Wed, 31 Oct 12 at 17:46 |
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Facebook Isn’t The Next MySpace, It’s The Next Microsoft
Where are the animated GIFs?
Another day, another long complaint about Facebook. Everyone’s favorite go-to metaphor is deployed again, although this guy actually knows what he’s talking about:
Is Facebook becoming the next MySpace?
… A lot of ads, which makes me use AdBlocker+. Content which is most often boring and not worth to waste time in this busy age. My profile is sold to some unknown people. And you can’t reach all the fans of your page when you post new content. That’s true – Facebook recommends me to pay when I want to reach all my fans.
Why should I post content to Facebook when nobody reads it? Why should I communicate trivial things to my friends and pay for that? Telephone is cheaper. Why should I pay for my band which does not bring any revenue in these days?
But the analogy to MySpace is too convenient. It only ever was kids and musicians there, and the whole thing collapsed before it was taken over by brands. Not to mention the notoriously garish user-created pages (like that of Baby Sloth Spirit, above). Facebook is at once much more and much less than that.
But parallels to another M-named tech gorilla are less farfetched: Facebook could be the next Microsoft. Consider:
It dominates the world. Microsoft: 92% of desktop operation systems. Facebook: 1 billion users. Enough said.
But everyone disparages them. “Facebook sucks” actually gets twice as many Google hits as “Microsoft sucks” (and the ratio is even more lopsided if you omit delimiting quote marks in the search). Try it yourself!
Yet…no one is ready to switch yet. Oh, sure, there’s Google+ (1.03% market share! Which is, um, less than Pinterest). Or various open-source attempts — Friendica, anyone? Pretty much everyone hated Vista, but instead of switching to Apple or Linux, they just gritted their teeth and toughed it out until Win7 finally came along. Facebook has little to fear from its current competitors.
On the other hand, eventually a sufficiently disruptive technology will appear. For Windows, it may well be mobile. Microsoft has gone all in with Windows 8, trying to shift to tablet/phone based computing. But they’re just playing catch-up to iOS and Android. Whether they’ll succeed is an open question.
So the real question is not “what will displace Facebook?” but rather, “What will make Facebook irrelevant?”
Of course, if I knew that, I’d build it myself.
And in the meantime, I’ll struggle along with FB as it is, grumbling, whining … and staying.
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