Has Facebook Jumped the Shark?
Last year, an article observed that “the media continues to portray MySpace as a seedy stomping ground for pedophiles and Facebook as a ‘utopian savior.’”
My, how times have changed.
Looking at recent headlines and discussions, the portrayal of Facebook has gone from utopian to Orwellian:
“Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative” – Wired Magazine
“A Visual Guide to Facebook Privacy Changes Over Time” – Huffington Post
“How Facebook Pulled a Privacy Bait and Switch” – PC World
“We all hate Facebook. There are enough programmers among us, can’t we create a Facebook clone, the way it used to be, without apps or pages and that is actually private?” – Reddit
“More Reasons Why You Should Still Quit Facebook” – Gizmodo
“Facebook Deactivations Gaining Attention” – InformationWeek
“Creating a Network Like Facebook, Only Private” – The New York Times
The list goes on…
You can’t help but think the web’s relationship with Facebook has flipped from friendly to adversarial. People, or at least tech-savvy people, are talking about Facebook like it’s a virus that must be quarantined.
Is this history repeating?
I’m getting a strong sense of déjà vu here – 5 years ago Myspace was the dominant social networking site. News Corp acquired it in 2005 for $580 million, and Viacom was so angry it lost Myspace to News Corp that it fired then CEO Tom Freston. Two years later the sky was the limit, and News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch looked like a genius for snatching Myspace for “only” $580 million.
And then the everything went to hell.
All of a sudden people didn’t like Myspace anymore. Now it’s a website relegated to children, what’s left of its traffic is declining, and News Corp is admitting mistakes.
So why did Myspace fall?
Everyone has theories, ranging from an influx of pedophiles to white flight. People will speculate about this forever, but in any event, for whatever reason, having a profile on Myspace became something with a negative connotation.
And just like that, Myspace, once the darling of the media and corporate America, became passé.
Myspace’s openness hastened the ascent of Facebook.
Facebook rose to prominence largely because it was a college-only alternative to Myspace, when Myspace was increasingly seen as full of children, low-lives and garage bands.
Shortly after capturing a critical mass of Myspace refugees with a more exclusive alternative, Facebook then let everyone in, not just college students. And, now, they’re aggressively prodding (or tricking) people into exposing all of their friends, interests and photos to the world, not to mention trying to integrate Facebook with every site on the web.
Is this a brilliantly executed, step-by-step plan for world domination or greed destroying the very thing that made Facebook successful in the first place?
The fate of Facebook
Myspace never had this much backlash due to privacy specifically, but if you zoom out, the reason Myspace sunk is that people came to view it as a place they’d rather not be associated with, especially when there were better alternatives.
Facebook’s current path leads right to a “place you’d rather not be associated with,” albeit for different reasons than Myspace. But unlike when Facebook siphoned off Myspace’s users, there are no alternatives to Facebook at the moment.
I’m not going to try to predict whether Facebook will ultimately thrive or fail, but if a competitor were going to steal Facebook’s thunder, now would be a great time. Because, after all, in the short time that social networking has existed, if we’ve learned one thing, it’s that people are always willing to switch to the next best thing.
