<story><title>Facebook is Dying</title><url>http://www.baekdal.com/opinion/facebook-is-dying-social-is-not/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>fnid2</author><text>As a consultant to the dot-com industry around the turn of the century, I traveled a lot.  I took a lot of long cab rides from airports to downtowns.  I talked to lots of cabbies.  At some point, I knew the end was near.  I knew the end was near when cabbies started asking me if it was a good idea to invest in some particular technology stock or another.  Why are cabbies investing in Juniper Networks?&lt;p&gt;Recently, I started another side business.  One of my cousins who knows almost nothing about technology came to me and said, &quot;Let me tell you something.  I know how you can get your business started and I want to tell you about it.&quot;&lt;p&gt;At this point, I was already skeptical, but she continued... &quot;There&apos;s this thing on the internet called Facebook and millions of people use it and you can make millions of dollars there...&quot;&lt;p&gt;Oh no, I thought.&lt;p&gt;But I knew the end was near for facebook.  I&apos;ve known for quite some time. Years in fact.  I can&apos;t explain to them why I don&apos;t join facebook anymore than I could explain to those cabbies why they shouldn&apos;t put their money in to Juniper Networks or pets.com.  Decisions like that can&apos;t be rationalized to those who see a bright future in their bets.&lt;p&gt;But history tells us a lot and history moves very fast on the internet.  Facebook is not sticky. Share prices are not sticky.  Users can leave and investors can sell -- and they do.  And they will.&lt;p&gt;Facebook will fall far and it could, and I suspect &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; falling fast.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mjfern</author><text>I don&apos;t think this analogy works, given the significant differences between investing and product adoption. Just because a product has become mainstream doesn&apos;t indicate that the &quot;end is near.&quot; In fact, I would argue the contrary, particular in this case. There are significant network effects in social networking. As the number of Facebook users increases, the value of Facebook to existing users (those already on the network) increases. Now, not only can I use Facebook to communicate with my college and grad-school friends, but I can use Facebook to stay in touch with my extended family, more distant friends, acquaintances, etc. If I want to maintain these relationships, I&apos;m forced to either stick with Facebook, or rebuild my social network elsewhere. If I wanted to rebuild my network elsewhere, I would have to convince most of my social network to defect to the new service, otherwise the new service is of little value. Facebook&apos;s recent moves around privacy (and changes in functionality) are clearly unnerving its customers; however, this alone won&apos;t cause the collapse of the service.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook is Dying</title><url>http://www.baekdal.com/opinion/facebook-is-dying-social-is-not/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>fnid2</author><text>As a consultant to the dot-com industry around the turn of the century, I traveled a lot.  I took a lot of long cab rides from airports to downtowns.  I talked to lots of cabbies.  At some point, I knew the end was near.  I knew the end was near when cabbies started asking me if it was a good idea to invest in some particular technology stock or another.  Why are cabbies investing in Juniper Networks?&lt;p&gt;Recently, I started another side business.  One of my cousins who knows almost nothing about technology came to me and said, &quot;Let me tell you something.  I know how you can get your business started and I want to tell you about it.&quot;&lt;p&gt;At this point, I was already skeptical, but she continued... &quot;There&apos;s this thing on the internet called Facebook and millions of people use it and you can make millions of dollars there...&quot;&lt;p&gt;Oh no, I thought.&lt;p&gt;But I knew the end was near for facebook.  I&apos;ve known for quite some time. Years in fact.  I can&apos;t explain to them why I don&apos;t join facebook anymore than I could explain to those cabbies why they shouldn&apos;t put their money in to Juniper Networks or pets.com.  Decisions like that can&apos;t be rationalized to those who see a bright future in their bets.&lt;p&gt;But history tells us a lot and history moves very fast on the internet.  Facebook is not sticky. Share prices are not sticky.  Users can leave and investors can sell -- and they do.  And they will.&lt;p&gt;Facebook will fall far and it could, and I suspect &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; falling fast.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>julio_the_squid</author><text>That&apos;s funny, I often think of a similar maxim in the book &quot;Groucho and Me&quot; by Groucho Marx.  Essentially, he said that in 1928-29, he knew it was time to get out of a certain stock once his taxi driver started talking about it.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s a great book, you can find most of the text here : &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=tFsnGr2SQJ0C&amp;#38;printsec=frontcover&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://books.google.com/books?id=tFsnGr2SQJ0C&amp;#38;printsec=f...&lt;/a&gt; though I can&apos;t find the section about the cab driver. The whole part about the 1929 stock crash is great.</text></comment>