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Ask HN: Is Facebook going away?

3 points by thatusertwo ↗ HN
So it seems that a lot of tech people and hipsters are leaving Facebook for other serves. Does hacker news see this as a growing trend (Facebook dying off)? What sort of time line?

17 comments

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thatusertwo
Reason being, I'm developing a Facebook alternative of sorts. There are two paths, integrate Facebook Connect or just say no to Facebook.

Thoughts?

computerslol
Who isn't :)
computerslol
you should call it thebookface.com, then later shorten it to bookface after you meet one of the members of *nsync
petervandijck
At this point, even if you're competing directly with FB, it's very hard not to integrate FB Connect.
cabalamat
It's not obvious to me that fb is dying.
keiferski
No: tech people and hipsters aren't normal people. Grandma isn't going to ditch Facebook for the hot new social network.
mrlase
Where are the tech people going then if they're leaving Facebook? I don't see many "competitors" that would be an alternative.

For the general population, I definitely don't see Facebook going away. Things such as invitations to social gatherings are done completely over Facebook increasingly by people I know...

keiferski
Nowhere in particular; by "hot new social network" I just meant any potential Facebook alternative. I can't think of any real ones offhand.
minalecs
youth early adopter segment in general are using tumblr a lot. In fact the way I see the usage on there is reminiscent to early facebook / myspace. Active sharing, friending and following pre spam, corporate/ad influences.
thatusertwo
Yeah, this is what I was sort of going for, read somewhere (or heard) that people where leaving Facebook and moving to Tumblr cause it was 'fresher'.
minalecs
By the time you finish you're alternative and get out your service, Facebook is not going anywhere. Just integrate it. Whats it matter.. in dev time should not make a big difference if you're accounting for both paths.
amathew
No, It doesn't look like Facebook will be dying off in the near future. If anything, Facebook will continue to grow if it can expand and attract users/members outside of the US and Europe.

Oh, and one more thing...

tech people > hipsters

tremt
No, facebook is here to stay. 500M users will not go away any time soon.
thatusertwo
as a side note that woman in the movie 'catfish' had 16 accounts.
tsuyoshi
Facebook doesn't seem to be dying to me. But personally I've never used used it, and neither do any of my friends (who all grew up with BBSes and IRC in the 90s and still use the latter). Looking at how quickly Myspace seemed to die though, who knows? Facebook could be dead in 5 years.
thatusertwo
That certainly is a possibility, although facebook seems to have a better hold of the market then myspace did.
cheeky
I have definitely noticed a decline in activity on Facebook over the last 6 months. Whether this means people are going to leave or not is another question.

I have been on Facebook for about 4 (maybe longer) years and the activity seemed to peak between 2009 - 2010.

However, over the last 6 months, I have noticed that there is a definite decline in activity on everyone's pages. People comment much less if at all, likes have declined, people that were getting loads of feedback are now getting much less. (this is based on 2500 friends pages, most randoms as I used to DJ / radio part time which resulted in lots of random requests)

Perhaps the novelty has worn off and people are simply using it to stay in touch instead of entertain. To me it seems that earlier users are using it much less while older users and users from other countries are boosting its userbase and activity.