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Facebook is in an interesting and dangerous position.
Zuckerberg was an absolute genius. First in creating Facebook, but then, even moreso, in monetizing it in a mindboggling way. Including the public offering and its timing.
My son had a bunch of his friends over this week, they are all high school age. Here's some of the things I heard them say to each other:
"Facebook is lame."
"I haven't checked my Facebook page in 5 months."
Etc.
My kids don't have facebook pages (or any other voluntary Internet presence where there real names are used), but most of the others did. And to literally every single one of them Facebook was "cool" a year ago, but is completely dead now.
That's similar to what I hear from a lot of adults, too.
IMO, it's pretty clear that at some point, the rate of growth of facebook's user base will slow (if it hasn't already) and then reverse. Once it starts reversing, that's a very slippery slope (i.e., MySpace).
But, people are always going to communicate, and Facebook as a company has a chance if it can keep riding that wave. For example, the kids mostly seem to mass communicate via Instagram these days. That's a company that Facebook bought out (for a ton of money) and now owns.
But, that seems like a risky business. It is basically constant gambling. At some point, IMO, luck runs out. And even when you have a big hit, like Instagram, it can be very fleeting. And, I'm still not clear how it's monetized long term.
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