Ray Kurzweil may be the most famous proponent of this concept, and nowhere is it more apparent than the world of online applications. The world is still figuring out what the internet is good for, and Facebook is simply the shining star of the current leading edge.
Second, internet users(especially young ones, which make up the majority of Facebook users) are notoriously fickle. There is a fine line walked between popularity and passe, MySpace has crossed it, Facebook is getting precariously close to it.
Third, The Google. Google already handles a huge portion of ‘social’ functions on the web for millions of users. Email, scheduling and calendering, document collaboration are all done exceptionally well by Google, and they are working on social networking.
Now what do we really get out of Facebook? “The Wall” ? i guess, but i prefer Twitter. Connections? yeah, thats good, but I don’t need it every day. PhotoShare? They have done it better than most, but its no category killer.
The real downfall of Facebook, and where Google will bring the fatal blow, is that FaceBook is limited to the internet. I have to be online to get any value from it. This is not where I want my social mastery to take place. It’s a great little online community, but the sun is shining. There is a world out there.
Google Wins
Google is developing the gPhone. A handheld device to compete with the iPhone and give seamless access to all Google functions from a mobile device. As Google develops the gPhone, they will be moving more aggressively into social networking. Give the gPhone GPS capabilities and suddenly my online social network is a mobile enabled Geo-Social Network!
“Your friend Doug is in your town.”
“Your friend Mary is leaving this country.”
“There are 10 single women in this vicinity” 
Geo-Social Networking via integrated mobile device will be the Facebook killer. I give it less than 2 years. Passive social awareness, (The Wall, Twitter) is great, but i don’t want to bother with input most of the time. My GPS gPhone will handle the spacial location aspects of this for me.
Official Prediction:
Facebook gone by october 2009.
some comments
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Right now, Facebook has presented a number of lingering dilemmas for both Google and Microsoft — in that the former don’t really have anything to compete with it and the latter can’t decide whether to just buy up outright or take a majority share.
I wouldn’t like to say if Facebook will be around in two years, and I can see your line of reasoning. But I know of a lot of business people using Facebook and they would be loathed to move elsewhere.
So while the fickle teens might mass migrate to the next sparkly-shiney thing, I and a lot more business people wouldn’t.
And that’s why Google and Microsoft are interested…
interesting! i wonder what else the gPhone would/could be able to handle that we currently have to input manually. could it monitor our heart rate? discern our emotions? track our purchases? directly post our photos? this is all very exciting stuff. but then there is the real danger of the whole thing: google could now track us geographically, as much as it tracks us informatically. with that sort of power, i kinda think the company itself should be more open and democratic. whatcha think?
Every advancement has its pathologies. I think that is certainly a plausible fear, but the assumption is that they will use that information to harm us or limit our freedoms in some way.
The thing about fears like these is that the people simply would not stand for these abuses.
I would agree that more transparency would be ideal, but this is another conversation.
support from wired:
http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/10/three-potential.html
i think Facebook will still be around in the next two years. it may evolve into something other than a broad social networking platform, but it would still be here.
the good thing about Facebook is its API. let’s say GPhone becomes a hit. Facebook developers would write APIs to integrate that with Facebook. and let’s face it, young people are the early adopters of technology, and a big percentage of internet savvy young people are Facebook users. they don’t have to switch to GPhone social networks to take advantage of Geo-social networking. Facebook can easily have room for geo social network features. and people would stay there because that’s where their friends are.
but you brought up a very good point. here’s a quote from a news article that supports your view.
“Some analysts wonder if it already is vastly overvalued. “It may be the benefactor — and victim — of hype,” says Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research.
Chowdhry has doubts about the staying power of broad social networks such as Facebook. He points out that Facebook is made up largely of former MySpace patrons, and he predicts the Next Big Thing could be micro social-networking sites that cater to folks that share specific interests such as hip-hop music or surfing. “Social networks are fads,” Chowdhry says. “People are moving targets.”"
speaking of micro social networking sites, that’s what i’m personally betting since i work at Zaadz
keep it flowing…
~C
Times Online:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article2573297.ece
I think the big question is really the most basic one and that is — “what the heck is the Internet for?” — we’ve seen some great things come and go, but nothing is really revolutionizing human-kind. Facebook is a cool online app to network with friends and family — but more and more we are seeing people connect via the internet and rarely connecting in real life. Websites like meet-up are gaining popularity because meeting in real life is so rare these days that its the new cool thing to do!
I really have no idea what the internet is really for… I buy my books online.. and that works great. I search shamelessly for hours for — nothing. I think the Internet has in some way stolen my social life!
I like your thought pattern… However, for a network like this to really take off you’d need everyone to have a Gphone… which isn’t that much of a possibility.
It’s a bit of a roundabout way of arguing isn’t it?
@Uno de Waal
I hear you, I did make a bit of a jump in reasoning, but i think everyone will have a gPhone before everybody has a Facebook phone. Some sort of integrated app that could work on multiple mobile platforms would render the point moot.
I think what i am calling for is a deeper techno-social integration, which is actually possible with existing technologies, and is perhaps being hindered by these hype-giants.
Thanks for the comment. c
Some more gPhone insights:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/08/the-more-gphones-the-better/
Read/Write web calls out mySpace:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/2003
social network world war one begins:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/01/confirmed-myspace-to-join-google-opensocial/
damn:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/29/googles-response-to-facebook-maka-maka/
That long, eh?