I see the evolution of social networking evolving from connecting with everyone in the world, aka public networking to only connect with the ones you actually care about, aka private networking. When Facebook was cool, it was cool to know that you can post a status update and have the "whole world" see it. With the rise of messaging services (snapchat, whatsapp, line and so on), we are moving to the stage where you only share with a very small group of closely connected individuals. A more intimate network.
A big counter point to the Facebook is a fad is Pepsi. Pepsi was considered a fad in the 60's when it was already 40 years old. It's still around. It buys coolness with a massive marketing budget. Pepsi is water + corn syrup + some flavor. And it's been around for many, many decades. Pepsi, and Cola, show that being old does not mean you can't still be cool.
It's a different market with different customer mind sets. More importantly, "cool" is relative. Coke is family oriented, aka not cool. This allows pepsi to be "cool" by associating its brand with "hot" celebrities and trends. On the other hand, Facebook has nothing older to compare to. It's "cool" relative to myspace I suppose.
>Pepsi was considered a fad in the 60's when it was already 40 years old. It's still around.
Tons of things have been considered fads through the decades, some rightly (hula-hoops) and some not (rock music). The question, when making an analogy, is how they relate to Facebook.
Unless you connect Pepsi and Facebook with something more besides (both have been considered a fad), we cannot draw any conclusions from Pepsi with regards to Facebook's situation except this:
Sometimes, people can consider something as a fad when it isn't.
If you want to make this analogy work, you have to show why Facebook will be more like Pepsi and less like the hula-hoop or piano neck-ties.
Maybe it'll be that the concept of social networks is here to stay forevermore, but Facebook is just a brand. Social networks are becoming a dime a dozen, so using Facebook is a brand choice.
There's a social cost to be seen doing the things that everyone else is doing (the equivalent, say, of wearing a mainstream band t-shirt), so having a presence on Facebook is just meeting the bar. To be "cool" you need to find the social networks nobody else knows about, and hang out with your friends there. Bonus points for alluding, on Facebook, to conversations you had on the not-Facebook social network.
It may be amusing to find in 10 years that using Facebook becomes a new fad again and is seen as "retro". Certainly a possibility if Facebook does not innovate itself to non-recognizability.
I can say I use Facebook Connect to log into web sites everyday, and sometimes I post to Facebook using other sites (if I pin something on Pinterest) but I actually check my facebook page one a month or so.
Facebook was so ridiculously hot a few years ago that it couldn't possibly have met all of its expectations for changing how we all communicate, replacing all other messaging mediums, dominating how we shop and buy, the portal for all things entertainment, etc.
> Teens likely see Facebook the same way the Facebook generation sees LinkedIn – like a utilitarian place to manage connections.
This sounds a lot like the Plateau of Productivity to me.
However, a forecast is just a forecast, not happened yet. The 'trend' graph spikes with the IPO which had no relevance for 99% of Facebook users. Take that spike out, ignore the 'forecast' and Facebook is doing the 'myspace curve' and in a similar time frame.
Anyway, where is the Facebook login for Hacker News?
I see it so much around me. Small Whatsapp groups, going back to sharing with just the ones we want to share it with. No content police. No long on-line history.
All social networks have remarkably short golden eras. That said, even though Facebook is declining, I still think all the articles about the "end of the Facebook era" and "death of Facebook" are sensational and exaggerated. They're still, what?... The second or the third highest traffic website internationally? Over a billion registered accounts (regardless of whether only half are legitimate and being used, it's a lot).
As the author noted though, Facebook can still thrive in the "cool factor" with their acquisitions.
Very interesting. A few years back, I was fascinated to see how much Facebook had become the native medium for the whippersnappers. Some of our interns thought of email like I thought of fax machines.
But even if Facebook is prone to stumble, I'd encourage entrepreneurs not to try to be the "next Facebook". As I wrote elsewhere [1]: "Honestly, there probably won't be a 'next Facebook', for the same reason there hasn't been a next Amazon, next Oracle, next Google, or next Apple. There hasn't even been a next Yahoo, because the secret to success for many startups wasn't being another Yahoo, it was being different. Something you should think hard on: Zuckerberg didn't set out to make the next Facebook, or the next anything. He was just making something fun for himself and his fellow Harvard students. It was only when he saw how powerful his creation was that his ambitions increased."
This seems especially relevant to me now that I'm seeing ads around San Francisco for two new social networks that are lamely trying to be the next Facebook.
I'd argue that Facebook is actually the next AOL (a tool for managing your connections, communicating, and viewing curated content in a walled garden). Teenagers in the late 90s/early 00s lived on AOL in the same way that they later lived on Facebook. But you don't become the next anything by trying to be it, you try to become something different, and it's only in hindsight that they look the same.
It's also true that the company that looks indomitable today is seen as an anachronism tomorrow. At one point there were lawsuits against AOL to open up the instant messenger network because it was seen as an anti-competitive monopoly. Now nobody seems to care.
Wasn't Facebook the "next Friendster?" I feel like it was actually a relative latecomer to the social networking party of the early '00s. Not to diss FB or their achievement, but it certainly felt like an evolution rather than a revolution upon launch. Only once they built up steam did it really begin to become an entirely new sort of beast.
Same with Google, no? I feel like they entered a crowded market of search engines and came out on top, but certainly weren't the first of their kind.
Wasn't Facebook the "next Friendster?" I feel like it was actually a relative latecomer to the social networking party of the early '00s.
A lot of industries also have early periods of extreme tumult, then greater stability as firms consolidated and success becomes more obvious and definable. Think about cars: it's become a commonplace that Detroit was the Silicon Valley of its day, but eventually a few car makers became dominant. When, say, GM first emerged, it might have seemed to observers that another rival would rise to take out GM—which didn't really happen until decades later.
Facebook may be the first of the "mature" social networks that isn't almost immediately superseded by something dramatically better. The fact that it now has so much lock-in inertia indicates that it may be with us for much longer than its day-to-day critics believe.
Well, Facebook could be seen as the next AOL, or Friendster, or MySpace.
And Google could be seen as the next Altavista, Lycos, Excite, etc.
Android itself could be seen as a copy of iOS (released a year after the iPhone redesigned to match it) , and it has eaten into its' market (and into the general untapped smartphone market).
So I wouldn't say he haven't seen that "next" stuff happening.
Doesn't have to be 100% the same to be next -- just to cater to the same market and needs.
>> Teens likely see Facebook the same way the Facebook generation sees LinkedIn – like a utilitarian place to manage connections.
This is why the "millennials are leaving Facebook" worry isn't actually real. Yes, middle schoolers and high schoolers aren't using Facebook. They are at a stage in their life where the idea of their parents being able to see into their life is scary. Their social circle is also disproportionately made up of people they can easily see every day. Facebook's utility for contact management, event planning, and keeping in touch doesn't really begin until people turn 18 and go out on their own. This doesn't even begin to touch the ease of using it to sign up for other products that are built on top of it.
I'am 18 and I agree with you. The way the discussion one day happened in status updates have now moved to usually hidden groups. The groups are usually built around some specific event, say prams, or alternatively around some common interest such as LAN gaming or binge drinking. It works as a new and more appealing way to create what you may consider mailing lists. Engaging in those groups is easier as you post something relevant to the topic and know that your or your friends aunt will not see what you said.
I think boomzilla was talking about electronic bulletin boards, i.e. BBSes and the web-based forum replacements that grew from them. (And it's an apt comparison -- forums remain an important social aspect of the web.)
Even if you don't care or agree about what revolves around Snowden and the NSA, I'm sure it got many people wondering about how facebook operated and how information works.
Even if nothing is done about the NSA, it will have the merit of making facebook less and less popular, and make people not trust websites who might be information hungry.
I wonder if people thwarting the way they post their info can really make those info gathering useless. That'd fun to watch.
Seriously, why do people waste time writing these types of stories? My guess is that it's because it's so much easier than actually trying to build something of value. The real problem is there is no penalty for being wrong. Everyone simply forgets. Write a thousand stories and if just one of them is right then you get to claim your genius.
Where are those guys who predicated that Apple Stores were such a stupid idea? We need to start keeping score.
The same thing can be said for comments like yours.
He actually does a pretty great job in this article in my opinion: Strong narrative, uses facts + common knowledge and personal insight to build a strong point.
He is informing people on a particular topic they might not be so well acquainted with. Whether or not he's right about Facebook, we'll have to see but he makes a good case.
Why. Why must you do this. Why must you dismiss articles on hackneyed grounds and kill the chance for an interesting discussion about the nature and direction of social technologies.
I thought this article was very interesting, it brought to light several factual points, and several not-heard-before insights -- e.g., I thought this in particular was very true and interesting:
This is why social networks, like Google+ (where I
worked for one year), are struggling even more than
Facebook to get a foothold in the future of social
networking. They are betting on last year’s fashion
I'm surprised it wasn't Google that made an offer on Snapchat, since it's normally quite forward-looking. But then again, social has never been Google's forte has it.
1. "Confirmed" in quotes because Valleywag cites an unnamed source, and I typically find Valleywag, and Gawker Media on a whole, dubious and not entirely worthy of trust. However, this may have been more solidly confirmed elsewhere as well.
> Seriously, why do people waste time writing these types of stories?
> Why. Why must you do this. Why must you dismiss articles on hackneyed grounds and kill the chance for an interesting discussion about the nature and direction of social technologies.
For the same reason. People like being perceived by others as contrarian or controversial, and people like perceiving themselves to be most clever/insightful/prescient than the next guy.
It hasn't been anybody's forte except for facebook by that standard. On the contrary g+ is far better than facebook by any measurement you choose to use, it isn't missing anything. A supportive user base mostly absent only in the minds of people vehemently dying for it to be absent. These people who repeat the idea that using google for social networking is the worst thing they've ever heard or thought about. The technology is still sound, meanwhile.
i think another reason both facebook and g+ are in decline is that they're insisting on the whole "our way or the highway" approach - g+'s real names crap, and facebook's relentless publicisation of every move you make, are unpopular with tons of people, and even if those people reluctantly stay on because that's where all their friends are (in facebook's case, at least - g+ threw away any chance at stickiness by being high-handed before people were hooked), their engagement with the platform is diminished.
The author mentions that teens see Facebook as a utensil and not as something "cool" anymore.
Okay, fine, but how does that predict the end of facebook? If facebook becomes a utensil, a utensil that a good chunk of grownups still continue to use no less, why would that mean the end of facebook?
The author further talks about the 70s and 80s and things that were cool. Great, but if he stated that teens see facebook as a utensil, what does "cool" have to do with anything? If we stay with the 70s and 80s statement, do you know what other utensils we had in the 70s and 80s? Cars. Cars are utensils as a mode of transportation but also they are an outlet for some people to show the world who they are. What I mean is, we still drive cars even though we had them in the 70s and 80s. They just look different as technology and consumer demands have changed over time.
So, there is no reason why facebook would go down just because teens currently don't see it as "cool" anymore. As long as it is useful to manage your private contacts, and as long as it adapts to people's changing demands it can go on.
In short, were facebook on its way out, there would have to be one new "cool" thing to replace it. It is not enough to just have something similar but without users like g+. And if such a thing emerges, facebook still isn't doomed right away. They would just now have a reason why they maybe should listen to their users a little more. Regarding thins like privacy settings etc. As long as they don't have a competitor, they can pretty much do whatever they like as people don't really have an alternative. Should we start seeing teens leaving in droves for new hip platform X, I think facebook would recognize this and we would start seeing some more user friendly changes.
Seriously, why do people waste time writing these types of stories?
Because they believe them. Life is a journey of discovery (I know waaaay too pithy) and the more stuff you see, the more bigger pictures pop out of it. Its like backing away from a fractal. You see what is important, what was probably luck, and what was different. When pieces come together in your head it is pretty exciting, like figuring out a difficult proof, or creating a clever algorithm. You want to share some of that with those around you.
Our Author had one view of Facebook, and now has another. Their view evolved based on what they observed, and they feel much more confident in their current view, and so they share it.
> Seriously, why do people waste time writing these types of stories?
Because no one remembers the misses, only hits.
> Where are those guys who predicated that Apple Stores were such a stupid idea? We need to start keeping score.
People are starting to keep score! Websites like http://www.pundittracker.com/ are starting to come out of the woodwork, and as more people help collect data (person X claimed Y would happen by Z date) we can start generating hit rates.
> What teenager wants to hang out in the same place as their parents?
Parents have been on Facebook for a long time. Why are teenagers today leaving but not teenagers from 3 years ago?
Also, why is it assumed that teenagers who stopped using Facebook today aren't going to come back when they get older and have adult-things they want to share?
ahh, it's not that the teenagers are seeing adults share things and not liking what is being posted, it's that people are uncomfortable posting things because other people may see them.
>>> But it’s rich, so it can buy cool. Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram was their first big move to strengthen their position with the youth of this country.
But with young people, if Facebook is uncool, then by proxy Instagram is uncool as well. This is how teenagers think these days. They can sink as much money into other social platforms, but you won't ever get rid of the Facebook stigma.
No, I bet quite a lot of teens are at least aware the sale happened. But they don't think about it every day. They don't care. Because Instagram is cool. In spite of facebook.
I believe another reason teenagers are leaving Facebook is the insistence of using your real identity. Teens don't want their mom finding them online. That's why they're flocking to services where they can be anonymous, like Tumblr, where you can also meet new people outside of your circle of friends.
What about leaving the endless discussion about FB's destiny aside and just focus on creating a __new pattern of behavior or activity__ that appeals to a mass audience if you really want to build a large network on its own?
Examples of things that worked:
- Follow updates of celebrities
- Collect nice looking things on a website
- Make even the worst picture look good
- Be the best cat gif curator
Examples of things that didn't work:
- Facebook but for ten friends
- Facebook for Google Accounts
- Facebook with open data portability
Let Zuck worry about the hype cycle and start building.
I found this article really interesting. I started using Facebook in high school, back when high schoolers were to use hs.facebook.com to access Facebook and networks were heavily emphasized. I left Facebook about one year ago today.
One particular observation that the article makes that I want to flesh out a bit is the following: Facebook has grown and grown in terms of the size of the application itself, and it is clear that they have pushed very heavily for the 'platform' model. It seems like this is getting replaced by a series of more specialized, more mobile-centric social applications, like Snapchat and Tumblr. Of course FB owns Instagram so they have that going for them, but this does seem to hint at a bit of a growing trend in social networking.
138 comments
[ 1.0 ms ] story [ 246 ms ] threadIn my native tongue, 10 years wouldn't be called an "era", hence the disagreement.
Tons of things have been considered fads through the decades, some rightly (hula-hoops) and some not (rock music). The question, when making an analogy, is how they relate to Facebook.
Unless you connect Pepsi and Facebook with something more besides (both have been considered a fad), we cannot draw any conclusions from Pepsi with regards to Facebook's situation except this:
Sometimes, people can consider something as a fad when it isn't.
If you want to make this analogy work, you have to show why Facebook will be more like Pepsi and less like the hula-hoop or piano neck-ties.
There's a social cost to be seen doing the things that everyone else is doing (the equivalent, say, of wearing a mainstream band t-shirt), so having a presence on Facebook is just meeting the bar. To be "cool" you need to find the social networks nobody else knows about, and hang out with your friends there. Bonus points for alluding, on Facebook, to conversations you had on the not-Facebook social network.
It may be amusing to find in 10 years that using Facebook becomes a new fad again and is seen as "retro". Certainly a possibility if Facebook does not innovate itself to non-recognizability.
Facebook was so ridiculously hot a few years ago that it couldn't possibly have met all of its expectations for changing how we all communicate, replacing all other messaging mediums, dominating how we shop and buy, the portal for all things entertainment, etc.
> Teens likely see Facebook the same way the Facebook generation sees LinkedIn – like a utilitarian place to manage connections.
This sounds a lot like the Plateau of Productivity to me.
http://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F02y1vz%2C%20...
However, a forecast is just a forecast, not happened yet. The 'trend' graph spikes with the IPO which had no relevance for 99% of Facebook users. Take that spike out, ignore the 'forecast' and Facebook is doing the 'myspace curve' and in a similar time frame.
Anyway, where is the Facebook login for Hacker News?
Just one example is its utility to sign up and log in to other services, which is 95%+ of my FB activity.
As the author noted though, Facebook can still thrive in the "cool factor" with their acquisitions.
But even if Facebook is prone to stumble, I'd encourage entrepreneurs not to try to be the "next Facebook". As I wrote elsewhere [1]: "Honestly, there probably won't be a 'next Facebook', for the same reason there hasn't been a next Amazon, next Oracle, next Google, or next Apple. There hasn't even been a next Yahoo, because the secret to success for many startups wasn't being another Yahoo, it was being different. Something you should think hard on: Zuckerberg didn't set out to make the next Facebook, or the next anything. He was just making something fun for himself and his fellow Harvard students. It was only when he saw how powerful his creation was that his ambitions increased."
This seems especially relevant to me now that I'm seeing ads around San Francisco for two new social networks that are lamely trying to be the next Facebook.
[1] https://www.quora.com/Entrepreneurship/Is-it-foolish-to-go-t...
It's also true that the company that looks indomitable today is seen as an anachronism tomorrow. At one point there were lawsuits against AOL to open up the instant messenger network because it was seen as an anti-competitive monopoly. Now nobody seems to care.
Same with Google, no? I feel like they entered a crowded market of search engines and came out on top, but certainly weren't the first of their kind.
* Facebook was the "Next MySpace"
* MySpace was the "Next Xanga"
* Xanga was the "Next Homestead"
* Homestead was the "Next Geocities"
A lot of industries also have early periods of extreme tumult, then greater stability as firms consolidated and success becomes more obvious and definable. Think about cars: it's become a commonplace that Detroit was the Silicon Valley of its day, but eventually a few car makers became dominant. When, say, GM first emerged, it might have seemed to observers that another rival would rise to take out GM—which didn't really happen until decades later.
Facebook may be the first of the "mature" social networks that isn't almost immediately superseded by something dramatically better. The fact that it now has so much lock-in inertia indicates that it may be with us for much longer than its day-to-day critics believe.
And Google could be seen as the next Altavista, Lycos, Excite, etc.
Android itself could be seen as a copy of iOS (released a year after the iPhone redesigned to match it) , and it has eaten into its' market (and into the general untapped smartphone market).
So I wouldn't say he haven't seen that "next" stuff happening.
Doesn't have to be 100% the same to be next -- just to cater to the same market and needs.
This is why the "millennials are leaving Facebook" worry isn't actually real. Yes, middle schoolers and high schoolers aren't using Facebook. They are at a stage in their life where the idea of their parents being able to see into their life is scary. Their social circle is also disproportionately made up of people they can easily see every day. Facebook's utility for contact management, event planning, and keeping in touch doesn't really begin until people turn 18 and go out on their own. This doesn't even begin to touch the ease of using it to sign up for other products that are built on top of it.
Great point
Facebook was created as an online replacement for something that had been around in physical form for a long time. Welcome to Facebook.
Even if nothing is done about the NSA, it will have the merit of making facebook less and less popular, and make people not trust websites who might be information hungry.
I wonder if people thwarting the way they post their info can really make those info gathering useless. That'd fun to watch.
"The end of the Apple era"
"The end of the Microsoft era"
"The end of the Netflix era"
"The end of the Yahoo era"
Seriously, why do people waste time writing these types of stories? My guess is that it's because it's so much easier than actually trying to build something of value. The real problem is there is no penalty for being wrong. Everyone simply forgets. Write a thousand stories and if just one of them is right then you get to claim your genius.
Where are those guys who predicated that Apple Stores were such a stupid idea? We need to start keeping score.
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2001-05-20/commentary-so...
He actually does a pretty great job in this article in my opinion: Strong narrative, uses facts + common knowledge and personal insight to build a strong point.
He is informing people on a particular topic they might not be so well acquainted with. Whether or not he's right about Facebook, we'll have to see but he makes a good case.
[1] http://webtrends.about.com/b/2010/01/26/5-reasons-why-apples...
I thought this article was very interesting, it brought to light several factual points, and several not-heard-before insights -- e.g., I thought this in particular was very true and interesting:
I'm surprised it wasn't Google that made an offer on Snapchat, since it's normally quite forward-looking. But then again, social has never been Google's forte has it.0. http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/15/5106950/google-snapchat-4...
1. "Confirmed" in quotes because Valleywag cites an unnamed source, and I typically find Valleywag, and Gawker Media on a whole, dubious and not entirely worthy of trust. However, this may have been more solidly confirmed elsewhere as well.
Like offering $6BN to Groupon - They could give away $5 million a day to companies using Google Offers for three years.
Obviously smarter-than-me people are behind these deals, but I just can't figure out how they make sense.
> Why. Why must you do this. Why must you dismiss articles on hackneyed grounds and kill the chance for an interesting discussion about the nature and direction of social technologies.
For the same reason. People like being perceived by others as contrarian or controversial, and people like perceiving themselves to be most clever/insightful/prescient than the next guy.
It hasn't been anybody's forte except for facebook by that standard. On the contrary g+ is far better than facebook by any measurement you choose to use, it isn't missing anything. A supportive user base mostly absent only in the minds of people vehemently dying for it to be absent. These people who repeat the idea that using google for social networking is the worst thing they've ever heard or thought about. The technology is still sound, meanwhile.
The G+ API sucks. Bad. It might as well not even be there for all the use you can get out of it.
Do a serious comparison of the Facebook Graph API to what passes for an API on G+, then tell us again that it isn't missing anything.
The author mentions that teens see Facebook as a utensil and not as something "cool" anymore.
Okay, fine, but how does that predict the end of facebook? If facebook becomes a utensil, a utensil that a good chunk of grownups still continue to use no less, why would that mean the end of facebook?
The author further talks about the 70s and 80s and things that were cool. Great, but if he stated that teens see facebook as a utensil, what does "cool" have to do with anything? If we stay with the 70s and 80s statement, do you know what other utensils we had in the 70s and 80s? Cars. Cars are utensils as a mode of transportation but also they are an outlet for some people to show the world who they are. What I mean is, we still drive cars even though we had them in the 70s and 80s. They just look different as technology and consumer demands have changed over time.
So, there is no reason why facebook would go down just because teens currently don't see it as "cool" anymore. As long as it is useful to manage your private contacts, and as long as it adapts to people's changing demands it can go on.
In short, were facebook on its way out, there would have to be one new "cool" thing to replace it. It is not enough to just have something similar but without users like g+. And if such a thing emerges, facebook still isn't doomed right away. They would just now have a reason why they maybe should listen to their users a little more. Regarding thins like privacy settings etc. As long as they don't have a competitor, they can pretty much do whatever they like as people don't really have an alternative. Should we start seeing teens leaving in droves for new hip platform X, I think facebook would recognize this and we would start seeing some more user friendly changes.
Because they believe them. Life is a journey of discovery (I know waaaay too pithy) and the more stuff you see, the more bigger pictures pop out of it. Its like backing away from a fractal. You see what is important, what was probably luck, and what was different. When pieces come together in your head it is pretty exciting, like figuring out a difficult proof, or creating a clever algorithm. You want to share some of that with those around you.
Our Author had one view of Facebook, and now has another. Their view evolved based on what they observed, and they feel much more confident in their current view, and so they share it.
Because no one remembers the misses, only hits.
> Where are those guys who predicated that Apple Stores were such a stupid idea? We need to start keeping score.
People are starting to keep score! Websites like http://www.pundittracker.com/ are starting to come out of the woodwork, and as more people help collect data (person X claimed Y would happen by Z date) we can start generating hit rates.
Author XXX is wrong 97.5% of the time!
We need contrarian points-of-view, even if fundamentally wrong, to challenge and strengthen our own opinions.
I agree about keeping score, however; that allows us to assign value to the predictors.
Why are you wasting time complaining about it if you don't like it. Just ignore it and move on.
"the end of the Microsoft era"
http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
Parents have been on Facebook for a long time. Why are teenagers today leaving but not teenagers from 3 years ago?
Also, why is it assumed that teenagers who stopped using Facebook today aren't going to come back when they get older and have adult-things they want to share?
But with young people, if Facebook is uncool, then by proxy Instagram is uncool as well. This is how teenagers think these days. They can sink as much money into other social platforms, but you won't ever get rid of the Facebook stigma.
Examples of things that worked:
- Follow updates of celebrities
- Collect nice looking things on a website
- Make even the worst picture look good
- Be the best cat gif curator
Examples of things that didn't work:
- Facebook but for ten friends
- Facebook for Google Accounts
- Facebook with open data portability
Let Zuck worry about the hype cycle and start building.
Pretty sad indictment of the tech industry that operating like a business had to be qualified.
One particular observation that the article makes that I want to flesh out a bit is the following: Facebook has grown and grown in terms of the size of the application itself, and it is clear that they have pushed very heavily for the 'platform' model. It seems like this is getting replaced by a series of more specialized, more mobile-centric social applications, like Snapchat and Tumblr. Of course FB owns Instagram so they have that going for them, but this does seem to hint at a bit of a growing trend in social networking.