The End of Facebook
In case you missed it, May 31 was the first “Quit Facebook Day,” a day in which people committed to deleting – not just deactivating – their Facebook accounts. We’re talking about permanent deletion, a decision to forever forego the #1 social networking platform. By the time Quit Facebook Day finally arrived, over 30,000 people had made the pledge, though this number falls short of the average number of Facebook accounts started each day. So we’re not talking about a substantial incision into the Facebook population. Nonetheless, we shouldn’t dismiss the number so quickly, because the mere existence of Quit Facebook Day indicates a growing dissatisfaction with Facebook as the main social networking platform. And while this will make many guffaw, I’m going to go ahead and mark this year as the beginning of the end of Facebook.
I don’t mean that Facebook is going to simply disappear or that some new competitor is on the verge of displacing it. I’ll get more specific about my reasoning in a moment, but first it’s worth understanding why it is tens of thousands of people felt compelled to publicly announce that they were done with the social networking giant. The main complaints centered around two issues, Facebook’s ever changing privacy policies and the increasing primacy of Facebook as a generalized intermediary for web-interactions. In the aftermath of what we might think of as the second social networking wars (the gated communities of AOL v. Compuserve would define the first), Facebook emerged as the winner, leaving Friendster shattered, and MySpace increasingly crippled, despite Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of the latter. The reasons for Facebook’s eventual victory are complicated and interwoven, and involve issues as diverse as better image viewing functionality, simple and standardized aesthetics, a higher socioeconomic user base, a better application of network theory, and so on. But one of the reasons often given by individuals to explain their preference for Facebook over MySpace back in the day was that Facebook had made a solemn promise to keep data private unless you chose to have that data made public. Since then, that promise has been broken, significantly twice, and the controls that govern the privacy of one’s information on Facebook have become so complicated and twisted that even seasoned social networking veterans have difficulty negotiating them.
The latest big privacy change, after which most information is defaulted to public, started a rather vocal outcry from many users. Indeed, the outcry was significant enough that Mark Zuckerberg, the man behind Facebook, actually published an op-ed in the Washington Post attempting to respond, quasi-mea culpa style, to those concerned about the direction Facebook was taking. The op-ed was, shall we say, not particularly specific about how things were going to work out for the better, and it read a little bit more like a sales pitch rather than a policy clarification or clear discussion of the guidelines that would govern future Facebook privacy issues, prompting Rachel Sklar to call the piece more of an op-ad than an op-ed.
On June 3rd, Zuckerberg had what some are calling his “Nixon moment,” appearing on camera at D8 and answering questions from Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg. Asked about some fairly unflattering stories about the early days of Facebook (referring to teens who trusted him with their data “dumb f@&ks,” for example), and then asked later about the recent privacy kerfuffle, Zuckerberg sweated so profusely that he took off his signature sweatshirt, doing so with what amounted to almost mother-like assistance from Swisher. On the inside of the sweatshirt, the now infamous Facebook logo was revealed
, looking like something an Illuminati or Carlyle Group member would be proud to call their own. That the logo was hidden on the inside of the hoodie did nothing to dispel that impression.
So there have been plenty of stumbles with team Facebook of late. A good number of people who chose to publicly quit Facebook (TWiT media emperor, Leo Laporte, is a good example) argued that, at the end of the day, one simply could not trust Zuckerberg and the folks under him. Too many policy changes, too much power, too much trying to stake a claim to the next big trend or to become the universal grease (think Facebook Connect) that powers identity 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever we’re calling it these days.
Add into the mix the rather surprising surge of interest in Diaspora, a project spearheaded by four students at NYU’s Courant Institute. Announced about two months ago, the Diaspora project posits itself as the anti-Facebook, an open source distributed social networking protocol that would allow individuals to own the “instance” of their data, and to allow multiple instances to relate to each other by way of existing social media (Twitter, even Facebook), but to do it in a way in which you had sole control and ownership of your social graph. The project clearly borrows from an open source initiative called Appleseed (the “seed” metaphor is used in some of the explanations for how Diaspora would function), an idea that started in 2005 and sadly remains “in development,” a fact that is hardly encouraging. Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine the Diaspora team will do in one summer what Facebook and other social platforms have taken years to do, especially as those other social platforms are designed to make projects like Diaspora more difficult.
So I’m not remotely suggesting that Diaspora is coming, and with it we can kiss Facebook dominance goodbye. The existence or eventual success of a Diaspora protocol isn’t even the most interesting aspect of the project. For me, it’s the response that’s tantalizing. Two months ago, those four students announced their project and requested donations to help them work through the summer on their anti-Facebook social platform initiative. They asked for 10,000 dollars. By the end of the donation period, well over 6000 people had come together to generate over 200,000 dollars in donations. Major news outlets got interested in the project, including the New York Times and the BBC. We’re talking about four guys no one has ever really heard of, and without anyone seeing a line of code. So the only way one can explain the overwhelming and disproportionate response is to understand two things: first, that people want social networking connectivity, and second, that people do not trust companies like Facebook to be in charge of it for the long haul.
It may seem difficult to imagine that any of this will lead to the end of Facebook, as dominant and central as it is to the modern Internet experience. But we should remember that in 2001, when the Internet was just a fraction of what it is now, AOL had an amazing 30 million members. No one thought AOL would fall, and yet,10 years later, AOL is a shadow of its former self, best known for having a clunky and ugly instant messenger. 
If the history of digital media shows us anything, it is that the giants of digital industry stumble with an alarming inevitability.
But there is another sense in which we can talk about the end of Facebook, a sense in which we could talk about the end of social media in general. Like the “Internet,” or “Blogging,” some terms lose their specificity and their uniqueness over time. In the so-called human sciences (in the States, we tend to subdivide these into humanities and social sciences), there is a term and a theory that explains how certain concepts gain potency while losing their specificity—and that term is hegemony. The term is used extensively in international relations literature to describe a state, like the U.S., that has become so powerful that it carries a disproportionate influence on other states. The more generalized, humanities theory of hegemony is similar enough: some concepts or identities become so large that they become synonymous with a wide number of things or other concepts, the way Kleenex became synonymous with tissue, or the way Facebook is working to become synonymous with social networking.
But one of the things that we know about hegemony is that the larger the hegemonic operation (the more things that can be strongly identified or influenced by a single identity or term) the weaker the identity of the term itself becomes. At the risk of being marginally technical, we call the various things or activities that can be included under the hegemonic term “chains of equivalence,” and the longer the chain, the less we identify any particular link in that chain as being essential to the hegemonic operation. To put this into the context of Facebook and social networking, we may only ask what we mean by social networking, which has always been something of an ill-fitted label. Messaging, peer-to-peer connections, file-sharing, status broadcasts, shared activities, identities defined by relation to each other (friends, followers, karma, etc.) – these are all part and parcel of social media functions, and as more and more feature sets get integrated into Facebook, and as more and more of Facebook gets integrated into external feature sets, the less and less we can say that any one of these functions defines social media in and of themselves, or defines the value and substance of Facebook in particular. So Facebook becomes the default, but the default loses some of its specific value.
For those that remember the days when people actually talked about the “Internet,” or used the full expression “World Wide Web,” or even when people actually spent time talking about “blogging,” as if it was some special and rarefied activity, you can guess what I’m suggesting, because of each of these terminologies represent a term that was at one point so dominant and so seemingly necessary that they became the default label for an increasingly robust set of activities, and each lost their nominal force as a result. These days people don’t talk about blogging as if it’s some semi-mystical activity that “you’ve just gotta try.” Now it’s simply part of how most websites are designed. Facebook, I believe, and to some extent the idea of social media in general, face a similar dilemma: the more they become everything, the less they mean anything. And when they lose their specific meaning, and with it their specific value, people will come to expect certain functions as normative and standard, and not simply as part of a specific walled garden.
Watching Facebook rush to copy Twitter functionality, geotagging, and every other new feature set (it seems obvious they’re setting themselves up as a future leader in real time web as well – it’s the best explanation of the new default privacy settings), I cannot help but think Zuckerberg’s Nixon moment, his uncomfortable sweating, may be a sign that Facebook’s chariot is already flying a little too close to the sun.
In this context, some sort of social networking protocol that will replace social media platforms seems inevitable. Getting different nodes (seeds, instances, whatever you want to call them) to communicate with each other without having those nodes instead communicate through a centralized database of which each node is functionally an epiphenomenal effect, is simply easier, and more adaptable, and more private. Once again, the history of the net hints at an important parallel. In the early days of Arpanet, emails were handled by the file transfer protocol, FTP, with the sender actually placing a copy of the email file on the recipient’s computer. Such a method worked, but it had its limitations—it was complicated (one had to manually enter the IP address of the target computer) and it was insecure (the computers had to be left open to outside tampering to allow ftp access). The eventual solution, and the first killer app, the app that really accelerated the transformation of Arpanet into the Internet, was the simple message transfer protocol, or SMTP, a protocol that still governs email function today.
At some point, social networking will benefit from a similar type of solution. And Facebook will join AOL in the net history books as an era-defining giant whose era has come and gone.
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19 Comments, Comment or Ping
Brook Ellingwood
Great post, Ken.
I think it’s important to be clear about the differences between “social networking” and “social media.” Social networking is a behavior, and social media is that behavior mediated. Whenever a two-way medium is created, people turn it into a social medium even if that had nothing to do with the original intended purpose of the medium. We can’t help it — social networking is what we do as a species.
Facebook’s downfall is as sure as AOL’s was. As technology and media march forward hand-in-hand, they create new landscapes made of newly developed open standards and decreased barriers to entry. Entrepreneurial companies can initially succeed by getting to where things are headed anyway, by building proprietary products based on closed standards and controlling the cost of entry. But the open model is always breathing down their necks, threatening to catch up it will erode the business.
AOL couldn’t stay ahead of the open model because it had nowhere left to go. Apple is staying ahead by introducing new products just at the moment that its old innovations become new standards in the open model. Facebook is more AOL than Apple, and has been floundering ever since it left the confines of Harvard, trying to figure out how to make itself futureproof, but it really hasn’t made any headway and now the strain of the effort is starting to become apparent. When your business model is to corner the market for personal identity on the Internet, you’re going to feel a lot of hot breath on the back of your neck.
You’re on the right track thinking about the open model that replaces Facebook. But that it doesn’t need to be a protocol. What should be making Mark Zuckerberg sweat is the Semantic Web. By embedding relationships directly into Web pages, the connections between pieces of data become readable by machines as well as humans. When those pieces of data include people’s names, the Semantic Web becomes the Social Web.
As an effort of the World Wide Web Consortium, official Semantic Web frameworks are entangled in the W3c’s process. Like most W3c work, they are elegant to the extent that many real-world technologists won’t see the point. But the real world definitely sees the point of the Semantic Web and less elegant non-W3c frameworks have already found a foothold.
If you know what you’re looking for, you can find Semantic Web information all over the place, including being exposed in Google search results. With the Operator extension for Firefox, I can see that Flip the Media is adding a small amount of semantic value by marking tag links as “tagspaces.” The theme I used on my own blog adds contacts to tagspaces (as seen on my final paper for your Winter 2009 “Evolution and Trends” class on The Future of Social Networking Sites, in which I predicted Facebook fading away, but ignored the privacy issue because I thought Zuckerberg had already learned his lesson).
Look at your Twitter home page with Operator and each person you follow shows up as a Microformated contact. Now look at a resume on LinkedIn with Operator and you’ll see that inside the human-formated resume is a machine-readable “hResume.” The connection between the person and the jobs is defined, not just inferred. The text may be the same as the text behind the “info” tab on someone’s Facebook profile, but because LinkedIn is using an open semantic standard, it can be indexed and used as a node in a map of a social web.
What’s messy now is tying all this together. A search engine may find that you are a contact on my Twitter home page, but Twitter doesn’t use XFN so there’s no definition of the type of contact. If your Twitter page doesn’t link to any information about you — such as your LinkedIn profile — then you become a dead-end node on my Social Web.
What it seems the Diaspora developers are working on is a distributed model where you connect all your presence nodes on the Web together through a seed point you yourself control. This helps with the problem of relying on your Social Web to be built because you linked your Twitter to your blog to your Flickr to your LinkedIn.
Because social networking is what we do as a species, attempts to monopolize it always fail. Facebook has done a brilliant job of building the interim, centralized, proprietary version of the final, decentralized, open Social Web to come. Whatever form it takes, the company’s eventual downfall is written into its business model.
Jun 24th, 2010
Sebastian Stevens
I think Facebook’s method of preventing spam might do them in. For starters there’s many of us out there that don’t have cell phones. There have been many people that tried to log into their accounts recently and were told they needed to confirm their identity via mobile phone number and confirmation code.Now there’s literally thousands of people that can’t access their own accounts. This is frustrating to say the least. The first thing I’m gonna do once I’m able to log back into my account (if that ever happens) is delete it once and for all. I’m sick of their control freak ways. This is ridiculous.
Sep 9th, 2010
Dean Holmes
Great post. Here’s Maverick’s take on Facebook (posted yesterday) that may be of interest. So much to do here.
Adding your blog to my mix.
Link to Mavericks Post: http://bit.ly/ghpCrm
Dec 2nd, 2010
sisa
I think Facebook’s method of preventing spam might do them in. For starters there’s many of us out there that don’t have cell phones. There have been many people that tried to log into their accounts recently and were told they needed to confirm their identity via mobile phone number and confirmation code.Now there’s literally thousands of people that can’t access their own accounts. This is frustrating to say the least. The first thing I’m gonna do once I’m able to log back into my account (if that ever happens) is delete it once and for all. I’m sick of their control freak ways. This is ridiculous.
Jan 10th, 2011
hadi bechara
why no facebook ?
Jan 10th, 2011
hadi bechara
whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!
Jan 10th, 2011
sara bechara
i love facebook very muchhh (K)
Jan 10th, 2011
sara bechara
It seems every other day we wake up, another one of our future generation have become a victim to gun or knife crime. Gone are the days when two people would meet up after school and scuff it out and whoever won, won and whoever lost, lost. It never really mattered because by the next day it was forgotten about and you were friends again! These days there is no appreciation and respect for HUMAN LIFE!
HOW DO WE STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING?????
Jan 10th, 2011
sara bechara
we need to keep coming together, cos as a nation, blacks are powerful, the first and the descendants of all races, black people have been brainwashed 2 kill each other from the begining of time, this is due to the fact that we are sextremely powerful, its not our fault that they chose us first… once we unite, we can change things… BLACKS NEED TO RESEARCH THERE HISTORY FROM EGYPT PERHAPS, AND U WILL C WHAT LINE OF GREAT PEOPLE WE CA,ME FROM… THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE, U JUST NEED TO READ IT…. THEN U WILL UNDERSTAND WHY BLACKS ARE HATED ON AND ARE SUPRESSED…the goverment play a major role in it… we need to all stand up 2 them somehow.
Jan 10th, 2011
louma merheb
EVERYTHING YOU JUST SAID THERE IS SO RITE BOTH OF U ITS COME TO THE STAGE WERE ITS THE YOUNGER GENERATIONR BEGINING TO WALK ROUND WIV WEPONS ITS AFASION STATMENT SO TO SPEAK BUT I DONT THINK THEY RELISE THE FULL EXTREM OF WAT THIS LEADS TO PEOPLE R LEAVING LOVED ONES BEHIND BY NO CHOICE AN THE PERSON THAT HAS DONE THIS HAS TORN THAT BEAUTERFULL LITTLE GIRL AND ROSEYS LIFE APART NOT TO MENTION HIS MUM SOMETHING HAS GOT TO BE DONE OVA WISE ITS NEVER GOING TO END .MY DAUGTER IS 2 AN IM SCARED 4 HER WEN SHE REACHES HER 20S WAT THE HELL IS IT GOING TO BE LIKE THEN R.I.P
Jan 10th, 2011
i love facebook
The up and coming young boys and girls need to be properly educated about the dangers of carrying firearms and the hurt it causes the families who are affected. I have cousins slightly younger then pinky and i worry for them coz they say they have heard friends talk bout using a gun if they need to and i think it is a crying shame!
We in the black community need to start thinking about what we can do to educate young black boys minds, and keep them away from that kind of lifestyle. Its time to take a stand a let these people who walk around with guns or knife’s know that we are NOT afraid of them and we will do everything in our power to stop gun crime altogether! NOT ANOTHER DROP!
I am truely sorry for Pinky’s family and hope that in time they will be able to get through this, don’t give up the fight to find his killer but PLEASE don’t try to get even because this will achieve nothing. R.I.P Pinky. xxxx
Jan 10th, 2011
i love facebook
First and fore most I would like to say my heart goes out to Pinky’s loved ones and Family. I am so sad to see yet another young, good-looking black man off the streets due to gun crime, another mother left to raise her child alone, another child left without a father, another Mother without her Son…it goes on
The generation of today in NW have mourned so many people over the years due to murders and I am getting frustrated, especially when i see my loved ones hurt and ther is nothing any1 can do 2 stop the pain or bring back who we have lost. Pinky did not deserve 2 b killed and I pray his killer is found, whatever the outcome prison or revenge. There will never be a day when gun and knife crime is put 2 a stop, HOW LONG HAS ALL THESE ANTI-KILLING CAMPAIGNS BEEN AROUND 4? YEARS? HAVE THE MURDERS STOPPED/ OR EVEN LOWERED? NO!. Since Obama I beleived that black people better themselves, but this is not the case. Some people r too hot headed and wanna act like gangsters and think that killing is a fashion, I have no respect for anybody who uses weapons. It’s funny how certain man will kill a nxt man without even giving that man a chance 2 defend himself!!! FUCKING DICKHEADS!!! Most of it is JEALOUSY N ENVY!!! MAN JEALOUS OF A NXT MAN, FUCKING HATERS!!! I’m getting so mad. God needs 2 step in now, how much more we gotta go through?
Jan 10th, 2011
maria blod
First of all i would like to send my condolences to the family, i knew Shawn through my son Leon, we have to blame the cowards who kill our children, they are nothing but that, HATERS, and JEALOUSLY is all i see. They want what you have LOOKS,WOMEN,MONEY,CARS. Can we stop this from happening i doubt it, these cowards dont want peace they dont want happiness all they want is war and our young children are the one’s that we have to bury.I know we like to say R.I.P but deep down it breaks my heart because we know our young son,brother,cousin,uncle, friend,dad,partner, should not be with god but here with us to live out the rest of there life as it should be what gives anyone the right to take someone else’s life.NOW SAFE IN THE HANDS OF ANGELS GOD BLESS YOUXXX
Jan 10th, 2011
Joey
someone has to buy facebook
Jan 12th, 2011
mark martin pablo
plssssss dont delete facebook
Jan 13th, 2011
mark martin pablo
i am so sad to hear the news you guys are kill joy
Jan 13th, 2011
mark martin pablo
facebook is now also our life you just dont know how happy we are having just a single account of facebook,so please dont make some stupid mistakes
Jan 13th, 2011
wings
If people complain about how people stole their picture and private informations. It’s not facebook’s problem but theirs !
-don’t put informatin you don’t wish to share.
-dont put your slutty pictures if you don’t want to get hateful comments.
I really don’t understand how people CAN have problems with fb, None of my friends complained in the past years
Jan 14th, 2011
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