Facebook is dying

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

About six months ago, I noticed something about Facebook: it was slow. I don't mean that I was getting fewer "likes" or that I had less crap in my feed; those things haven't really changed. But conversation in groups has dropped off sharply, and most telling, popular groups that had been gaining new members daily -- sometimes by the hundreds -- started having slower membership gains. Then they plateaued. And now they are declining. Post reach dropped precipitously, I suspect as part of Facebook's efforts to convince group and page owners to pay for visibility. It's funny that after all these years, they still don't understand  how the internet works.

I've seen this before. I saw it with dialup BBSes, and with newsgroups, and with pay-per-month web services, and with free webforums. I've been waiting for it, because frankly, Facebook is a shitty, shitty platform for online discussion, and discussion has always been my main motivation for being online.

I went looking to see what the Web had to say about Facebook's user numbers, and found these:

http://www.fastcompany.com/3025273/fast-feed/study-facebook-will-lose-80-of-its-users-by-2017

http://www.dailydot.com/technology/facebook-teen-stats-fall-2014/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2015/01/27/facebook-active-users-decline/

http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/27/facebooks-active-users-arent-so-active-anymore-says-survey-data/

I can't say I'll be sorry to see it go.

[LMNO]

But what will fill the niche?  Most other platforms either try to be Facebook, or are sort of an niche app that expanded beyond it's original vision.

[The Johnny]

There seemed to be more interaction on facebook...

What i believe fucked themselves in the A was their motherfucking sponsored news articles and ads in the goddamn newsfeed... i want to see what my acquaintances are up to, not the billionth 20 THINGS ABOUT THAT YOU WONT BELIEVE

my newsfeed besides that is filled with updates of pretty alt models... but with people i know we mostly keep it in chat and rarely post anything....

for all we care we might as well be in msn messenger that allows for offline messages to be sent... or could be whatsapp if it wasnt such a bitch to type on a phone...

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

But what will fill the niche?  Most other platforms either try to be Facebook, or are sort of an niche app that expanded beyond it's original vision.

No idea.

My only guess is that whatever it is will be completely different, and will just sort of bloom onto the scene organically.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Good riddance!

[Cain]

Time for a Myspace comeback!

I actually suspect it will be Twitter.

[Faust]

I found myself over the last year interacting more with the discordians on facebook then anyone else, friends, family etc.

Facebook isn't cool for young people so that will be an ultimate death for the site but not for a few years to come.

Baseless speculation: Facebook goes through periodic Drive-people-away mode ever since the IPO, in a price fixing exercise.

Say you have a load of shares in facebook, you are its ceo, and you control its technology.

You sell a load of your shares at a high price, but you control the product.

You make the product unpleasant to users and drive down revenue from adverts and get some negative press about privacy issues or thought experiments etc, you drive down the share price and buy back some of your initial shares.

You fix the product, people become more active, the revenue stream restores. Your share price goes up and you sell again for a large profit before repeating the cycle.

[Junkenstein]

Crazy talk. Utter madness. Such things would never happen.

[Reginald Ret]

Good.
Fuck facebook.

I'm hoping for some kind of integrated communication platform with various options for both direct and indirect communication. In which the user decides which are direct and which are indirect based on personal preference.

[Ben Shapiro]

Facebook will add Myspace groups the ones that mimic forums.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Several of my friends and I use it quite extensively as a communication hub, but I wonder if we fall in a narrow demographic band where Facebook rose to prominence at just the right time in our lives. The Internet will move on and some of us will stay just out of habit.

[Doktor Howl]

Also gonna say, I've noticed a SHARP drop off in the last 6 months, in groups.

I think I can see why, to a degree.  Same thing happened here.  Put a bunch of people in a room.  The smarter, charismatic ones start seeing it as a competition, and drive each other away.  Eventually, you fall below a threshold where conversations can occur.

(Similarity ends here)

In the meantime, the people that leave make more pages, which go gangbusters for a few days and then die.

And all the people who hang around ANYWHERE post millions of "game" or "joke" threads, and there's the horrible selfie threads, of course.

[Richter]

I've noticed a bend away from what people are actually doing, and a shift to what's "Trending"

People stop talking about their lives and doings in favor of the latest funny meme, clickbait article, or point of outrage.  Facebook promotes these, and certainly slants posting order to them, because some make them advertising money.

Hence the plot is lost

[The Johnny]

I've noticed a bend away from what people are actually doing, and a shift to what's "Trending"

People stop talking about their lives and doings in favor of the latest funny meme, clickbait article, or point of outrage.  Facebook promotes these, and certainly slants posting order to them, because some make them advertising money.

Hence the plot is lost

Yes yes, the newsfeed has been corrupted, in that sense (of many) Myspace was better.

[Doktor Howl]

One other thing:  Dial up BBSs had a small following.  Then the internet happened, and people became more and more drawn into social interaction accordingly.

So a possibility is that people are just getting sick of being so social.