Is Facebook Doomed?

There are people who are addicted to social media (Facebook and Twitter). Others couldn’t care less about it. And then there are those who hold it responsible for every problem in India!

idiot420 posted this hilarious article on Faking News on the havoc social media wreaks on society, from lack of economic growth to dowry and dandruff! The sample below should give you an idea of the tone of the article:

There is a competition among the people to buy new cars and upload its pictures on Facebook…Such desires have pushed them to amass wealth through unethical ways and are giving rise to corruption.

I am guessing Facebook-haters would be very happy to hear this analysis of why Facebook might be doomed. The short answer would be what Ben Thompson wrote in his blog:

“Whereas Google is valuable because it knows what I want, when I want to get it, Facebook knows who I am, and who I know. Ideally, they also know who and what I like, but it’s a much weaker signal.”

In the real world though, Facebook doesn’t seem to know what people like (or maybe they don’t care to know). And therein, argues Jeswin, lies the seed of Facebook’s destruction. What’s the connection, you ask? Think about how many posts you see on your Facebook page. Next consider how many of them seem even remotely interesting to you. That’s the problem:

“(Facebook) looks like one of those spam filled mailboxes from the nineties.”

That is rooted in the difference between the real world and Facebook, what Jeswin calls “indiscriminate sharing”:

“In the real world, you don’t have information that you need to share with every single person you know.”

Ironically, the more friends you add on Facebook, the worse this problem gets.

Then there are the bores and loudmouths who just like to say whatever comes to their mind:

“Facebook is godsent for people who love to talk, but have nothing to say.”

C’mon, you say, Facebook can surely fix these problems: they have (or can hire) smart programmers, can’t they? Not so fast: Facebook makes money through Social Media Marketing. If you “like” a product or service, chances are that future posts by that company get shown on not only your page but also on your friends’. And since advertising is all about reaching the maximum people, it would be suicidal for Facebook to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Which is why, Jeswin argues, Facebook is in a death spiral that it can’t break out of.