When any phenomenon reaches a high level of popularity, its future and eventual decline have to be considered. I have lived through the good times and the end of emule, msn, and a long (and geeky) list of similar cases, which I will spare you from having to read. Facebook will also go through the same thing, sooner or later.
When a platform becomes popular, mentioned on radio and television, and everyone (even an elderly person from a remote village in the Pyrenees where there is no Internet) knows about it, 20 thousand ‘tricks’ start to appear like wild mushrooms, which end up ruining it. And it is well known that what goes up must come down.
Lately, an increasing number of the messages published on Facebook are promotions from companies. I am not referring to ads, that is normal. I am talking about original and creative heavy and dubious efficiency practices, which are becoming common. For example, we can see companies that force you to click on share to participate in a draw, get a discount voucher, or post a message on your wall indicating that you use an app or register on a website.
The average entrepreneur has found out, as always, late, that Facebook can be a great advertising medium. What was initially a real business opportunity for a few visionaries has become a common, annoying practice carried out by companies that, not even sure of the results they will obtain, try to claim their share of the pie. Because their brother-in-law told them that ’it’s what’s in now’, or they took a course in ‘Advertising on the Internet, creative initiatives on Facebook’.
If we add to this the recent failures of Facebook in the stock market, its manifest inability to bring its business model to mobile devices, the bankruptcy of Zynga, and the fact that, inevitably, people end up leaving products for newer ones, in my experience, this smells like the beginning of the end for Facebook.
I’m not saying it’s going to happen tomorrow, but an important abandonment is going to take place in the coming years, which has left the peak of popularity behind. But well… we will always have Twitter.