Eulogies trickle in for Facebook
“The End of Facebook” trumpeted the headline. 46 points in 46 minutes on Hacker News.
“Facebook Screws Social Media Marketers!” trumpets Business Insider.
“Facebook is losing teens” states Global Web Index.
Here we go with the bandwagon.
Hop on!
Only that this time isn’t going to be quite like the last time(s).
Teens have fled to their smartphones
They’re computers they can control. They’re computers that aren’t tied to the family room, where parents can seen them.
Small screens offer a degree of privacy and intimacy that larger screens, even the tablet, just can’t replicate.
Facebook saw that a long time ago and snapped up a few cool startups.
Ditto Twitter.
Ditto Google.
And the rest of us are behind to various degrees.
The smartphone is just a better computer for them.
After all, look at their circumstances.
Platform Plays
Facebook has huge penetration.
It has huge API’s.
Facebook continues to be useful.
So much of that usefulness is embedded in a lot of the apps you know and love.
And there are very few signs that it will stop being useful.
I’ve watched two generations of tech executives now go through an open-closed-open-closed supercycle of platform openness.
I’ve never seen Facebook go through a single supercycle. It started off pretty closed. It went open. It’s just become more and more open.
I think that’s a huge competitive advantage.
For these social networks, it’s so much more than just being about social.
It’s well beyond the desktop or any single app.
There’s an ecology here
(And I think Myspace et al were the dinosaurs.)