Will Facebook Die?

Sean Parker: You know what's cooler than a million dollars?

Eduardo Saverin: You?

Sean Parker: A billion dollars.

I recently watched the movie The Social Network and thoroughly enjoyed it. It also forced me to think about the social networking sites once again (previous post). I also recently came across this video on facebook which cribbed about the numerous facebook cliché.

The awesome run of facebook has inspired many a budding entrepreneurs and nerdy programmers. However, is facebook merely enjoying its honeymoon period, is something which I ponder upon often. We Indians are very familiar with orkut. Orkut was the facebook of yesteryears. However, it is approaching its termination at a fast pace. There are multiple reasons suggested by people about the orkut debacle. Some point out the flaws in its security and privacy settings. Some other argue that it was facebook which killed orkut. For me I believe it was the latter which forced me into shifting from one to the other.

But over the past few months I have started getting ‘bored’ of facebook. After having used facebook for some time, I have started identifying a pattern in the way people post stuff and react to it. There would be the usual videos running around. Then there would be these status messages about life, love, exams, music, friends, picnic, something being awesome, something being sucky, beatles, tendulkar, girls, rajnikanth, alcohol, college, football, placements, birthdays, miss you, love you, sitcoms, congratulations, cricket, etc. There would be these fortune cookies, horoscopes, ask a psychic, which bitsian insect are you and hell lot of other quizzes and apps which become really annoying.  Every person makes it a point to meddle around with his relationship status. Well I think you can see the video which I mentioned before to get an idea of what I am saying.

The point is that Facebook has become predictable. The number of things which can be seen on your wall are a subset of a very small universal set. My wall looks more and more like a notice board nowadays. The reason behind this sudden decline in interest is simple. The universal set was always small. If at all, it has just grown and not shrunk (facebook is trying really hard). Initially, it was the “sense of wonder” which had gripped us when we first came across social networking. The idea of having the power to create one’s own image in a virtual world was the driving force. However, once the image has been formed now, the whole idea looks lame.

So where are things heading to? Facebook is coming up with a new unified messaging product (more). @facebook.com is going to be the newest entrant in the email industry. This clearly shows that facebook is now tilting towards a tried and tested internet product, Email. It has to leverage the 500 million user base, before they get really bored with it, and has to make itself an inevitable part of its user’s life ( which its current product doesn’t seem to do; at least not for me).

Taking another view to the whole discussion, let us assume a scenario where Zuckerburg would have remained less ambitious and would have settled for the millions (instead of billions). This would have meant that Facebook would have still run on a university based networking model. Although the revenue would have been way lower than what it is currently, it would have been assured of a loyal user base (college kids are passionate about anything related to their college; try me) and a sustained growth. Eventually, Facebook and other social networking sites would primarily cater to the demographic age group of 15 – 25 year old people. Taking this into consideration, the previous facebook model doesn’t look that bad after all.

My suggestion to Zuckerburg would be to take the “God wants you to know” quiz. I heard it is awesome.

Image courtesy: http://www.kk.org

Quote courtesy: http://imdb.com

Networking... Social networking

There were days when ‘orkut’ was the new buzzword. Suddenly people started asking whether i was in orkut or not. When i said i was not, they would make it a point to convince me that i am missing something important in life. After hearing this time and again i gave in to the temptation of finding out what this word had for me (initially i felt it was taken from mandarin). Although i was bogged down till then by the countless arguments of elders that internet is a haven of ‘dirt’.

When i made my account on orkut, i was under the able guidance of one of my happy go lucky friend, prabuddh , who scared the wits out of me when, in order to screw me, he added one of the girls from my coaching class as ‘friend’ in my account. I was really worried about the prospective consequences of declaring a girl(whom i never talked to) as a friend on web.
Then there was a phase of juvenile enthusiasm, of making a community, meant just for me and my friends. It was the birth of the bad boyz (hail all you Bad Boys!!!!).We, monkeys... running in a rat race... really got overboard with our community... and most of our recess discussions in school were dedicated to this... the teenage blood was at work and the innocence and fun that i derived from such trivial things really makes me miss my teenage.

I remember when one of my ‘interactions’ ( :P) with a junior, i figured out that people can have ‘networking’ as their hobby(initially i was impressed, thinking he was talking about computer networking, to be dawned about my ignorance of the usage of a term). It really amazed me how a thing so unproductive can feature in that list.
I agree that it is really a nice medium of keeping in touch with people and i myself have benefitted a lot by finding long lost friends on net. The thing is, these sites are social networking sites and not keep-in-touch sites. And so these come with value added services which can keep you occupied for hours together, only for you to find yourself growing grey and dumb.

A very significant important social/cultural shift that has happened lately, is that people are given an option of living two lives at the same time. One in which they are what they are and they cant change how people look at them. Then there is this virtual world, where one can manipulate their own image. Where everybody becomes the cool dude they always wanted to become. Those cool funky names that people keep on orkut.... or sudden escalation of interest in photography specially in the art of self portrait... or people using the ‘about me’ column to write in length about how complicated a creature they all are and use that space to display their command over English language . Hypocrisy has mutated from the time of jews to social networking sites.

And well i am no exception to this hypocrisy and myself have gone through all that i have criticised. But at times my conscience does prick me. Living virtual can never bring a real peace. It has now become a necessary evil. But then i guess i have bigger evils to deal with and this doesn’t need my efforts :P.