[numble]

And when everybody started drinking coffee, I bet Coca Cola expanded into that market.

Yep:
http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/brands/coffee.html

[Tashbrooke]

2006: GUYS THE WII IS A GIMMICKY FAD PEOPLE WILL GET TIRED OF IT 2007: THE WII IS A FAD IT WILL END ITS REIGN SOON 2008: HOW CAN YOU PEOPLE NOT SEE THAT THE WII IS JUST A FAD 2009: HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS ARE BUYING INTO A FAD STOP BUYING WII'S 2010: $#%#$*%&*#$%&FADFADDFAD 2011: RARRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH 2012: HAHA I TOLD YOU GUYS THE WII WAS A FAD Can something that's been around and SO successful EVER be called a fad? People were wrong about the Wii, they're wrong about Facebook. It's here to stay.

lol 2011, Facebook is not a FAD

[TheWiicast]

I heard they are making Facebook Pogs with Zucky as a special slammer.

[-COOLIO-]

This. I can't stand all this social networking nonsense.

this is what it boils down too, people aren't calling it a fad because their actually making an analytical response, it's just insanely popular and people hate that.

[Hoo-doo]

Exactly like this, huh? You've seen social networks with 800 million active members just up and vanish? Hey man, I, too, don't use Facebook, but don't make up some idiotic bullshit just so people will think you're super suave for not using the service.

I'm not making anything up, I can only judge it from my country's perspective.

We had a ridiculously popular online social service just like facebook that literally the entire country was on, and it simply withered and died completely once people started trickling towards facebook. The next big thing.

These guys were king of the world on one day, and begging for members the next.

[Famassu]

I'm still not totally sure why Facebook exists, and why it's so big.

Really? Being able to keep in touch with faraway people every day if you want to (texting & calling people that much would end up being costly), arrange events much more easily than ever before, getting info on things you're interested (i.e. dates of gigs from bands you like) and just being able to see what friends are doing with a click of a button... you really don't see why it's so popular? I understand there are people who don't give a shit what anyone is doing, but for people who do like to keep in touch with people or at least see when something perhaps funny or notable happens to friends, relatives & such (without having to go through the hassle of calling EVERYONE everyday and asking if anything happened today), it's a good tool for that.

[KevinCow]

Facebook, or social networking in general?

Because Facebook might bet usurped by something else, but social networking has changed the way people interact and communicate with each other. It's here to stay.

[Bombadil]

im not really feeling your comparisons and i disagree with "The digital realm is nothing like the physical realm". I dont really see the difference once you start talking about finely tuned, massively engineered, billion dollar budget, patent protected software. a fairer comparison would be comparing facebook to windows.

Fine, let's compare Facebook to Windows. Recall, it was you who compared it to Coke.

Windows is constantly evolving not only to keep up with advancing technology but to keep up with competing Operating systems that offer innovative features. Windows 7 is drastically different than Windows 98, even if they look somewhat similar with the windows layouts. Windows 8 will be drastically different from Win7. There's no guarantee that Windows will be around forever. Microsoft makes changes to their OS to try and keep up, but if they make the wrong changes, or if they make the right changes but make them too late, they will fail. Their wealth will not save them.

That's what Facebook is like, to an extent. BUT an operating system is at the heart of the computer experience; it binds all things together - the business programs, the leisure programs, and the research programs (i.e. the internet browser). But Facebook is merely a communications hub, just like Myspace was, and just like Twitter is.

Hubs don't last. People tend to migrate on the internet to the next best thing. And marketing cannot truly control where people go. Throwing a ton of money is also not a guarantee. Facebook started out as something small, and it grew by word of mouth. At that time, Myspace was pretty big. Millions of people from all ages and all walks of life were frequenting Myspace.

But then people left. In hindsight, we look at Myspace and we think it's pretty obvious that it would fail, right? The layout was terrible. My god, all the gifs and sparkly backgrounds and shit.

Facebook is cleaner, slimmer, more efficient, at least it used to be. It's growing bigger, with the new features like Timeline increasing its bulk, making navigation a chore. But you know why it's happening. Facebook is trying to make itself more customizable to the user. Big mistake.

People will move on to something easier and simpler and newer.

[Al-ibn Kermit]

all consumer services evolve.

That's like saying fashion evolves. There's only a finite amount of "social networking" you can do, people's preferences will change to something that makes facebooking (as a verb) irrelevant in their everyday lives.

That's not to say Facebook as a company will go out of business. I think they will expand into any new markets and probably continue to dominate social networking for a very long time.

I just don't see the services that Facebook provides right now as future proof. The question is if they will try to incorporate a bunch of different services/features into one product, or let individual services adapt more dynamically.

[-COOLIO-]

I'm not making anything up, I can only judge it from my country's perspective. We had a ridiculously popular online social service just like facebook that literally the entire countrywas on, and it simply withered and died completely once people started trickling towards facebook. The next big thing. These guys were king of the world on one day, and begging for members the next.

if your country's social network had 800 million users and the same brand recognition fb now has it woulda taken over past fb

[Fenderputty]

almost every new site allows facebook logins already. facebook has essentially become our online passport and it's more engrained than a facehugger, but despite the analogy i dont have a problem with it.

As someone who doesn't use facebook, this really pisses me off.

[TheNatural]

I just deleted my Facebook account. I'm sick of the "tie in X account with Facebook, post to facebook" shit and getting updated from people I met that one time years ago or getting friend invites from people back in high school I didn't even talk to then and I don't now.

Enough of this crap.

[LosDaddie]

At minimum, FB is here to stay for another decade. It's become too popular, too mainstream to go away quickly, or have a competitor take its place anytime soon.

The only thing FB needs to make sure is that it doesn't get overloaded with ads.

Edit: And Coca-Cola won't be around, forever, either. If the people at the Coca-Cola Company thought they'd be around forever, they wouldn't bother with all the marketing and diversified products they create.

:lol What? That makes no sense.

[-COOLIO-]

Fine, let's compare Facebook to Windows. Recall, it was you who compared it to Coke. Windows is constantly evolving not only to keep up with advancing technology but to keep up with competing Operating systems that offer innovative features. Windows 7 is drastically different than Windows 98, even if they look somewhat similar with the windows layouts. Windows 8 will be drastically different from Win7. There's no guarantee that Windows will be around forever. Microsoft makes changes to their OS to try and keep up, but if they make the wrong changes, or if they make the right changes but make them too late, they will fail. Their wealth will not save them. That's what Facebook is like, to an extent. BUT an operating system is at the heart of the computer experience; it binds all things together - the business programs, the leisure programs, and the research programs (i.e. the internet browser). But Facebook is merely a communications hub, just like Myspace was, and just like Twitter is. Hubs don't last. People tend to migrate on the internet to the next best thing. And marketing cannot truly control where people go. Throwing a ton of money is also not a guarantee. Facebook started out as something small, and it grew by word of mouth. At that time, Myspace was pretty big. Millions of people from all ages and all walks of life were frequenting Myspace. But then people left. In hindsight, we look at Myspace and we think it's pretty obvious that it would fail, right? The layout was terrible. My god, all the gifs and sparkly backgrounds and shit. Facebook is cleaner, slimmer, more efficient, at least it used to be. It's growing bigger, with the new features like Timeline increasing its bulk, making navigation a chore. But you know why it's happening. Facebook is trying to make itself more customizable to the user. Big mistake. People will move on to something easier and simpler and newer.

i changed the comparison to windows because you were taking about physical vs software being completely different

[-COOLIO-]

As someone who doesn't use facebook, this really pisses me off.

it makes remembering passwords easier.

but god help you if you lose your google or facebook password

[Steelrain]

I just deleted my Facebook account. I'm sick of the "tie in X account with Facebook, post to facebook" shit and getting updated from people I met that one time years ago or getting friend invites from people back in high school I didn't even talk to then and I don't now. Enough of this crap.

Sounds like you didn't know how to not add people.

[Enco]

The internet is a fad.

Every few weeks we get amazing analysts predicting the death of Facebook. It's not going anywhere any time soon. Get over it.

[Al-ibn Kermit]

Really? Being able to keep in touch with faraway people every day if you want to (texting & calling people that much would end up being costly), arrange events much more easily than ever before, getting info on things you're interested (i.e. dates of gigs from bands you like) and just being able to see what friends are doing with a click of a button... you really don't see why it's so popular? I understand there are people who don't give a shit what anyone is doing, but for people who do like to keep in touch with people or at least see when something perhaps funny or notable happens to friends, relatives & such (without having to go through the hassle of calling EVERYONE everyday and asking if anything happened today), it's a good tool for that.

I meant why it exists when massively popular competition already existed. How it managed to beat that type of competition.

I can see why social networking is useful to just about anybody. What I don't understand is why Facebook became THE social network.

[Hop]

after zuck it could just get balmer'ed and not grow nor fail

For a public company, "not growing" is failing. (At least in the current investor environment that demands profit increases every quarter lest you be cast aside.)

And business people do apparently hate Ballmer, so...

[jvalioli]

Then it's not a fad. That's like calling driving a fad.

Depends on your definition of a short time. The big SW companies seem to die out a lot faster than HW companies(counting car manufacturers and such as HW). So using that as a metric, I would call most companies based off of one type of SW as fads, and everything else is basically too young to tell.

[nVidiot_Whore]

Facebook is how people share tons of information with each other.. how they organize events.. wish each other happy birthday, etc.

I doubt it is going anywhere.. as the years go buy with it being the most popular service of it's type, by far, the chance of it being usurped by something else gets slimmer and slimmer.

It's being used by people of all ages and walks of life, who add more and more data to it.

It's already beyond a fad.. and other than that, likely will be around for the unforeseeable future.

[Fenderputty]

it makes remembering passwords easier. but god help you if you lose your google or facebook password

I'm more concerned with the content I don't get access to without facebook because of this. Spotify for example.

[Winnie the Pimp]

can we just go back to the 90s or something and STAY there please?

(not kidding)

i can't even relate to all this new shit anymore like facebook, social networking etc. and fuck i am only in my 30s and already yelling at clouds, i dread the later years lol :(

[Qasiel]

We used to have much cooler fads, like pole sitting. What happened?

Planking/Owling/Batman-ing/Horsemaning/Faith Hilling happened.

[-COOLIO-]

I'm more concerned with the content I don't get access to without facebook because of this. Spotify for example.

oh true, that's balls

[Hoo-doo]

if your country's social network had 800 million users and the same brand recognition fb now has it woulda taken over past fb

I personally don't think dutch people care about users from across the globe. It's used to keep in touch with friends and family in your life, not manage international connections.
As for userbase, in the Netherlands, a country with 16 million inhabitants, Hyves had a userbase of 11.5 million on november 2011. In comparison, Facebook has been hovering around 6 million users over here right now.

All i'm saying is that from my perspective, it's not that hard to see us switch to the next social media thing that pops up. Hyves was a much, much bigger thing over here than facebook is now, and it died out relatively quickly.

Did the US ever have a social network on this scale before facebook arrived?

[DarkKyo]

I lost all interest in facebook when I graduated from college. It just seems like a thing for people who crave attention now(perfect for entitled american children who think their life is the entire universe).

[LegendofJoe]

Facebook, or social networking in general? Because Facebook might bet usurped by something else, but social networking has changed the way people interact and communicate with each other. It's here to stay.

Social netwokig is useful in that it makes it easier to connnect with new people, organize events, and maintain communication with old friends. That is all I use it for though. To be honest, most of the people in my circle use Facebook as a substitutue for real social interaction and it drives me crazy. I curse Zuckerburg every night because of it. Who does he think he is stealing time from me that could have been spent with my friends and fiancee? He should be paying me for making my social life worse.

[Criminal Upper]

I'd fucking be LOST without Facebook. Best way to organize parties, get togethers, etc.

[Famassu]

I meant why it exists when massively popular competition already existed. How it managed to beat that type of competition. I can see why social networking is useful to just about anybody. What I don't understand is why Facebook became THE social network.

Well, I guess it's a combination of things in addition to a good timing (people were perhaps ready for such a thing). I personally aren't aware of any other competitors than MySpace (in the early days, that is, nowadays there's Diaspora, G+ and whatnot), but MySpace was absolutely horrible (looked like shit and every profile I saw was filled with some random shit and made my computer run like shit). Facebook, on the other hand, was fairly clean, you registered with your own name so it's easy to find your friends, it's (or was) easy to use and it just collected a bunch of social/sharing features into a neat little package.

[abusori]

I don't even know if it's a fad; I just like to call it one to keep convincing myself it's all just a bad dream that'll go away.

[marathonfool]

Facebook's biggest threat is the mobile platform. They already admitted they don't have a sustainable model for mobile platforms. There's no ad space and the mobile apps compete with Facebook apps. Social networking is moving towards mobile.

The best move is leveraging Facebook users toward their own services. Search, maps, and places. Then media properties. Creating an ecosystem for desktops isn't going to help them going forward. This is the reason they bought out Instagram and the infusion of institutional investment will finance services development and deployment.

[AbsoluteZero]

It is a fad.

There was a point in time where everybody thought MySpace was invincible.

In time something else will come along and everyone will move over to that.

[goomba]

Is neogaf a fad too?

[Mr. B Natural]

I agree with half of Americans.

I love this post.

[Jacob]

Has there ever been a website that has transcended the Internet to ingrain itself in popular culture in the way that Facebook has? The only other example I can think of is Twitter (not counting sites like Orkut that have smaller, more regional userbases). Hell, Facebook usernames and Twitter handles are well on their way to eclipsing actual URLs in advertising and business. It's easy to say that Facebook could fall at any time, but the MySpace comparisons are ridiculous. MySpace was never at the same level as Facebook. FB surely won't be around forever, but it will be relevant for the foreseeable future.

Not to mention that after a certain period of time you can't really call something a fad anymore even if it does eventually cease to be popular. I wouldn't call AOL, Yahoo, or MySpace fads either because they were relevant for years despite having faded recently.

[AlexMogil]

Looking forward to the Facebook Wars of 2072.

[meijiko]

People like to cite that the internet is rapidly changing and it's only a matter of time before everything we know and love gets replaced, but I don't think there's enough history to predict it. Facebook is ingrained in almost every corner of the internet, buried into almost every website worth using. Nothing has compared to it before. Not to mention the advent of smartphones and easy internet almost anywhere you go changing the way we interact with people.

I think Facebook has the capacity to evolve and change with the internet, and it won't be a "fad." Hell, even if it disappeared off the face of the planet tomorrow, it still wouldn't be a "fad," because it changed the way people use the internet. To call it a fad is to indicate that it didn't have any lasting impact, which it most certainly did.

[Tideas]

http://m.apnews.mobi/ap/db_6776/cont...tguid=eKd3tgO0 I'm still not totally sure why Facebook exists, and why it's so big.

and that sis why u're not an investor

[Curtisaur]

I'm not a fan of Facebook, but I can see why a lot of people are. I think it's here to stay for a little while.

[nyong]

Everything is a "fad" if you want to look at the really big picture. Facebook has already been around long enough it can't be compared with the likes of Beeny Babies and Pet Rocks, though.

[Milchjon]

Isn't calling Facebook a fad a fad itself?

Facebook has a lot of things to consider going forward, but it'll take a few years to lose 900 million active users. Especially since it actually offers a plethora of useful functions that people rely on by now. It's certainly no second MySpace.

[Peasant Princess-King]

The Artist Formerly Known as Prince believes the entire internet is a fad. . .

[Emwitus]

Because people will have moved on to the next big thing.

lol in 2050?

[bangladesh]

I never got the fascination with facebook. Always looked like a flaunting device to me. And only attractive females would succeed while everyone else are miserable failed attention fisherman. And also everyone on facebook think they're deep philosophers with all their nonsense quotes. It's a good way to keep in touch! No it's not, MSN, email and phone are.

[shas'la]

Guys, I heard Pokemon is a fad as well.

[Bombadil]

At minimum, FB is here to stay for another decade. It's become too popular, too mainstream to go away quickly, or have a competitor take its place anytime soon. The only thing FB needs to make sure is that it doesn't get overloaded with ads. :lol What? That makes no sense.

Yes, it does. You just have to think about it first, before culling up the "lol" sequence.

[SteveWinwood]

I never got the fascination with facebook. Always looked like a flaunting device to me. And only attractive females would succeed while everyone else are miserable failed attention fisherman. And also everyone on facebook think they're deep philosophers with all their nonsense quotes. It's a good way to keep in touch! No it's not, MSN, email and phone are.

Okay grandpa.

[Steelrain]

I never got the fascination with facebook. Always looked like a flaunting device to me. And only attractive females would succeed while everyone else are miserable failed attention fisherman. And also everyone on facebook think they're deep philosophers with all their nonsense quotes. It's a good way to keep in touch! No it's not, MSN, email and phone are.

Uh, yes it is.

Also, Facebook doesn't place random people on your feed so that you have to read their posts. If you have annoying friends then that sounds like a personal problem.

[Dutch Mafia]

over a long enough time it is all a fad