The End is Nigh for Facebook
We know the many things that killed Friendster, including Facebook. Do we also know that Facebook is facing a decline now? But what is killing Facebook? Hit Read More to... well read more.
Adoption of Laggards
Like all products, Facebook has a lifecycle. Marketers identify a product's lifecycle based on the adoption of types of consumers. Innovators and early adopters, usually the most adventurous, are the first to jump into a new product before the rest of the world even know of their existence.
Then comes the mainstream adoption, when everyone else joins in the fun. The product now starts getting a little generic, but Innovators have not gotten sick of the product just yet. Or they may have already begun discarding. This is also the time when potential competitors begin to see this market as being lucrative and are developing similar products.
Finally when laggards find the product awesome and perfectly worth their time, the product is indeed very much dying. Laggards, in marketing, is the target market made up of senior-aged consumers and those from lower socio-economic status. They are generally more resistant to change and will only be moved into a product by strong endorsement from their peers and neighbors. As much as we try not to label and put people into subsets, we can't help but agree that when seniors and people with almost no purchasing power adopt a product it almost immediately loses all appeal.
Some small groups of products and services, for example rice cookers and air-conditioners, do not fall under this category because they are simply made for its intrinsic purpose. For everything else, there's perceived value.
Generation Gap
This has nothing and everything to do with the previous sub-topic. Facebook was the perfect utopia for young people to mingle and interact with each other, without being constantly monitored by their parents. That was until their parents jumped aboard to join in the fun. Dear uncles and aunties: your kids keep secrets from you, and they always will. And being as hip as them will not make things any different. Get over it already.
Kids were suddenly not able to brag about their new tattoos, getting wasted over the weekends and bitch about life without their parents potentially knowing. Frustrated, they leave Facebook in search of greener and more fenced-up pastures. What baffles me is that all the while Facebook does not realize this problem and try to introduce a 'Circles' version of friendship ala-Google+ that allow users to filter who-sees-what.
Lost Direction
Many years ago when Zuckerberg started Facebook he had a vision of his creation being the ultimate place for everyone to find and connect with everyone else. It wasn't until very recently when he introduced advertising, and we can all agree that he wasn't at all subtle about it. Then came Initial Public Offerings and users suddenly have to pay to do everything out of the ordinary.
We can understand the need for a company with board of directors to focus a little more on the monetary side of things. But this no-holds-barred approach is leaving most users pretty sick to their stomachs.
Everything to Everyone
First they wanted to become everything Friendster was. Then they wanted to become Friendster for businesses and public figures. Then they wanted to become Flickr. Then they wanted to become Twitter. Then they wanted to become Google+. Then they wanted to become Instagram (which they then bought in the end anyway). The result is the messiest and most uncharacteristic social site ever.
Sure there will be something that will appeal to someone, but that someone will hate everything else they don't care much for. The result is the social site you hate the most but could not live without, well not until a replacement comes along.
Privacy Concerns
I remember there was a time when Facebook would automatically tag the faces of everyone in the photos I uploaded by detecting their faces against their names. This utterly freaked me out. I'm okay with their other privacy-challenging introductions but this one drew the line for me. I never looked at Facebook the same anymore.
They seem to have this unique approach of always introducing the most unappetizing version of their updates, then start chipping away the rough edges based on users' complaints. Good thing is they're letting everyone know they're listening, bad thing is they're letting everyone know they only know how to react and not pro-act.
Alternatives
Right now we're not seeing a very strong competitor to Facebook besides Google+. And somehow Google+ hasn't taken flight despite the overwhelming distaste for Facebook. Users prefer to practice a more fragmented approach to social media these days instead of an all-in-one, oddly. They would use Twitter to get updates on news and daily reports, Instagram for photo creation and sharing, Tumblr for photo curation and sharing, Pinterest for interest sharing and online shopping, and maybe Spotify for music.
The future of Social Media
I guess I do agree to some degree that usage of specialized social media is somewhat a more desirable alternative to all-in-ones because the former will certainly be better at what they do. Users can also actively filter out things they do not want to see by not signing up for those social media providers. If this is indeed true, the future of social media is no longer a competitor to any of the ones available out there, but rather one platform to integrate everything into one.
No I'm not talking about one platform to view everything from everywhere, which Facebook is trying to be now. I'm talking about an Uber Social that handles every single social media platform out there so users don't have to open a gazillion tabs just to log into all their accounts. Any app developer out there trying to figure something strong to hit the market with, this might just be it.
