http://www.businessinsider.com/half-of-americans-think-facebook-is-a-passing-fad-2012-5
Quote
Half of Americans think Facebook is a passing fad, according to the results of a new Associated Press-CNBC poll. And, in the run-up to the social network's initial public offering of stock, half of Americans also say the social network's expected asking price is too high.
The company Mark Zuckerberg created as a Harvard student eight years ago is preparing for what looks to be the biggest Internet IPO ever. Expected later this week, Facebook's Wall Street debut could value the company at $100 billion, making it worth more than Disney, Ford and Kraft Foods.
I think social is here to stay, but it may not always be FB. There is nothing special about the place other than its broad user base.
And in more news related to the problem FB's valuation....
QuoteSundaram says judging from this price these investors seem to believe that the company's profits will double, and then double again, and then double again — all within the next few years.
For that to happen, Facebook will need to attract 10 percent of all advertising dollars spent on the planet "across all media – print, billboards, radio, television, Internet," Sundaram says. While this is theoretically possible, Sundaram says it's "an extremely low probability."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/15/152736516/is-facebook-worth-100-billion
It's interesting that all of these polls and surveys are just coming to light before the IPO. It reads like someone trying to manipulate the media to lower the opening price.
Sure FB is a fad...how soon this fad will pass is another question entirely. No other fad in this sector has gained so much market share.
They do have a large user base and I guess the question is, have they become a necessary evil in our daily lives. I know parents, grand parents love to use it to keep in touch but it does seem like younger people are all on Twitter these days. I have a feeling Social will be very cyclical with young people jumping to either old networks or new networks trying to escape from their parents.
Apparently if you want to be on the forefront with social then http://just.me is the one to watch.
They've had a few good rounds of funding recently and is headed by Keith Teare who is a co founder of techcrunch so there's will be no shortage of publicity when it's live.
Here's some more info - http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/12/just-me-preview/
I'm with littleman, I think social is natural, like talking around the water cooler at work, but it will not always be FB. Of course we said that about Google and now 10+ years later we are ojust beginning to see the shift away from Google - so it might take awhile.
Quote from: hungrygoose on May 16, 2012, 09:15:44 AM
They do have a large user base and I guess the question is, have they become a necessary evil in our daily lives. I know parents, grand parents love to use it to keep in touch but it does seem like younger people are all on Twitter these days. I have a feeling Social will be very cyclical with young people jumping to either old networks or new networks trying to escape from their parents.
I agree. My kids hate the fact that I am on FB (even if I was there for a good while before them). The trend in my household (and among the couplle of schools they are at) seems to be -
Connect via FB chat, then switch over to anyother chat platform on a smartphone.
Even though fb chat is not public they don't seem to trust it/it offers less features than other platforms/their parents can't see that they are ONLINE when they are supposed to be asleep/doing homework.
Parents are uncool....and they are all over FB.
OK, maybe because I'm old and uncool,
But I can't get into twitter. It just reminds me of a huge IRC chat room where everyone is talking about a different topic and nobody is really talking to each other. I don't feel like I'm in touch with anyone on twitter.
Maybe it is just because I haven't figured out how to manage it...
I had a t shirt, that was banned in my house, it said:
"Because no-one gives a Twatter.com what you say."
Sums it up for me. That said this is funny:
https://twitter.com/#!/PigeonJon
>Maybe it is just because I haven't figured out how to manage it...
Twitter Lists: break it down into small manageable chunks.
#Tag Searches: This can be useful for broad overview of a subject. Then like in a busy forum, find out who the voices are that you trust and put them into a list (see above.)
Paper.li - it has it's uses. For subjects I don't need realtime feeds for I make a "newspaper" which I use as sort of an executive summary for that day. Not perfect but free.
Most of the people I follow on Twitter are SEO's and Web developers that I learned to trust there comments back in WmW, Spider Food, Search Guild, Threadwatch days or they are local voices from my region, politics etc.
FB is all friends and neighbors so the discussion is different and I stick with it because of the people in-spite of hating FB's walled garden.
Twitter is a news-junkie's dream.
I pretty much use it as a ticker for world events. I don't really use it to communicate socially, I have games for that.
Welcome to the Core Chakazulu.