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Why Facebook's Network Effects Are Overrated 183

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from a contrarian take on the power of Facebook from hacker Benjamin Mako-Hill: "A lot of people interested in free software, and user autonomy and network services are very worried about Facebook. Folks are worried for the same reason that so many investors are interested: the networks effects brought by hundreds of millions of folks signed up to use the service. ... Facebook is vulnerable to the next thing more than many technology firms that have benefited from network effects in the past. If users are given compelling reasons to switch to something else, they can with less trouble and they will. That compelling reason might be a new social network with better features or an awesome distributed architecture that allows freedom for users and the ability of those users to benefit from new and fantastic things that Facebook's overseers would never let them have and without the things Facebook's users suffer through today. Or it might be a sexier proprietary box to store users' private information. It doesn't mean that I'm not worried about Facebook. I remain deeply worried. It's just not very hard for me to imagine the end."
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Why Facebook's Network Effects Are Overrated

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  • Data ownership (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Martz ( 861209 ) on Monday June 04, 2012 @04:28AM (#40206801)

    Users don't care about who owns their data.

    Sit down with the average user and explain to them that Facebook owns their comments, photos, videos, metadata - and they totally don't care. Suggest to them that Facebook might start charging the user for the service (obviously they won't) and the user will freak out as that costs them something real and tangible.

    The author of this article is basically saying that Facebook is vulnerable to failure because the mass of people might leave and join another service. The reason for that happening would be to join a free and open network, but as I stated before (without evidence) most users don't care about a company owning their data anyway - so it's not going to happen.

    For Facebook to fail it has to stop innovating and offering new features, and a competitor has to come up with something new and cool. People will not "leave" Facebook - they'll sign up with the competitor and forget to go back to Facebook to check on what's going on.

    Facebook is going to be around for a while yet, regardless of if geeks "get it" or think it's worth something.

    • by Taco Cowboy ( 5327 ) on Monday June 04, 2012 @04:38AM (#40206827) Journal

      ... I registered for an account

      The few times I was there I felt uncomfortable

      Everyone was telling everybody else everything about themselves - their name, their phone #, their address, their hobby ... everything

      Maybe I'm just old fashion. Privacy for me is something very important

      I haven't been to facebook for years, and I don't miss it

      • by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04, 2012 @05:09AM (#40206929)

        There was a time when it all made sense. When I first signed up for facebook, it was only people at my university and a handful of other universities. People at other universities could see that you exist, and could message you. You could set your privacy so that only people from your university could see your info. This made sense in the context of not knowing what Facebook's future plans were. At the time it was a very convenient way of keeping up with people you met on campus. Honestly, facebook was ruined when they let the masses in, but it's obvious now that that was their plan all along. When they let the high schoolers and the unwashed masses in, I was reminded again of Eternal September on USENET.

      • by Lisias ( 447563 ) on Monday June 04, 2012 @05:48AM (#40207059) Homepage Journal

        I ended up using it by force.

        My son (that lives far away) and childhood friends are there, and just there (a managed to convince some of them to go to G+, but just a few).

        So basically I signup with my well known email and my first name - no other personal information added.

        No big privacy at all, I know. But better than nothing.

        • Thats not force. You made a conscience, un-coerced choice. Does your son not have an email? Are you too much of a luddite to setup your own messaging system? Where is this 'force' you talk about?
          • by jedidiah ( 1196 )

            I have an account but I barely use it anymore. Plenty of my "friends" are the same. At least half of the accounts that aren't duplicates are likely mostly inactive.

            That makes "network effects" a little more difficult to pull off.

            Doesn't make it impossible though and those of us with something resembling a clue should resist any attempt to give Facebook some sort of communications monopoly.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04, 2012 @06:10AM (#40207149)

        The IT lifers on slashdot don't get it, but the average person doesn't give a rats ass about privacy. If you do? Don't share anything of value on Facebook, just use it to interact with distant relatives, old friends, whatever. Nothing worth griping about on EVERY Facebook article posted here.

        • And the average idiot doesnt get the VERY GOOD reasons why we get up in arms about this stuff. You are equating not caring with not important, which is completely false.
        • by jedidiah ( 1196 )

          I know someone that can barely deal with Windows well enough to get onto the web and still manages to be paranoid about privacy on Facebook. You don't have to be a Slashdot geek to understand that exposing yourself to the world is perhaps not such a great idea.

      • Everyone was telling everybody else everything about themselves - their name, their phone #, their address, their hobby... everything

        OMG the horror. People making social connections and finding things to talk about.

    • by moozey ( 2437812 )

      Agreed. A lot of people are so quick to suggest that Facebook is going to turn out like Myspace in a matter of months but in reality that really couldn't be further from the truth... Usually the people who suggest it also have a huge dislike for the service for whatever reason.

      The summary suggests that Facebook could be ousted by a new site coming a long with some new features and what not, but If Facebook sees another site as a threat, there's nothing stopping it from implementing whatever new attributes t

      • Agreed. A lot of people are so quick to suggest that Facebook is going to turn out like Myspace in a matter of months but in reality that really couldn't be further from the truth...

        If you want to see the digital equivalent of tumbleweeds, go check out MySpace. Just for the hell of it, I logged into my MySpace the other day for the first time in many months, and the only thing I saw there was dozens of bulletin posts by one band whose posts I used to ignore every couple days. About 4 years ago, MySpace added a bunch of worthless features (apparently trying to copy the increasingly popular Facebook) and increasingly in-your-face advertisements, and not coincidentally most people made t

        • by moozey ( 2437812 )
          Well, supposedly come the end of the year, Myspace is going to be launched again as some revamped music service. Justin Timberlake and a few other idiots bought it for ~$35 million... talk about beating a dead horse.
      • I think they only bought Instagram because the IPO was looming. It could have wiped more than a billion off the IPO so in that sense the money was unimportant to them.

        I think the only thing that could unseat Facebook to any great extent is a site that allowed adult content. People posting pictures of their genitals and doing that 'cyber' thing.

      • Re:Data ownership (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Lisias ( 447563 ) on Monday June 04, 2012 @05:52AM (#40207081) Homepage Journal

        Facebook *is* going to turn out like Myspace - I just don't know when - perhaps not in my lifetime.

        People are always looking for the next big thing - and the satisfaction saturation (that precedes boredom and the desire to change) are reached exponentially faster after each change.

        Orkut lasted almost 10 years. Perhaps Facebook will face its book, I mean, its nemesis in 6. But I don't think it will manage to last more than 10 years.

        • Orkut was a victim of its Brazilian success. I and everyone I know stopped using it because it became nothing but a bunch of portuguese spam.

          I sure would like it if Google would use (or hell, even "leverage") their language tools to automatically mark things in languages I don't read as spam.

      • Re:Data ownership (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rev0lt ( 1950662 ) on Monday June 04, 2012 @06:02AM (#40207113)
        I'd say that, after the unsurprisingly disappointing IPO, the infinite money faucet has closed. Give them some months to settle, and then you'll start to see less monkeying around new features and more commercial focusing. People didn't buy Facebook shares to "finance the vision". They bought them to make money, and for that, they need to have a business model (and I really doubt that advertising - at current levels - is enough to keep the lights on).
        When they start to put more ads, when some new features start to be paid, it will be the beginning of the end.
        • by jezwel ( 2451108 ) on Monday June 04, 2012 @06:44AM (#40207287)
          Does this mean G+ might finally get some activity ? :)
          • You know, it's funny you should say that. In just the first week following FB's IPO, I got no less than three invitations to G+ from people in my friends list on FB. I'd been wanting to make the jump there anyway because I like the idea of "circles" (no need for my young kids to see the sort of blue humor my college friends and I engage in), but didn't bother because it seemed like a wasteland.
          • Re:Data ownership (Score:5, Informative)

            by Psychochild ( 64124 ) <psychochild@gmail.cTWAINom minus author> on Monday June 04, 2012 @12:06PM (#40210463) Homepage

            There's a lot of activity on Google+, the problem is that you have to invest some time and effort to find the good conversations.

            The circles Google+ uses are it's best feature and it's biggest weakness. You can send out updates only to people who you want to see. But, the problem is that newcomers to the network don't see anything you're just sharing with a circle. So, to someone who just signs up, it looks like there isn't much going on.

            In my case, I was lucky enough to have a few people involved with indie tabletop RPG development add me, probably because I'm a somewhat known MMO developer. From them I was able to add a few more people, and some of them shared their circles, and now I have nearly 3000 people who post about tabletop RPG stuff in my circles. There's a wealth of information there, but if I hadn't found the first few people I wouldn't have known about it.

            I wonder if Google+ could do something about this. Maybe have some "official" circles for people to join into to see some activity immediately upon joining. It won't replace personal circles, but might help fight the perception that nothing goes on at Google+.

            Ultimately, the lesson here is that you get out of Google+ proportional to what you invest into it. If you just add a few friends to circles it's boring. Find some existing circles on stuff you care about and it'll blow your mind.

        • Zuckerberg still owns more than 50% of the voting rights for Facebook. he doesn't have to care what the other stock holders think. it might as well have never gone IPO it is pretty much still his private company.

          • Zuckerberg still owns more than 50% of the voting rights for Facebook. he doesn't have to care what the other stock holders think. it might as well have never gone IPO it is pretty much still his private company.

            Can you say "stockholder lawsuit"? Sure, you can...

            It doesn't take a majority of the shares to start a lawsuit against the Board of Directors/CEO.

          • by rev0lt ( 1950662 )

            Zuckerberg still owns more than 50% of the voting rights for Facebook

            The problem is, 50% of a rapidly devaluating asset is half of almost nothing. The freeride of investor's money has ended, and many of those initial investors have already cashed out. If the company isn't clearly turning a profit on the next year or two, the company value will decrease, current bank investments will dry and then the money problems will come. And we all know how Zuckerberg is such a good lider that works well under pressure, so everything will work just fine, right?
            This is business - if he s

        • People didn't buy Facebook shares to "finance the vision". They bought them to make money, and for that, they need to have a business model (and I really doubt that advertising - at current levels - is enough to keep the lights on).

          Why do people keep forgetting that advertising isn't Facebook's only source of revenue? There's also their slice of in-game microtransactions/subscriptions.

      • Pintrest is gaining on FB very quickly.

        It's doing so by being LESS than Facebook, not more.

        How do they counter that?

    • More so, it's hard to leave. People are invested in the infrastructure. It carries their data, their pictures and activities, and a lot of metadata about their pictures and activities (like tags in the pictures).

      There is no reason why we shouldn't all start referring to "tables" as "papgualas", but it still will never happen. Facebook just needs to not be significantly worse. G+ was IMO significantly better than facebook when it launched. But I still couldn't switch because I would have needed to convince e

      • by Lisias ( 447563 )

        More so, it's hard to leave. People are invested in the infrastructure. It carries their data, their pictures and activities, and a lot of metadata about their pictures and activities (like tags in the pictures).

        I don't think so.

        People are "commodities" nowadays. We're living on a "throw away" culture that extended the discardable concept to the relationships.

        People don't care about photos and metatags, all what they care is the "Like counter".

        The next big thing will be the one that will manage to somehow "import" the "Like counter". The content is secondary.

        G+ was IMO significantly better than facebook when it launched. But I still couldn't switch because I would have needed to convince everybody I want to coordi

        • by Lisias ( 447563 )

          Damnit. I forgot the [QUOTE] tag on the second parent quoting.

          The sentence that starts with "G+ was IMO" belongs to parent post.

    • most users don't care about a company owning their data anyway - so it's not going to happen.

      Sure they do.

      They just don't care enough to ditch FB because of it.

      Give them a real alternative (no, G+ doesn't count), and watch people switch in droves.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday June 04, 2012 @05:29AM (#40207005)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Re:Data ownership (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Pieroxy ( 222434 ) on Monday June 04, 2012 @06:15AM (#40207175) Homepage

        No the only way I see FB going down is if they decide they need to "monetize the users more" and basically crap all over the network but I haven't seen any signs so far they are THAT stupid.

        Watch the stock go below $15 and they'll become that stupid. It's a matter of days.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        So the ONLY way I could see FB going down is if they did the same dumbass mistake that MySpace did, and that was spamming the crap out of the users.

        I see two ways that FB could go down. First is when they run out of money because they couldn't monetize their xillion users. This could very well be the fear behind the stock price decline.

        Second is Facebook failing to provide a suddenly popular feature that another social networking site has. This feature can be anything from better-than-Skype video conferenci

        • I see another way that Facebook could implode: poor performance to give a return on the investments made. This creates demands for Facebook to do stuff to exploit its users data in a more ruthless and abusive manner, creating a death spiral of people leaving -> more exploitation of data -> people leave -> more exploitation ...

          Just look at internet advertising. The more abusive it became, the more people installed pop-up blockers and adblockers and the more the advertisers tried to circumvent those

      • by skids ( 119237 )

        The author of TFA is also missing something even more fundamental and that is the users don't give a damned about free as in freedom

        That is true of the people who are current FB users. Of the people who are not, here is a sizeable chunk who do care. If a service that upped the bar sufficiently in that department were to come along, and was easy enough to join, then those people might join that new service. If there are enough of them, then those people would start to pull FB customers into having an account on the new service (in addition to their FB account) in order to interact with them. If the service were on par with FB for oth

    • users start caring when the os tells them that they're locked out of their user account for having michael jackson mp3's.

      for most things facebook is a convinient single sign on platform, nothing more. the rest of the things is that it's a miniblog feed and mini wiki(for events and such).

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Joce640k ( 829181 )

      Facebook is safe.

      Moving all those photos, messages and contacts to a different site simply isn't going to happen.

      Don't forget that Facebook can copy whatever the other site is offering before it can even gather momentum.

    • Of course something is going to happen to facebook. They have hijacked the open internet. They have effectively created an "internet inside the internet".
      It is not like governments are going to stand by and do nothing about it.

    • Exactly,

      What killed MySpace was itself, it was a good first attempt but missed the mark. It's fault was it actually gave people to much control over their pages. All I remember about it was getting annoyed because each "kid" (and that was its demographic) had 3-4 music players set to auto play over each other. Add to that the themed pages you couldn't read because it was black on blacker font...

      Facebook, solved those issues and made it "grandma" friendly. The demographic that found social networking usable

    • The question is how much facebook is a standard that can be defended (comparable to how Windows is a standard that can be defended by delivering pc's preinstalled, and people are so used to it they rather stick to what they know), and how much it solves a well rounded need. No doubt facebook is a standard, its user base is simply so large that part is evident, just as much windows is. But I doubt it can be defended well enough, but this could be proven wrong. But facebook is long enough there for people to
  • by AndrewStephens ( 815287 ) on Monday June 04, 2012 @04:28AM (#40206803) Homepage

    Facebook has reached the pinnacle of social networking - the only place to go now is downhill unless they change. They already have every user who wants a page, the only new users are young kids just getting online - not Facebook's target demographic. Also, they have just gone public which puts pressure on the company to make more money.

    I predict Facebook will start to branch out into video and music more and more in an attempt to get more pages views - it must be galling for Facebook to see people sharing videos with YouTube advertising instead of Facebook's. They are going to have to be careful, users don't like change.

    (One thing users don't want is a whole slew of different social networks. I am on Facebook and G+, but I would only use one if either gave me full control over who sees what. I think projects like Diaspora are always going to be niche ideas)

  • by will_die ( 586523 ) on Monday June 04, 2012 @05:01AM (#40206903) Homepage
    The article is wrong because FB is not about new features or the architecture. FB power is that I can connect with easily with people of similar interests.
    With FB it is easy to setup local group, and invite people, or for them to find it, of similar interested and then all those people plan, talk about or support the topic.
    Until something new can get everyone to switch over to that system there is no value in me, a single person, switching to that new site. Even in the event that facebook does something totally stupid to upset the users it will not loose that many because the abaility it provides for communication is worth some hassles.
    • "The article is wrong because FB is not about new features or the architecture. FB power is that I can connect with easily with people of similar interests."

      Just as usenet in the 80ies, Compuserve or AOL in the 90ies and so on.
      They're all mostly dead now. And they even charged money every fucking month.

  • No content (Score:4, Insightful)

    by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Monday June 04, 2012 @05:17AM (#40206955) Homepage Journal
    Wow, the article wasted a lot of words essentially saying nothing. Heres the article in 1 sentence: Facebook is big now, but like others before it, it may not be big forever.

    See, was that so hard?
    • Wow, the article wasted a lot of words essentially saying nothing. Heres the article in 1 sentence: Facebook is big now, but like others before it, it may not be big forever.

      See, was that so hard?

      Hard? No, but distilling their message down to a sentence that can fit on twitter doesn't do anything for their ad revenue.

      • Hard? No, but distilling their message down to a sentence that can fit on twitter doesn't do anything for their ad revenue.

        Or for Slashdot's hit count and ad revenue.

    • There's slightly more to it. Something like...

      (a) People can easily use Facebook and alternatives simultaneously.
      (b) Users are only interested in freshly generated data.
      Neither is true of Windows, so Facebook can be far more easily replaced than Windows. The end.

      That argument sucks too--using multiple OSes is extremely common with smartphones and people are interested in their old pictures, so at least two of the four premises have gaping holes. The article wasn't worth the read and I'm not sure why it was even accepted.

    • Can slashdot please hire this guy?

  • It is feasible to create a distributed version of Facebook without the need for central servers accept to connect users together initially, in the way that Skype or a torrent file does. If you made connections invite via email, you could do away with the central site completely.

    You would need always-on devices to make it work well, but the chief benefit would be that there was no need for your information to reside anywhere other than on your own machine (and in the cache of your friends if network speeds a

    • It sounds like you're talking about wall wart servers. If so, I think you're on the right track.

    • The down side to this approach is bandwidth. If you don't have enough bandwidth at home to support your data and your household's personal internet use then one or both will suffer from poor performance.

      If you can't use the internet because your personal data server is taking up too much bandwidth you'll throttle it. If your personal data is too slow to load for others they won't be patient enough to view it, which would render your personal data server pretty much pointless.

      I do like your idea of you
    • It's an interesting idea, but it will not appeal to the masses if setting it up is as easy and cheap as getting a FB account.
  • Perpetual Data (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Facebook can turn this whole privacy thing on it's head with one smart business move - promise to keep your data public on the internet forever, if you pay for it during your lifetime. I have several dead friends now where the facebook pages they left behind are the best way to remember them, as they are full of pictures and movies and things they said and did. But there has never been a guarantee that the data will be there forever.

    If facebook started charging people a few bucks a year to guarantee their d

  • you might have a fancy club n all - but if all yr friends are down at the pub, where you gonna go??

    nobody's going to switch from facebook unless all 300 of their friends have magically switched to another service at the same time as they have - this is why google's social network never caught on. having another social network with only twenty of yr friends is useless if the other 270 are still on facebook.

    2cents from toronto
    jp

  • Facebook is like a truly famous celebrity. It has a lot of clout and power. But if it uses that power, and someone else comes on the scene, it could quickly go the way of Warren Beatty Ishtar (names my kids have never even heard of). Google and credit cards have more access to private info and potential for abuse (I use gmail), but haven't made any really bad movies yet. The only problem I see with Facebook is what choices it will make with my data tomorrow.
  • Server in your fixed (wired) phone. Your backup is at your phone company (access provider) in the usual case, maybe at some specialy "cloud" company under certain special conditions.

    Your phone serves your blog, your tweets, your picture and other sharing, your family bbs, etc. If it's your year to do the soccer club's site, you host it on your phone.

    Google or LinkedIn or maybe FaceBok or some other similar company takes care of the links you use to connect with your virtual community.

    Simple.

  • You can't reasonably expect to go back through everything you've ever posted on Facebook. The further you go into history the less likely it is that what you're trying to bring up will ever load. They want you to forget the past. Problem with that for them is that if you forget the past it can't tie you to them, either.

  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Monday June 04, 2012 @06:42AM (#40207277) Journal
    A lek is the courtship ritual in many species of grouse, pheasants etc. Essentially the males gather in some clearing and do their courtship dance. Females gather around and choose their mates. The most interesting thing about the lek is that, most females choose the male chosen by most other males. It is essentially the perceived popularity of the males becomes the actual popularity. Scientists have done experiments using robotic female birds, and by making the robotic females change their preferences, other real females also would switch their preferences.

    Facebook is popular because most people thought it was the most popular social network and joined it. It was exactly like most businesses choosing Microsoft windows in early 1990s because they all believed most businesses were choosing Microsoft windows. One of the consequences of lek courtship behavior in birds is that, species that practiced it produce the most ostentatious males with outrageously useless features like seen in peacocks and birds of paradise. Much in the same way Microsoft in its heyday and Facebook now go for so many bells and whistles whether or not they are useful.

    • Typo correction

      most females choose the male chosen by most other males. wrong

      most females choose the male chosen by most other females. right

  • by Jay Tarbox ( 48535 ) on Monday June 04, 2012 @07:04AM (#40207353) Homepage Journal

    Recently the wife and I tried an experiment, we put an ad on Facebook for a few days about her eBook. I targeted it to 18+ females with an interest in reading/romance/kindle and so on... In theory it's pretty cool how you can target an audience based on their profiles. Facebook will tell you dynamically exactly how many people meet the criteria as you add and remove options.

    We saw no effect in book sales. Before, during and after the advertising, sales remained on average the same.

    • You probably didn't spend enough money.

      Display ads or text ads definitely have a minimum impression count requirement to be effective, especially for an unknown brand.

      I'm sure FB displayed your ads but the customers may not have been receptive at that time. Just before a holiday would be best, when your demo is feeling lonely.

      That time spot is likely more expensive though.

      Or you could leave it up longer to establish familiarity. Unlike actual romance, it's not the first impression that works, it's the 3rd,

    • This *this* is exactly why Facebook will go away (or change). Everyone seems to compare them to Google, but with google, moneh gets you clicks, and if you're smart, you can estimate how many clicks generate a sale, and spend appropriately. The future of advertising is relevant targetted ads that result in easily quantifiable sales---companies will line up to buy ads like that.

  • Facebook has their market share because they were available and easy when the great unwashed masses of old people decided it would be cool to get on a social site. Right place, right time.

    The reason facebook will fail is because someone will not just make a better site - it could be argued that Google has done a technically "better" site at least twice now. Facebook should be worried when all of the old people are at another site. MySpace died because they hung their hat on youth - and youth is very trendy

  • FTA:

    A lot of people interested in free software, and user autonomy and network services are very worried about Facebook.

    How is free software related to this topic?

  • The Social Web is still in its infancy, and Facebook is just one of many boom towns that have sprung into existence to feed the movement. It won't be long before all of the Social Web upstarts (I should say the remaining ones) go the way of the dinosaur to be replaced by the next generation of innovation. I envision a near future in which 'social' evolves beyond a product and becomes more of a service or protocol. Much like what happened with Email and messaging.
  • We all thought google was a fad, the same way Lycos and Altavista, and even Yahoo were before them. Google was easily the third major contender for the crown of most used search engine. Social networking has had about three leaders so far. There's been friendster, Myspace, and now Facebook. Unless there's a sudden shift in the way Americans behave (because lets face it, we're the only ones that matter), then Facebook is not going away anytime soon. The problem being that old people never change, and they're
  • Why is everyone hating on Facebook? It's just a shitty company.

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